A rant against religious critics

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
1

…Or anti-theist, as Hitchens might like to be called.
As an introduction I been posting here for many years and those that have known me over the years, like Bob, Peter Krop and Impetinent can attest to the fact that I am not a “Christian”, in fact I am no stranger to hurling devastating attacks against the “Mafia mentality” of Christianity. But that said, I have also met a few credible individuals who stand in my mind as theists more than as Christians, and who trancend superficial attacks of these atheists wanna-bes.
If “religion” was exactly, and nothing else than what they say it was, then their criticism would be rightfully appreciated. Instead, from my experience, religion has a malleability that resists reductionists approaches. The fossilisation in which faith finds itself today is a new stage in religious belief and not the state it always was in. Even those with faith have an evolving faith and/or are part of a mutated, from an original, system of belief. No one is taught today at Church that the Earth is the center around which the sun runs circles, AS IT ONCE WAS, because as human knowledge advances the religions of the world become more sublime, more ambiguous to allow for scientific truth to co-exist with religious truth.
Now a valid criticism is that religion is an obstacle to science, that if it has accepted a scientific new theory it does so less effectively than if it did not take the presupposition of God as a given. That religion violates Ocham’s razor at every cross-roads of innovation and thus always make the turn decades after everyone else who live by the Ocham’s principle has accepted the turn and taken it in stride. But isn’t this a feature of our humanity rather than a derivative of religion> For example, I was watching the History Channel and they were discussing the History of the Theory of Everything, the theory of the history of the universe. Fred Hoyle was one of the proponents of a Steady State Universe as oppossed to a Big Bang theory. Over the years his theory lost steam and new theories made predictions that were confirmed in 2001 with the WMAP(?) satellite images of the Baby-Universe. Hoyle dies supposedly in 2004 still unconvinced by the data. How many are like him? And he was unconvinced because of his dislike of the philosophical consequences of the theory. And as ususal, it is not that he questions the metrics but the interpretation of them. And I though, that it sounded like debates between Luther and Erasmus over Divine Determinism. Each accepted the metrics, the Bible, the revelation, the received data, but disagreed fundamentally over the interpretation of that data. And I go a step further because the Bible itself simply is a record of these same debates over centuries, such as the debates between Paul and James, and other more that once can dicern in a sort of Hegelian dialectic that exists within the Bible narrative, a sort of evolution over time…not unlike the sort of evolution that proper science still makes, because it only holds on to theory at this speculative level, theories which it grants, can be modified, or abandoned. For the longest time, I think, religion was no different. Moses, like Jesus said that you shall know them by their fruits, by their works, or by their practical value and this is that faith that is not religious but all-too-human, a faith that takes on a theory as true that has been fruitful. Evolution, for example.

I used to write more about the “Problem of Evil”, the “Gangster mentality” and about other points worth criticisn about fundamentalists religion. Now these days I am caught up in a lot of apparently apologetic writings, yet I feel, against my will. Meaning that I don’t particularly care about Christianity or Judaism or Islam, as I consider each to be faulty, but I hold these defects as my own opinions and do not negate that someone might feel that they can accomodate such matters that to me are indefensible faults. Yet some critics’s attacks, in my mind are just fundamentalist in nature, meaning that they repeat the sins they accuse their subject of performing.
In a recent exchange with such a critic who pretended to attack “hope” of all freaking things (in this case not because he was an atheist but because he had a pseudo-buddhist view that blamed ego for all evil and hope as an obstacle to a reconcilliation with the world as is. I was trying to clear out this mistake, because while I think that you can criticise religion, you cannot critique religion, in my opinion, effectively by accusing it of what are the facts of our species. Ego is part of what we are and in fact philosophically it cannot be dealt away. The very act of criticism employs or requires egoism. Yet it got to the point lost and the critic (probably thinking himself as ego-less and at one with the ONE) egoistically said:“enough”. This is fine by me but it shows a defect in recent criticism that I have seen which is that they criticise something in religion as if it was solely in religion, safely confined to it and so bound to disappear if “we” can just make religion disappear. Often their mentalities hold themselves aloof from what they criticise and hold themselves as paragons of this virtue, either the lack of egoism or a lack of natural aggressiveness, which during their discussions with me, they have not displayed.

I hope that everyone continues to evolve their understandings of religion and every other subject that peeks your curiosity, but I hope that callous criticisms are confronted.

