Moderate Religion - its shocking relationship with its extremist co-religionists

Support for so-called moderate religion is guilty of something called the Englishman’s Fallacy. Otherwise known as the argument to moderation, it incorrectly assumes that it is always the right thing to take a middle position.  Suppose half a religion is terrorist and the other half is pacifist. Look what happens if you take the moderate or middle view! You are compromising with evil. You are trying to meet it half way.  You are trying to put a net curtain over the evil by blending in the good people.

 

If religionists themselves can claim to be moderate that does not mean outsiders should agree with them.  Usually the talk about moderate religionists comes from tactical commentators from outside their ranks.

A religionist who fits or seems to fit the politically useful standards: being a religious doubter, being unwilling to put religious standards first, being pro-choice, says human nature is marvelously good and trustworthy, says nothing critical about LGBT will be labeled a moderate. 

 

The fact that people with harmful doctrines (such as the Bible doctrine that God as master of life has the right to order us to kill) may never put them into practice only means they never had to. It is not grounds for praise. Religion readily says that itself about philosophies such as atheism or utilitarianism and it is right that bad teachings not being acted on does not mean they should be tolerated. But that means we can say the same thing about it - it teaches doctrines that would harm and which are to be abhorred even if they never get into a position where they do a lot of damage. You are not a good person but a hypocrite if you will not condemn something bad and wait until it does harm. There is nothing moderate about respecting and refusing to abominate any book of scripture that is in some way inappropriate or exploitive.

 

Moderate religionists are considered moderates by those with socialist and secular values. Your opinion and method for evaluation is irreligious or non-religious. While you claim to respect moderates and their faith you treat them as if their religious side does not matter – it is just the social side you are worried about. Your opinion is not even relevant for it is not religious. Not only is your approach dishonest you are not asking why, “If these people are really are so moderate then why can’t they find a more moderate religion – one that is willing to trash violent scriptures - and one with more moderates to be in?” . Being designed a moderate sect, religion or person is nothing to be happy about. It is patronising and condescending and is the assessor not being truly respectful of a religion. Real respect for a religion starts with admitting what it is. If is violent then call it that.  If it is so great for a religion to care only for your liberal modern progressive values then what on earth do you want the religion for?  Why can't it just drop the religion and be about the values?  Why can't its ministers be something equivalent to

 

So liberalism defines what is a religious moderate.  That amounts to politicians defining it.  What right has a politician to decide that!!  The person is just an opportunist not a religionist or a yes-man wimp or a yes-woman wimp.  The idea that human nature only orientates towards good is dangerous if you consider abortion murder or to lead to pre-born murder.  Liberals argue that if abortion is murder we have to trust women not to avail of it unless they really need it maybe to protect their health.  It stops you taking responsibility for dead babies if you vote for abortion.  If abortion is extreme and many think it is then moderates and liberals are deceitful in how they take the labels without warrant.

 

No religious extremist becomes one overnight.  It starts off with interest in religion, then "evolves" to moderate religion and then the risk of getting extreme and spiralling out of control is incurred.  The catalyst is how irrational beliefs that are devoid of a reality check breed worse beliefs.

 

There are many isms both religious and not religious.  There are okay people in every camp.  Let us forget about people for a minute and think about the isms. An extreme racism cannot exist unless moderate racism exists.  An extreme Islam cannot exist unless moderate Islam exists.  Even if the extreme form is the honest form and the true manifestation of Islam it needs the moderates, the heretics, to lend it some respectability and power.  There is a symbiotic relationship going on.  That is why peaceful members of a religion still need to be called out on their support for the religion if it has violent tendencies.  They still have something to do with the terrorists - it may be tacit but is there. It may be implied but it is there.  It may be indirect but it is there.

The politicians and the media extol moderate Christians and Muslims and probably moderate Satanists as well! By moderate they mean whoever agrees with their understanding of liberalism or human rights. A peaceful Muslim is never called a moderate if he believes women should stay at home and wear burkas. A Catholic is called extremist for taking a total anti-abortion stance. Also, even if there is such a thing as a moderate the fact remains that at least some of these moderate people are not moderates but heretics. Given that the Koran is fonder of commanding violence than peace it is clear that a Muslim who argues that violence is always wrong is not a Muslim but a heretic. The moderates are just pawns in the cesspool that is political and media hypocrisy.
 
The moderates and the liberals and the media and the politicians when shown that a religion commands violence and hate will argue, "There is more to a religion than what texts say." They thus define religion more as a community than as a company of believers but that is a dishonest definition. You do not need a religion to form a community so religion is a company of believers. There is no room and indeed should be no room in a religion for a person who thinks their interpretation of the religion is what matters for the religion is not about what they want to think.
 
