Wednesday, 21 October 2009

Some Things I find, Simply, Incomprehendable!

I am reading ‘The God Delusion’ by Richard Dawkins at the moment and it is constantly leaving me fascinated! Finding out how religion originated, how it’s spread and evolved throughout different societies and different countries throughout the world. Why it originated, why did it catch on in such an immense way and spread so rapidly and why it is still so prominent in today’s societies after, literally, thousands of years. The fascination is never ending !

     I would like to think I keep a relatively open mind when it comes to peoples beliefs and that I also respect them, but there are some things about some religions, on some scales that literally infuriate me! I read the following and wanted to share this, as I believe it to be simply vile and outrageous!


     “…..when I interviewed for television the Reverend Michael Bray, a prominent American anti-abortion activist, I asked him why evangelical Christians were so obsessed with the private sexual inclinations such as homosexuality, which didn’t interfere with anybody else’s life. His reply invoked something like self-defence. Innocent citizens are at risk of becoming collateral damage when God chooses to strike a town with a natural disaster because it houses sinners. In 2005, the fine city of New Orleans was catastrophically flooded in the aftermath of a hurricane, Katrina. The Reverend Pat Robinson, one of America’s best- known televangelists and a former presidential candidate, was reported as blaming the hurricane on a lesbian comedian who happened to live in New Orleans. * You’d think that an omnipotent God would adopt a slightly more targeted approach to zapping sinners; a judicious heart attack, perhaps, rather than the wholesale destruction of an entire city just because it happened to be the domicile of one lesbian comedian…..”

“……By the way, what presumptuous egocentricity to believe that earth-shaking event, on the scale at which a god (or a tectonic plate) might operate, must always have a human connection. Why should a divine being, with creation and eternity on his mind, care a fig for petty human malefactions? We humans give ourselves such airs, even aggrandizing out poky little ‘sins’ to the level of cosmic significance.”

* …… whether true or not , it is widely believed, no doubt because it is entirely typical of utterances by evangelical clergy. The website that says the Katrina story is untrue (www.snopes.com/Katrina/satire/Robertson.asp) also quotes Robertson as saying, of an earlier gay pride march in Orlando, Florida, ‘I would warn Orlando that you’re right in the way of some serious hurricanes, and I don’t think I’d be waving those flags in God’s face if I were you.’

     I don't feel there is much more to say, as Dawkins says it all with such precision. But, it really is beyond my comprehension that anyone (in particular groups of people whom claim to be all loving and all excepting) can be so full of bias and venom. It's nothing short of inhumane!

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