P.S. For those that care to meet my Straw man, you can find them either in the Philosophy forum:“An unusual perspective on HOPE”, and on the Social Sciences forum under the title: “God as a tyrannical Lord”.

2

I guess i have to take up defense here. It will probably only be one response mind you, i am running short on time as of late.

we started out with animistic beliefs. Many obscure tribes explain their realities with notions of spirits or conflicts. Any answer is better than no answer.

Now-a-days science is leading the pack in terms of understanding.

furthermore i did not bring up the razor in the other thread, you did. What the bible is not consistent with is logic and benefit.

If this is in refrence to myself you are wrong/ i don’t not attack the bible in that thread with certitude. I stated in the beginning that we are going to pretend that the bible was written by a tyrannical lord, and then analyze the ten commandments in various contexts.

by comparing analyzations, we can come to conclusions of who would benefit the most from the teaching of the bible, a tyrannical lord, god, or even human beings, as you would probably like to think.

i feel special.

I await your response in the thread whereby i build that straw man.

duhhhhhhhhhh… =P~

3

Well the problem is that religion doesn’t necessarily adapt to co exist with science. The continued advice against condoms by the catholic church, saying in aids ridden Africa that it is actually the CAUSE, creationism as opposed to evolution, a 6000 year old earth, believing that miracles actually happened, and all the rest, are all in a series of things that indicate that religion doesn’t advance when it can simply poke its head in the sand.

Although two scientists may hold positions that are contrary when interpreting the same data, it’s only allowed because separate models exist to yield the same result. On the other hand, when a creationist looks at fossils and says they were put there to test their faith, or that proven scientific dating methods are simply just wrong and the bible is right, how do you respond to this type of stupidity reinforced by literalist interpretations of a supposedly infallible text? Those indoctrinated into conservative religious thought don’t interpret the metrics as metrics, is where the issue lies. They have a completely different framework with which to approach things.

4

Firstly; this is titled, “Rant”, but I am going to let this stay here as I really like it’s primary point that directly deals with much of the discourse that occurs between two radically opposing sides that frequent this section of the board; it’s relative to this section.

Secondly; while it somewhat suffers some inevitable heat because it brings up other threads where heated arguments are/were taking place (causing involved individuals to possibly feel the need to respond here in their defense; causing “collateral damage”, as it were, of the previous arguments), I still would rather this exist here because the actual citations of said threads with said arguments are only brought in as examples of the primary point, among many other examples that are pulled in from other sources than activities on ILP.

Thirdly; I feel that censoring this thread post would be to take part in an activity that adorns the same error that the omar’s post directly points to; missing the focus of the core because of a concentration of the fringes.

Fourthly;
Omar; as always…very, very well thought and written.

5

Rouzbeh,
Look at what you are aiming at:
1- The continued advice against condoms by the catholic church…
But Catholicism is not the whole corpus of religion.
2- creationism as opposed to evolution, a 6000 year old earth…
Not every religious person affirms this. Creationism is not a “must-have” of the religious perspective…
3- believing that miracles actually happened…
Maimonides was not a literalist, for example, and taught that miracles such as a talking donkey should be allegorized, or viewd as a dream or vision.
4- literalist interpretations of a supposedly infallible text…conservative religious thought …
Not every religious person is a biblical literalist, or a religious conservatist or fundamentalist…in short, Patterson does not speak for all religious persons… and many do not endorse the text as infallible. It is an injustice, I think, to judge religion by the lowest denominator one can find.

Of those four objections that I have quoted from you, have you seen Ned or Stumps or Bob, commit any of these? Ned specially is a very scientific believer. Now if you have some literal/conservative/fundamentalist perspective then yes, you would have to hide your head in the sand. But with 3/4 of the population of the earth seemingly religious, you would be hard pressed to explain the advances in science, medicine, technology and law if, as you say, all religious people hide their head on the sand. Some of the most influential thinkers have in fact been at peace with their faith, like Newton and Einstein, and saw in their search of the Laws of the Universe not the explaning God away, but the explaining God in, seeking to find the How of God’s plans and could not fathom a mathmatically consistent universe without an Intelligent Mind behind it. Of course, I would hardly call this type of men Christian or Jew and probably you would not find them at the wailing wall or at the confessional booth, but that does not matter because the religious trancends the labels available by their faith. As Bob would probably say, he is a spiritual person rather than a religious person, but as I find many that echo his feelings I say that he and others form a sort of yet to be defined religion, unstated, unrefined, and perhaps for that reason, more authentic to religious feeling than the pillars of stone that you’ve brought up as symbols of religion.