Some argue that if a religion's holy book does not command women to get into burkas or to force religion on others then it is okay for society and the state to stop the burka wearing or forced conversion or whatever. Though there are things that it is necessary for a Christian or Muslim to believe in there is some areas in which private interpretation and having your own beliefs is allowed. If the women who wear burkas consider sexual desire to be a grave sin it seems logical to them that their way of dealing with it is to cover up. The argument that there is no command in the Koran to cover up totally is a thin one. You would see people who would argue that if God commanded that gay sex is a sin or that peaceful pagans should be liquidated that does not apply today for there is no commandment against loving gay relationships or commandment to kill Satanists.  Silence is not the same as consent and we can be sure that when God did not say gay sex being loving made any difference that when he condemns it it applies to loving modern gay relationships too.  Such arguments and logic is thin and unhelpful.  The texts make it reasonable to permit people to interpret them in the hardline way.  The argument that some evil is not officially endorsed by a religion and thus there is no problem is unhelpful and manipulative.  If there is more to a religion than what a text says then clearly the door is open if a text can be understood as permitting or even commanding some evil.
 
Public religion is cosmetic. The cosmetic is used to hide something dark. Cosmetics are for hiding secrets. Society and politics often collude with it or it could be that religion is colluding with them.  Politics is terrorism in a sense for it involves each rival trying to make the other look bad and hateful.  That religion has a good relationship with politics says a lot.
 
Religion will always cause trouble as will any ideology that cares about getting people to do enough good to outweigh the bad. Religion in some forms says good works do not get you into Heaven but that does not mean it rejects the idea that you can be as bad as you want to be as long as you do more good than bad. The ideology is rife in religion and politics and society and seems ingrained into human nature. When a religion says it abhors it, it is lying. It is worse when it is religious for that is like claiming the sanction of the divine for it. Secular evil is not as bad as religious evil in the sense that the secularist does not say, "God told me to do it or it does not matter for God forgives it."
 
When it is human beings who invent and imagine revelations from God it stands to reason that a religion being man-made can turn into a violent one any time. Or it may manipulate the state or some grouping of people to do the dirty work while pretending to be outraged.
 
Also if a religion has indeed a revelation from God that will do nothing to improve the situation if the religion thinks it is a man-made religion. A religion that is from God can intend to be man-made as much as an outright invention would.
 
Catholicism says God rules the Church. That led to the Church feeling inspired to kill during the Dark Ages so it turned very violent. Christianity and Islam have a lot of innocent blood on their hands.
 
The religion can revere scriptures and saints and a God who are pro-violence. So what does a moderate Christian Muslim mean? One that does not take the Bible and the Koran and the Sharia seriously enough to be willing to put the nasty commands into action? That is not a moderate but a hypocrite.
 
All people religious or not agree that truth and freedom come together. Lies can make people feel free but free. Thus any system that claims to be the truth will believe that war if absolutely necessary for the sake of truth is justified. Truth will mean "my version of truth" to them but they agree that truth does come first. Pacifists are simply liars. Those who oppose the true religion going to war are hypocrites for they think the truth and the religion are not worth fighting for when lesser things such as food and territory are!!
 
What is moderate religion? Is it the middle between lax religion or extreme? If it is then both the lax Catholics/Muslims and the extreme ones are true Catholics/Muslims.
 
If a religion more than any other seems to produce terrorists or if it has violent revelations from God then there is no such thing as a moderate. Are there such people as moderate religionists then? No. They are not moderates but weak believers or even fakers.
 
Moderates are to blame for the fact that a religion can revere violent gods and scriptures and get away with it. They make a bad religion look better. Moderates are hypocrites for they take no responsibility for what the extremists do and believe. They are complicit.
 
So-called moderate Christians or Muslims can do nothing to inspire the extremists to change their minds. Today's moderate is tomorrow's religious fanatic. They deal with the extremists with boring platitudes, lies and half-truths and the extremists feel, “They seem okay but me doing these terrible things is my lot in life. Hopefully one day all will be like them. I bomb and kill to bring that day about.” Do-gooders cannot impress bad people. The evil ones feel part of the religion and respectable because they see the example of the respectable ones and feel they are under the same spiritual cloak. People who draw others into religions that produce some violent members are to blame for that violence. There are faiths out there that never produce violent members who feel they must hurt in the name of God or who see hurting as part of God’s plan.
 
Moderates do not advocate or assist in war against the extremists which is telling.  To condemn religious literalists and to call them dangerous or fundamentalists is implicitly to call for their destruction or death if necessary.  Moderates will stand by silently while that is said which shows they are no better than the fundamentalist or the fundamentalist straw man if you like.

