Religious Intolerance

There are much more frightening caricatures than those Sarah Palin embodies. I think you just experienced one of them.

 

Zen, it's regrettable hearing what happened at your husband's workplace, but certainly not surprising. Many have been taught that thinking outside of their religious box is simply blasphemous. These arguments will continue until the end of time and we can't do a thing about it, either, less we become as rigid and petty as they are towards us. I also agree full heartedly that the religious right also continues to claim that is has the answers to all things good, as we are also seeing with the radical Islamists. Regretfully, this will continue as the only option to many.

What has always confounded me is that religion is available to connect us to our faith, our beliefs, our God, as well as to create structure in society (even if that structure is shifting from nomadic cultures). However, once violence occurs in the name of religion, be it through words or the sword, then that religion has failed to achieve it's ultimate purpose. Whenever someone is killed in the name of religion, then that religion has defeated the value for mankind. It simply didn't achieve ultimate peace and unity it was intended to achieve.

Half of the fundamentalists, in whichever of the main players of today's religion, are breeding hatred and intolerance. In Christian terms, this goes directly against the message of Jesus Christ, who preached of forgiveness and love.

I find myself seeing messages in Eastern religions that provide practical tools to handle the hatred in the world, but certainly wouldn't expect everyone to follow the same path. I do, however, indeed have respect for many religions and find similarities in each that I have studied.

 

I like your husband. Previous to this I thought he was a moron for being a republican. However those [Old Republican] are the views I can respect and admire, and have done for most of my life. Those are almost Tory views, which are close to the Reformist views for which I stand.

The other fellow was a dickhead.

 

That's interesting...and kinda funny. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. The sooner people get that through their heads the better off we'd be.

Religion as a whole irritates me for that reason. Believe what you want to believe, just leave me out of it.

 

Your husband is a wise, tolerant man, ZC, and it's terribly sad that the other fellow showed his a$$hattery by being a mean, intolerant bigot.

Man.

He's making good folks look really, really bad. Satya, I'm sorry that this person is fuel for your arguments.

I used to vote Republican for a while, too - until after the Reagan era. Then I became a social Libertarian. I liked the idea of "Compassionate Conservative" but it certainly wasn't utilized in the past eight years. It frustrates me when folks equate religion with absolute politics, and a political movement becomes the new religious movement. And it's scary! It's what happens in African nations and India and Pakistan, and some very leftist/rightist countries: The political party becomes the religious party, and vice-versa. So if you end up voting differently from your religious circles, you're ostracized and immediately declared a hater of your own religion.

Which is false.

*Sigh.*

*Hugs Obama tight in a topsy-turvy world*. Obama has his issues, don't get me wrong. But I am SO GLAD he won. The alternative would probably have turned the USA into a neo-fascist hell.

 

Madison should have been put down at birth.

 

Oh right, that's HS's husband.

Gah, I get you two confused in my mind all the damn time.

 

Politics and religion will bring out all kinds of extreme behavior in people.

 

Gyah yeah. What's worse thought is Politics and Religion combined.

I think that Politics and Education is the worst possible combination though.

 

A friend of mine is turning into one of those.

 

Props to him for putting up with that! Lord knows if I were in his shoes I would have flipped out.

 

me too, someone insulting the woman I chose to be with? Bye Bye Employment.

 

Let's also throw a dash of parenting, money and sex into the fold, mix in a little fatigue, et voila ! Guaranteed outright, justified argument waiting to happen ! ! !

 

Two words:

Comprehensive Education.

 

Zen that guy sucks. Your letter rocks!!!

 

Kudos to you and your husband. When someone says something insulting or bigoted to me I usually react with a combination of and .

If Obama hadn't won the primaries, I think there would've been a serious move to create be a third political party formed in the US. The paleolibertarian/Ron Paul supporters in the GOP and the non-unionized intellectual liberals from the Dems. But maybe I should get my own thread to talk about that...