6

As for my friend, the Wonderer,
You don’t have to defend yourself here. You can do it there. In any case I mentioned the tread because it inspired me to write this peace and not because I wanted to address what I consider to be the faults of your argument outside of that tread. By stating the titles, I tried to establish a background for the curious reader who might wonder where I am coming from. If anything it might bring some new respondents to those treads. I did not go in point by point in fact because that was not the purpose. The criticisms I raise against the critics are pretty general, so general in fact that even Hitchens is in my mind as I am writing that piece.

7

I’m with Omar on this.

Man is evolutionary; not stagnate.
The trend right now appears that many minds that are religious and deep thinkers are carrying a perspective that is not strictly dogmatic as we’re used to religious followers being in the past.
Instead, religious followers who are also considerable thinkers in western cultures are showing a new form of followers; followers that are less dogmatic and more heterodoxic theists (believing in the fundamental principles, but not accepting the strict adherence to a given creed from the same source that provides the principles; specifically involving a deity; chiefly, the Abrahamic God), and even heterodoxic atheologists (believing the fundamental principles, but not the strict adherence to the given creed from the same source that provides the principles, nor accepting any specific outlined theology, but instead creating their own from the culmination of many theological perspectives and considerations; may include or not include deities. Often mixed with philosophical schools of thought).

To continue to argue in “high thought” form against the former stronghold of religious tradition; the dogmatic theist and dogmatic theologist; is comparative to any religious follower arguing against the foundations of evolution from the times of Charles Darwin instead of what we know today.

It’s radically losing grip on it’s age old stoic stance of standing strong against religion because religion is changing as people change to accept science more openly with accepting thought.
Why?

Because we’ve seen enough arguments to realize what’s important in the religion and what is not; and we’ve seen what’s important in science and what is not; and we’ve learned from philosophy how to reason, and have done so for many generations since the advent of the Newtonian system in search of a consolidation between the two seemingly incompatible systems.

More religious followers who think allot deeply are no longer opposing science, but including it.

8

Omar,

Very thoughtful OP, even if a “rant”. Points that self-proclaimed “theists” and “atheists” ought to take seriously.

As I see, a productive “religion”
(as in a group of beliefs and symbols–that a group of people “worship”–united by a metaphysical outlook that includes a principle “ought” to one’s life, and values and principles meant to “swim with the current”)
is one that genuinely helps someone feel at peace with his experiences; one doesn’t feel the need to force his mythology on another.

Though there may be exceptions (I suppose the closely knit LDS faith, with its emphases on family values and good work, is an exception),
I think a health mythology (and a “religion” that sets a template for one’s own interpretation) requires the “theist” to know that his myths don’t (need to rationally) explain reality (that there actually is an absolute “right” view of purpose to the world), but are actually used to help one accept and enjoy it (in more moments than not).

For me, the only difference between a Christian actually thinking there is definitely a “God” (defined in such a way it’s unfalsifiable), and an “anti-theist” claiming the purpose of life is to propagate one’s genes, is that one of the myths points to something more concrete. They are still irrational beliefs regarding an ultimate purpose, though.

9

…

10

But Omar, the more liberal minded, who are also generally the more educated people who also happen to subscribe to religions aren’t representatives of their religion. The representatives of religion are the people who get offended at Jesus jokes, they’re the people that listen to the Vatican on such issues as condoms and believe in papal infallibility, the people who throw their money at televangelists, the people who listen to their local mullahs urging them to strictly observe the mullah’s interpretation of islam. The people who have no trouble at all living in luxury while other people suffer, but who are “pro life” because the quantity of life is so much more precious than the quality. And I believe this kind of half caring is exactly the kind of thing that Hitchens argues against.

I still always wonder at the people in the Catholic Observatory. It seems that religion and science don’t have to be exclusive. What a wonderful thing religion would be then, a non interventionist non political item for the individual’s peace of mind. But again, the problem is not with the minority of educated and independent minded people who can differentiate between the metaphorical and the literal, but with the majority who under the institution of religion become a dangerous political force. I still won’t ever forget the people I met at university at a Christian society meeting. One of them actually suggested that maybe gravity doesn’t exist, but it’s a path defined by god that objects have to travel through. These are people at a reputable university, one expects a higher standard of thinking. I didn’t even know what to say. And to the Newtons, I think it was Hooke or maybe Kepler who dedicated his money to refuting atheism and other religions after his death. There have been other names which I forget, but scientists who believed that the laws were true but were hold together by a constantly monitoring god. Scientific pioneers, but still dogmatic men.

