Faith-Based Fanatics

[cbayer]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/19/opinion/timothy-egan-faith-based-fanatics.html?_r=0

JULY 18, 2014

Timothy Egan

He’s had a busy summer. As God only knows, he was summoned to slaughter in the Holy Land, asked to end the killings of Muslims by Buddhist monks in Myanmar, and played both sides again in the 1,400-year-old dispute over the rightful successor to the Prophet Muhammad.

In between, not much down time. Yes, the World Cup was fun, and God chose to mess with His Holinesses, pitting the team from Pope Francis’s Argentina against Germany, home of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. Well played, even if the better pope lost.

At least Rick Perry was not his usual time-suck. The governor proclaimed three days of prayer to end the Texas drought in 2011, saying, “I think it’s time for us to just hand it over to God, and say, ‘God: You’re going to have to fix this.’ ” The drought got worse. Two years ago, Perry said that God had not “changed his mind” about same-sex marriage. But the states have. Since Perry became a spokesman for the deity, the map of legalized gay marriage in America has expanded by 50 percent.

Still, these are pillow feathers in a world weighted down with misery. God is on a rampage in 2014, a bit like the Old Testament scourge who gave direct instructions to people to kill one another.

more at link

[chrisstopher]

1. Oh.

God.
Damn.
It.
All.

[blkmusclmachine]

2. "God talk" always ends in death, bloodshed, and destruction ...

[Igel]

3. This only partly belongs in the Religion forum.

I prefer to think of them as "Big Idea"-based fanatics.

It doesn't matter if you're slaughtering to establish a caliphate and bring all the unbelievers to Muhammed (using starkly Christian-sounding terms) or fighting to establish a proletarian dictatorship and bring everybody to Vladimir Il'ich. Or make everybody live in an agrarian paradise, like Mr. Pol Pot wanted.

It's the view that there is One True Path for society that is step 1. Step 2 isn't necessary, but happens fairly often: Somebody comes to believe that it is necessary to force society to adopt that One Truth Path, for it's own good. That leads to terrorism.

Step 3 is where it gets scary: Enough people decide that Step 2 is a good idea and join up, sometimes out of ideology and sometimes because they figure Step 3 will get them goodies--better housing, better women, more power in general, revenge and protection from their horribly evil and murderous enemies.

I can accept Step 1. But the battle should be fought with words, and still be respectful of minorities. After that it gets sketchy real fast. Even if Step 3 is done through allegedly democratic means.