Londoner wrote: ↑Mon Jun 26, 2017 3:36 pm
If you think warmongers may "sanctify" their warmongering with reference to religious ideas, how do you know that isn't the case with other things?
All religious people may be using religion to "sanctify" their various secular desires.
Some do. Some don't. It's not hard to tell the difference.
When somebody is just trying to "sanctify" a desire, it's because that desire is actually unsanctified by the Scriptures he's trying to use. So you read the book see what it says, and then judge whether they're using or abusing the text.
You believe that you can tell when this is the case that other people are doing this, but they might believe exactly the same about you!
The text itself will arbitrate, in such cases. If my text says, "Love your neighbor," and even "Love your enemies," then it doesn't warrant crusades or jihad. But if it says, "When you meet the enemies of Allah, kill them," then it does.
...your dislike of Muslims?
I don't have one. I like Arabs, and live with them every day. But I don't like Islam, which is a horrid ideology. Likewise, I work with Atheists all the time. I get along with them great; but I don't like their creed.
The people, I like; it's just
the ideology I don't. And that's fair.
I'm sure you would consider yourself in that camp...but so would everybody!
Actually, no. Some people are content to be "culturally" this or that. The ideology itself, they don't care for much. How many Jewish people keep all 613 (or even all 10) of the commandments? But many people identify as Jewish. And you can observe that many Muslims do not keep the "Five Pillars," but still wish to identify as Muslims. Likewise, there are Easter-Christmas Catholics who reject Papal interdictions against birth control or abortion. These are just culturally religious, and most of them know it very well.
So will you award communism and racism the same status as religion?
Yes to the former, but the latter is probably more an emotive state or a claim of taste than an ideological one. Racism occurs in many forms, and in association with many ideologies, including Atheism -- look at eugenics, for example. And Atheism is also a "religion" of sorts, for it is a faith ideology. So I grant them all that status.
But "religion" itself (at least in current usage) isn't a term "religious" people generally use to describe themselves. It's an Atheist or skeptic's term, a collective noun with dismissive implication. I've never met a Catholic, a Hindu or a Muslim who was just happy to say, "I'm religious," without meaning their own particular ideology, not the others.