The previous examples that I pointed out aren’t simply things in religion, they are things that stem from it. There are some very intelligent theists, but their intelligence is a result of the education they’ve received coupled with extensive thought and study. When people are seriously considering teaching creationism next to evolution, we can only conclude that such people are in the minority. Against the kind of minority that you’ve named, I don’t think you would find many people that would want to change their beliefs because those beliefs are “spiritual” rather than “religious”, and as such do not have the social and political consequences that affect all of us.

11

Really?

The fundamental extremists, in my opinion, are poor representatives of an entire religion.

I can’t walk into every religious center and find people that are offended at jokes implied by their religion, but I can find people that hold themselves to be followers of that religion, and aspire to be representatives of it.

12

This sentence could’ve been better phrased. By “many people that would want to…”, I mean atheists and others that argue against religion.

Stumps, the moderates are not always particularly influential. The leaders of religions, the Vatican, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the chief sephardic rabbi of Israel, the cardinal archbishop of New York and other lesser religious figures all appear to have sympathized with , if not supported the death verdict of, Khomeini in his fatwah against the blasphemy that was inclusion of a fictional mohammad in Rushdie’s fiction. I actually think the book wouldn’t have got much attention if not for all that, I found it far from flattering.

Again, I’m not talking about every single individual who labels himself as one kind of Christian or another. There’s enough difference between churches for me not to have to address specific and localized variables, but the problems that arise are because the kinds of influential figures that may sympathize with Khomeini wield significant political power, which they can only do if they have enough support.

13

As easy as it may be to pick up and say, “Tom Cruise is a nut job; therefore, Scientologists are nut jobs.” I have to completely disagree with you.

My point was not about moderates.
My point was about people; not moderates.

People are changing how they identify religion.
Fundamental Extremism is being shunned more and more and more.

Religions that support and overtly express interest in these values are being exchanged for more open forms.
Congregations within sects are altering their tolerances and changing their lessons; yet maintaining they are still part of that sect.

When is the last time you met someone saying, “Homosexuals are evil servants of Satan and God will smite them.” ?

And furthermore, when is the last time you could take this same person into a given Church of his following and say, “This is yours!” and expect a reply, “Yes, and proudly so!”

Some exist, yes, but not widely.

Extreme religion is evidently not popular; literally. Look at history, and look at our extremist religions now.
Look at them and then go find yourself one in person that agrees.

Count them against the numbers you find that do not.

Then tell me the masses are defined by the extremes accurately.

14

On the other hand, the masses are pretty segmented ideologically. I mean, some national US political news programs have something like a 6% overlap in audiences–out of millions of viewers, only 6% would be willing to watch the other program. The same can be said for religious or worldview related communication in general, I think. I know people who believe things like, “We don’t need to worry about global warming, because God’s judgment may be coming, and maybe that’s how He wants to end the world.” And that’s just by chance, because as I said it can be hard to bridge the cultural divides in communication.

15

I think there is a critical difference between holding different ideals and being a fundamental extremist devoutly holding to every creed of one’s dogma and condemning those that do not.

That’s a fairly small group right now.

16

I was hoping Omar would give his input. Anyways, I’m going to assume that you didn’t just compare ‘the Vatican, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the chief sephardic rabbi of Israel, the cardinal archbishop of New York and other lesser religious figures’ to Tom Cruise. Religion allows for quick mobilization of people. The people that are influential in religion, which means the people whose words varry weight and have significant numbers of followers, like the above, are people who are willing to sympathize with extremism, so long as they think their god has in any way been ‘insulted’, if not necessarily condone its methods. With Christianity’s emphasis on group think, ‘people’ naturally follow these figures.

17

Leaders are always extremists…that’s why they are leaders. :stuck_out_tongue:

That doesn’t mean much in current times in western culture.
Western culture hears these things, but we don’t truly jump at them in large mass.
Some groups do, many do not.

I would suggest that most people practicing their religions have far more tempered acceptances of what other people do with their lives than the words of their leaders would have us think.

18

Hello Rouzbeh.

Sorry for the late reply.

