Greta Christina: The Armor of God

[trotsky]

http://gretachristina.typepad.com/greta_christinas_weblog/2009/11/armor-of-god.html

Why is religion special -- and specially troubling? What makes religion different from any other ideology, community, system of morality, hypothesis about how the world works? And why does that difference makes it uniquely prone to cause damage?

...

It's this: Religion is ultimately dependent on belief in invisible beings, inaudible voices, intangible entities, undetectable forces, and events and judgments that happen after we die.

It therefore has no reality check.

And it is therefore uniquely armored against criticism, questioning, and self- correction. It is uniquely armored against anything that might stop it from spinning into extreme absurdity, extreme denial of reality... and extreme, grotesque immorality.

Much more at link. It's an older blog post but quite interesting.

[rurallib]

1. articulated random thoughts that have been wandering in my head.

[trotsky]

3. Yup, she does that well.

I notice no liberal believers have stopped by to insist that there IS a reality check mechanism for religion.

Probably because they realize Greta is right.

[Warren Stupidity]

2. irrational, hierarchical, authoritarian: what could possibly go wrong?