Webster’s Dictionary defines ‘Religism’ as animosity, intolerance, conflict, oppression or bigotry towards religions or belief systems.
Archon’s Street-Usage Dictionary, based on keen observation of desperately insecure individuals and groups, defines it as opposing, doubting, not holding, or even merely QUESTIONING any religion or particular set of beliefs.
It is a particularly useful concept and term for the most adamantly religious, to allow them to hold and foment the most extreme acts and views. They couch the holding of every position except theirs as an attack, to justify outrageous actions.
He who takes offence, when none is offered, is a fool! – Brigham Young
Groups like the Taliban, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram and ISIS view the very existence of the peaceful, democratic freedom of Western society as an affront to their particular narrow view, and claim that it needs to be met with IEDs, torture and beheadings, to ‘defend’ the Muslim faith.
At home, it is only the rule of law which protects all segments of society, and prevents some of the more Fundamentalist Christian groups and individuals from going that far. I feel that thugs like the Westboro Baptist Church should be weeded out, root and branch. I grant them the right to hold their noxious opinions, but not to disrupt polite society by ‘defending’ them with graceless attacks and accusations.
I recently read a quote from the President of the Christian Screenwriters’ Guild. The very existence of this group says, “We’re better than you, and we’re going to fight for the right to keep telling you that.” They’re the kind who refuse to be inclusive, and view any attempt to speak of plural ‘Happy Holidays’, and add the year-end celebrations of any other Faiths, as Religism, and an attack on Christmas.
The somewhat dated quote, from Barbara Pelosi said, “I find it beyond naïve, to convince myself that the folks who are lapping up The Da Vinci Code are on a ‘search for truth.’ They’re not. They’re on a crusade to validate their own rejection of the authority of Christ and the Church.”
As an analogy, which she and many other Christians would refuse to accept: – Barack Obama is the President of the United States. Within legal limits, his word is law. He is the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, and his orders must be obeyed. He has the authority!
But wait. I live in Canada, a completely separate country. I don’t have to obey him, or even respect him, and the truth is, our rejection of him and ‘his authority’ doesn’t make my Prime Minister the Devil, nor do I live in Hell. People like Pelosi have convinced themselves that the ‘authority of Christ and the Church’ is universal and valid, and any rejection is an attack. They simply can’t accept that their faithfully believed “TRUTH” could be wrong, or anyone else’s, right.
If Christians go to other countries to convince ‘misguided’ natives to accept the Christian faith, they are viewed as kindly missionaries. If the natives object to these interfering do-gooders, and they end up in prison, or dead, they achieve the exalted status of Martyrs.
If people of other faiths attempt to do the same thing to Christians, they are insultingly dismissed as ‘Heathens’, and, until a couple of hundred years ago, would have been tortured and burned at the stake as heretics, by a Church ‘defending itself from an attack on its narrow set of beliefs.’
In a recent MSN article about the 20th anniversary of the movie Pulp Fiction, the line uttered by Samuel L. Jackson’s character, just before he killed someone, was quoted. “Ezekiel 25:17. The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men.”
As an English language purist, I questioned whether the word should have been “iniquities”, so I looked it up in ‘one of my Bibles’. Ezekiel 25:17 does not exist! Nor does Ezekiel 17:25. They say that you can get people to agree with almost anything, if you tell them that, “Benjamin Franklin said it.” Evangelical Christians just claim, “It’s in the Bible.” whether it is or not. Pay no attention to that deluded person behind the curtain of a “Holy Book!”
The Skeptic’s Fate
The miraculous tale that you tell
I don’t credit. I’m under no spell.
I don’t swallow events
when there’s no evidence.
So I guess that I’m going to Hell.
P.S.
English-speaking Christians have ‘The Bible.’ Sometimes it is ‘The Holy Bible’. In selecting the picture of the Koran above, I found that English-speaking Muslims have ‘ The Koran, The Holy Koran The Noble Koran, The Glorious Koran, and a companion study volume, whose title firmly states, “There Are No Contradictions in the Koran!” I am underwhelmed by religion. 🙄
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