— But Omar, the more liberal minded, who are also generally the more educated people who also happen to subscribe to religions aren’t representatives of their religion.
O- Just as catholicism is not representative of all religions. There is a difference in terms. Religion, as a term, contains not just Catholicism but Buddhism as well as well as our best examples. Even if they don’t line up with one of the major religions, or the religion in which they grew up, that does not make them any less religious or deny their beliefs the right to be classified as a religious espression. I went through the same process when I first conversed here with Bob and Alyoshka. That was usually my one common rejoinder:“…but the majority…that is not what the majority believes…then you cannot call yourself…or a part of the tradition…” etc, etc. However, I eventually backed off from that possition because I think that it presupposes a static nature to religions and what we find, even in today’s world, that religions are flexible, not to the point of chaos, but mutable in the sense that they back off certain parts and get closer to other parts of the Bible, for example. What today is acceptable, once was considered grounds for burning you at the stake. Don’t get me wrong, the measure of change is not religion wide, at least in Christianity, but variations from the norm simply multiply the variety of the still religious experience. This is how Catholicism became separated from Protestanism and within that another separation between Lutheranism and Calvinism and so on and so forth, each time however the new branch (another good analogy) was but another religion.

— The representatives of religion are the people who get offended at Jesus jokes, they’re the people that listen to the Vatican on such issues as condoms and believe in papal infallibility, the people who throw their money at televangelists, the people who listen to their local mullahs urging them to strictly observe the mullah’s interpretation of islam.
O- This is prejudicial. It is stereotyping and character assassination. Would you like for your country, your family, your town, your gender, your sex etc, etc, to be judged, as a whole, by the things and acts that you and others do not agree with? Would you like to be rolled and judge not by the contents of your belief, but by the beliefs of those related to you? I think that having an opinion is inevitable. I can understand having apprehensions against the Bible, the Koran, and seeing them, judging them, for the most part to be anachronistic and barbaric, unfit to guide us in this new, more moderate age. My point is that religion is not defined by these Holy Books. Religion is the encounters between man and God, or whatever you consider the Highest Principle.

— The people who have no trouble at all living in luxury while other people suffer, but who are “pro life” because the quantity of life is so much more precious than the quality. And I believe this kind of half caring is exactly the kind of thing that Hitchens argues against.
O- Take for example this objection of yours. It seems anti-religious, but in fact it is religious. It is Christian and might have come from the lips of Jesus himself, were he around to say it. Didn’t he rail against the Pharisees? Didn’t he say that if you want to get into Heaven that your Righteousness would have to surpass the righteousness of the Pharisees? You see what I mean? All these criticisms have already been made from within the tradition, and old news. This is why I say that religion must not be necessarly taken as static because you see tension, competition of ideas (Paul), and self-criticism (at least in the Bible). The Jews, Christians, and even Muslims (to a lesser degree), had the ideological underpining, meaning that their understanding of God was compatible with modification and updates.

— But again, the problem is not with the minority of educated and independent minded people who can differentiate between the metaphorical and the literal, but with the majority who under the institution of religion become a dangerous political force.
O- If they are the “majority” was as you describe, you got to wonder about us as a species, because the phenomenon of religion is present in some form or another, in every recorded culture. You should consider the factors as to why some adopt particular versions instead of other, more benign versions, and you might conclude that it has less to do with the character of the religion itself and more to do with the character and circumstances of the particular believer. Fundamentalism is available, but not obligatory…

— The previous examples that I pointed out aren’t simply things in religion, they are things that stem from it. There are some very intelligent theists, but their intelligence is a result of the education they’ve received coupled with extensive thought and study.
O- Very well then. Education and probably social/economic status plays a part right? can we agree on that? If you agree with that then my next point is that if you have two possible versions (if not more) of the Christian religion, as an example, then we can predict their taste according to their circumstances and that each taste, or version of the religion does not speak for the entire religion. It would be unfair to judge Christianity, in this sense, as being prone to fundamentalism or more likely to vouch for fundamentalism, and just as unfair to say that Christianity vouches for allegorical versions and interpretations. Rather, these interpretations are rooted in the men and women who adopt them. it is caused by their taste, their circumstances, their biography, whatever else, but not necessarly caused as a direct effect of reading the Bible. Their interpretations are limited, condensed and informed by the text, but mediated by their circusmtances. It is therefore more accurate to describe the world we live in as caused and modified by men and woman and their circumstances, rather than just shaped by the ideas, in themselves (as if they were received without change, without interpretation), that are contained in the sacred texts.

