Hi, My Name’s Pastor Bob*
And I spew bullshit that my congregation eats up.
I think there’s a lot of problems with religious groups, and at the root is that they all ask an imaginary friend for help and give him/her credit even when nothing happens (”some of god’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers…”).
That said, another issue with these groups is the credibility they lend to their leaders. Pastors and preachers and cardinals and popes can say whatever they want, and it often goes unchecked, happily swallowed by their respective congregations.
Case in point: We host a Christian small group at our house. I wouldn’t usually participate, but they’re doing a 10 or 12 week or so marriage study, and while I don’t care for the religious part, I am pretty passionate about keeping my marriage in good shape.
Last night was the 4th class, and up until that point the guy on the DVD had seemed pretty normal and reasonable, not calling atheists bad or anything. Until last night. It was then that I found him telling everyone listening that people who accept evolution “believe we evolved from apes,” “think women are more evolved,” and are “giving pills to boys to fix them [to be more like girls].”
Well, that’s a holy load of bullshit. First, off, while it’s true that we evolved from something like an ape, we didn’t evolve from modern day apes. So let’s get that straight. Not to cavil, but the way it’s often expressed makes people think that we’re direct descendants of orangutans. Which we’re not. We’re cousins, coming at some point from the same ancestor.
Next up, what does it mean that “women are more evolved?” If taken on a literal sense, that would mean that women are consistently breeding with their ancestors, or that women descended from men. What? No.
In all likelihood, maybe he meant “more adapted,” which is equally stupid. More adapted in what sense? In the workplace? Better at rearing children? Better at birthing children (ok, you’ve got me there, there’s only been one pregnant “man” to date)? Only someone stupid enough to, I don’t know, rationalize the holocaust by calling “artificial selection” “natural selection” would think something like that.
Lastly, I don’t know who’s giving pills to boys to make them more like girls, but that was the first I’d heard of it. More likely, it’s some bullshit taken out of context or just made up. Neither of which would be out of your everyday nut’s playbook.
Crazy people are crazy, independent of their religion (or lack of it). The difference is that religious people who spout hate or commit atrocities are often let off the hook - because god made them do it. So, organized religion rants aside, let’s not make hasty generalizations about groups of people based on some uninformed or fringe case. Most Jews don’t subject their sons to Rabbi-fellatio; most Muslims don’t bomb buildings or sew their daughters’ girl parts shut; most Mormons aren’t okay with marrying 10 year olds to adult men; most Christians don’t want their children molested.
Sadly, I think this concept is lost on most people attending churches, and they happily accept whatever vitriol leaks into the speaker’s microphone. Groups are only characterized by their extremes. While this lends itself to some more legitimate points in debates around groups that breed extremism (which is any religion), on your everyday person it’s not a valid critique.
Kthx.
*Insert your favorite religious leader’s name here