Faithful and Dangerous

Some people don't like the idea that religion is dangerous. They'll say, religion doesn't kill people, people kill people. You can't blame the spanish inquisition on religion, it's bad people who did that. But what about those PEOPLE who tortured "sinners" in the name of God.? They knew for a fact that people who disobeyed the dour man in the sky would suffer beyond comprehension in hell when they died. So what could they do but torture the sinner in the hopes that this extreme duress would compell the soul to confess? Or something. A moral obligation for a humanitarian of integrity. Not a very well thought out idea, but also not a suprising conclusion for a "man of faith" to reach in that situation. Christians created the ideas that would allow normal people to behave like deranged psychopaths. The logical conclusion of hardline christian premises end in the thumbscrew and the rack.

Maybe religion is dangerous. Christianity anyway. Or maybe it's just organized religion that is problematic. Organized religion - organized crime. Is there a difference? Of course, there's always a few people every year who go on a killing rampage because their private spirit/devil told them to. You don't have to be organized to be lethally deluded. But you do have to be organized to pull off the spanish inquistion. Or convince a townful of folks to burn a witch. Or topple the government of a middle eatern country. You'd have to be very crafty to get that done.

But people who say religion should be banned are way out to lunch. Next they'll be telling us we need to ban drugs too. Imagine!