— When people are seriously considering teaching creationism next to evolution, we can only conclude that such people are in the minority.
O- Thank you very much, but not for that should we consider evolutionists as atheistics, and since I consider evolution is widely accepted, we must suppose that somehow the theory is accepted in some form or another, by theists, without the apparent necessity of abandoning their God. How do the majority then do it? Well, taking Rabbi Boteach and and the Catholic Church as well, we might say that they have began to understand evolution as a description of how God has done His business of creation. It is NOT a logical necessity to accept the invitation of Ockham or to to do away with the assumption because “it works well as a theory without it (God)”. As I see it, HOW it works (well, badly, so-so) is a value judgment, an opinion, in the eye of the beholder and so there is not logical need to take that position. To some, the theory works BETTER with God. Again, it does not matter whether we agree or not, but whether they are better for believing that or not.

19

Stumps, I just have to wonder why they’re called leaders and why they have so many followers. I guess the conclusion is that the more devout crowd may in fact be the more educated and independent minded of the population, and their leaders are ceremonial figures with no real influence or power. Especially given the emphasis of Christianity and Islam on converting others, and other socially oriented policies like religious gatherings. Religious people vote for religious political figures. These people then enforce religious policies. Like preventing stem cell research and abortions on religious grounds.

Omar, I’ll have to read Hitchens’ take on Buddhism to see what criticisms I can throw at even this best of religions. But Buddhism is still not religion in the conventional theistic sense, since it seems more an approach to life. Your main defense appears to be that religion is too broad an entity to generalize and describe using a few examples. I think this has to be one of the oldest defenses of religion, since it doesn’t really address any of the issues (at best it admits them), but just makes religion untouchable. Every religious government, every religious institution, every religious person that, every thing that has to do with religion, if it is in any way not ‘good’, it goes into the domain of the individual and not the religion. Can I ever cite a bad thing done in the name of religion, and have it go down to the weaknesses of the religion rather than the individual? I don’t really think there is anything that I can say when by definition religion is a good thing to you. On the other hand, saying it all comes down to the person is also a mistake. As per the video that I posted in the Hitchens thread, Dawkins brings up the example of a Harvard archaeologist who as a science educated graduate still would not believe in evolution. This is a person whose belief remains archaic only because of an archaic tradition. The most peaceful people can do the most gruesome things in the name of religion. Families partake in honor killings on a regular basis. The attacks are so broad, and I would name a variety of examples, because it’s the entire concept of theistic religion that is all encompassing and self justifying.

Again, regardless of what the Catholic church says, there’s other groups that adamantly push creationism and who have clear biblical evidence for what they say. These people have political power, so much so that these retarded arguments found their way to a country with as proud a scientific tradition as Britain. It does matter what they believe, because they’re distorting the facts. They’re distorting an otherwise unbiased and open ended attitude to discovery with religious prejudice. Here’s a little something by the EVILutionists, intelligent sounding remarks that give no evidence of anything to the contrary and bring up specialized evidence to an audience with no specialization in that field (who can’t verify the whole truth of the supposed scientific attacks), to back up their religious claims with supposedly precise scientific arguments:
youtube.com/watch?v=EQ0tLNBeNkA
Has there ever been a propaganda device as useful as religion? God said so, therefore the evidence suggests…

20

I stand as one example that you can know that is Religious, does not Vote, does not care what my political affiliation is, is a member of the local LDS congregation, take the President of LDS as a fellow with some good thoughts on life, just started also practicing Zen Buddhism (Specifically Kwam Um [Thanks Xunzian and Ingenium for the extra links to online info]), believes in stem cell research, pro-abortion, anti-death sentence unless it’s done by the revenge seeker in a closed and monitored room, believe the Government needs to stay out of State laws, and thinks the U.S. Military is too soft.

I am but one.
I have met more with mixed concepts.
But at the very least, I can find very few that sway easily with the statements of their leaders.

Do our political leaders truly maintain such control successfully?
Truly not.

If statements are counter to the current moral conscious acceptance, then it becomes hard for people to just bite and accept the edict.

For instance, the new Pope jumped up and started condemning the LDS congregation.
Now, this sucks, yes; because the adherents will indeed think the LDS is some evil group…sigh
But on the other hand, whoever those adherents are…I’ve yet to meet them.
I only run into Catholics with a brain and sensibility; see the LDS, and see they aren’t harming anyone, and just let it be as it is…a difference of choice.

What people truly want, and I fully agree, is for Religious parties to be removed from political circles.