Daniel Dennett states that if a religion has violent members who do not claim to have the backing of God or holy books and who are purely political then the religion is still partly to blame. That is because religion is an attractive nuisance – something that draws people in and brings them to harm. It provides a system that terrorists can recruit from. He points out that religious leaders condemn the religious terrorists in their religion in general terms. It is exactly what you would expect them to do if they have to pretend to care. They never condemn the terrorist by name or adequately explain why the terrorist is wrong. These condemnations are absolutely essential for every terrorist is different.
 
Moderates are just posers.

Christianity says God did not make evil for evil is not a thing but merely a lack or absence of good. If you think good is real and bad is a privation or absence of good then there is no real middle. All you have is a privation that is not as strong. But it is on its way to getting stronger and ending up very bad. Remember that if you think lax religion is good and extreme religion is bad! And if both are bad then looking for the middle is not going to help even if there is a middle. And there is not.

A principle is about truth. Truth is not about you. Truth is truth no matter how much you want it not to be. Once you oppose principles you become a lie. You automatically make your life a lie and thus lie to others. To seek a middle ground between the truth and the lie is to create a half-truth and a half-truth is a half-lie.

A good principle and a bad one are not opposites. The bad principle is bad not because it is a lie but because it manipulates the truth and uses the truth to make itself look sensible. Two extremes are not necessarily opposites.

Extreme religion and nice religion are thought to be opposites. That is odd for you have every religion having both sides. And as for the moderate believers, if they are trying to find the middle they need to remember that there is no middle between vice and virtue. To look for a middle is compromising virtue. If you look for a middle ground between the truth and the lie you only end up with another lie. If you really cared about the truth you would not be looking for a moderate or middle ground to slot into. And you are treating the whole thing like, "Okay I can be an extremist and become a suicide bomber. Or I can be so nice that people find me sickening. The best idea is to be in-between." If you want to be the kind of person who wants to kill and who curbs that by a desire to be saccharine that is up to you but you cannot claim that you or your faith or religious devotion is good.

The middle between a lax form of a religion and the rigid bloodletting form is fanaticism. It might not be very strong - for now! But it is still bad.
  
Christianity is a catalyst for society's hypocrisy. Society cares more about public order than principles. That is why Christianity often gets away with being violent in spirit when it is not violent in action. To praise a God who makes viruses to kill children, to praise a Jesus who took responsibility for the Old Testament murderous laws and to give money and social prestige to ministers and theologians who stand up for all that evil is paying homage to violence. It is alarming how in Catholic countries how many Catholics can say their religion is good when they would adore a God who would send a ten year old boy to Hell forever for masturbation. It is alarming how they can support the religion despite suspecting that it may be man who is saying it not God. The priest who says it would send the child to hell himself so what does his faith say about him? Religion reflects man's love for his own version of good as opposed to real good.
 
People know that if they want to work on feeling horrendous about the tragedies they learn about that do not otherwise affect them, they will soon be consumed by grief and terror and anger. So they switch off. The down-side of that is that the more they anaesthetise their emotions the more they will see and think of the suffering people as unimportant or as objects. It is possible to see a person as 80% an object and 20% as a person. There is an empathy problem then in most people. That is bad but it is a fact of life. But to sanction it by telling that person that God accepts their lives and connects with them in spite of their attitude to suffering people is going too far. If you objectify the enemy that makes it easier to kill him so religion is to blame for it makes that easier still.
 
It has been noticed that there is link between Muslims joining ISIS and Muslims failing to integrate into the wider society. People always sacrifice their faith commitments to get food and drink and shelter. The saints, monks and nuns vowed to peace will gladly slaughter if they lose those basic resources. A religion with a blood splattered warmongering past will behave itself and seem to integrate when it is a minority. Muslims fitting in in say the UK means nothing. When numbers get big enough in the area and the Muslims feel more self-sufficient they end the integration. The integration was never real in the first place.
 
A Moderate Muslim or Moderate Christian simply a person who claims a religious label that has violent and fanatical baggage but does not have the guts or strong enough faith to do harm in the name of Islam or Christianity. If so then being called a Moderate is nothing praiseworthy. The fact remains that the religions are based on accepting vicious revelations as the word of God. They are sympathisers for the cruelties done by their prophets in the name of God. They refuse to admit that holy books that commanded evil are man-made thus they make a god out of human opinion. Human opinion is not that special that it should be dressed up as the word of God - that arrogance is violent in itself!
 
Moderate religion should not be praised. All extremist religions start off looking moderate until their true intentions surface.

 

Ideology is an addiction to an idea or set of ideas. Cherry picking or being selective with facts is the core ingredient. Liberal religion by definition is more dangerous than fundamentalism.