IGNORANT FAITH OF RELIGIOUS BIGOTS

Many people do thing that do harm and appear immoral claiming they felt they had no alternative as they saw it for they could not get complete information. Iris Murdoch felt that we were pretending morality was too unclear and blaming this lack of knowledge for the terrible harm done instead of admitting that the problem is us. And even if we suffer ignorance of what morality truly is and entails the fact remains that we don’t need that ignorance to be bad.

The Roman Catholic Church says it is the only religion which enjoys the power of God to keep it from error. It claims then to be the only true Church. The Church says there is no salvation for anybody who wilfully refuses to join it. This includes the person who thinks they should check out the Catholic Church but doesn't bother. The Church says it enjoys the fullness of the truth that God needs to give us. It does not mean the Church knows everything.
 
It is sectarianism to teach, “My Church is right and everybody else’s is wrong”, when you have little or nothing to support this contention with. Religion will say the same but it tolerates and nurtures the very blind faith it condemns.
 
It is bigotry to enter your child into a religion when you don’t have any evidence that you should and it is not old enough to see the evidence if it exists. You are putting conformity and the convenience of not upsetting the family or neighbours before your child’s welfare spiritual and intellectual not to mention in other ways. It does not bother you that you may be sending your child into a life of error and self-deceit with possible eternal hellfire at the end for having been enrolled in the wrong faith.
 
The average religionist cannot defend her or his faith in any convincing way. The vast majority of Christians do not understand Christian doctrine. They learn it in a catechism at school and a few months later it is forgotten. These people have a merely blind faith. What good is evidence for belief when you don’t know what your cult teaches? They know that a God would want them to be wise in the ways of religion. You need to know God and what his principles are. They do not care and then they call themselves good Christians. How could they be really good with an attitude like that? Their good works are really bad when they are done with a sense of loyalty to evil.
 
Wilful ignorance means you are bent on doing as you wish and do not care what harm you do with your errors. Anybody who is truly godly would be trying to become a religious expert or would be one already.
 
The clergy complain about the ignorance of the reluctance of the people to learn more. But all the learning tools that are provided are just vague dogmatic books which are not much good and have no great intellectual depth. They only demolish the criticisms they can handle and ignore the rest as though they never existed. There is no productive effort made to eradicate the disease of blind faith. Blind faith is really fostered by them.
 
The Church condemns you if you repeat an accusation against a person that has little or no evidence in its favour. But then it turns around and praises you for accusing other religions of being wrong when you cannot defend your own beliefs. It wants to be reckless with everything except itself. Exploitation is its game. It is bigoted towards you when it does that. It treats you as an inferior because it wants to think of you as one.
 
Young children are taken to Church to pray and be indoctrinated. Wafers said to be the flesh of Christ are thrust into the mouths of seven-year-olds in Catholicism. Children are expected despite their naivety and inexperience to believe and are treated as true believers. This is a prime example of manipulation on the part of the Church. The evil of blind faith and blind obedience is demanded of the children, degrading them, debasing them, abusing them. The evil is applauded. Blind faith is treacherous and the priests and other clergy know it so don’t believe their explanation that their having taken advantage of children is about instilling good habits. You don’t need to instil blind faith in a child to instil good habits.  Childlike faith, though praised by Christ, is harmful and gives the clergy an unfair advantage. Children may believe lots of things on blind faith but that is necessary unlike religious belief. There is nothing we can do but tell them that the sea exists even if they have never seen the sea or pictures of it. But that is nothing like telling them that their parents’ religion is true for when there are so many different religions it follows that all you can do is tell them what different ones teach and guide them to make their own choice when they grow up. We have to tell what is proven but it is wrong to tell them what is not proven. Nobody can prove their religion - and it is exceptionally hard work if they can - therefore nobody has their right to indoctrinate their children. Education is to be fact-based. Otherwise it's not education. Religion does not give evidence for religion to children to help them make up their own minds. Religion is manipulative.
 
The clergy don’t give the people any decent evidence for living the way they tell them to live. They manipulate them to get their blind faith and then they tell them to oppose or evangelise against other religions which is bigotry. To enter your child into the Catholic Faith instead of letting the child find her own path is opposing other religions and it is unfair. It is bigotry to be against other religions when you don’t know if your own is true. Belief is only an excuse when it is not solidly based on evidence.
 
If you take a machete and murder people society will repulse you. But if like Tony Blair you tell lies to get declaring war and then send good young men on this war to waste their lives and lose limbs and die you will still be reasonably liked or respected by society. This shows a tendency to block out the reality of evil. The same faculty is behind Christians praising this God of theirs who makes animals to torture each other to death and who makes viruses to kill innocent babies. If they saw Blair actually doing the killings himself or if they saw God programming animals to torture it would be a different story. The lesson from all this is how wilful ignorance can warp us.

Religious morality only leads to lies and unfairness. Take Catholicism. It tries to turn people against the pill with arguments such as what follows. "The pill causes havoc with a woman's body. It could damage her fertility forever. It kills any baby she conceives by preventing implantation. It increases the risk of breast cancer." The Mormons argue against drinking tea, "It contains a drug that is bad for you and addictive. It can prevent you sleeping." I could mention the Jehovah's Witnesses who say that blood transfusions have lead to disease and AIDS being spread and use that thinking to prevent their members thinking that blood transfusions may be had. These conniving cults purposely ignore the fact that there are risks with everything we do. If Catholicism, to pick one out, was not trying to manipulate women and society to turn against the pill it would condemn driving a car with a petrol engine and would certainly condemn smoking which does far more harm than the pill ever could. In reality the reasons given have nothing to do with Catholicism banning birth control at all. It is because the Catholics won't admit that their faith is wrong. They are trying to make it seem that they prohibit because they care. They are insecure about the reasons for their prohibiting and so they have to use subterfuge. The Church gives out arguments and evidence that contraception is wrong. They ignore the arguments they don't want to hear.
 
We challenge everybody routinely every day. Politely challenge religion but by asking questions so that the believer has to think. Thinking is the antibiotic for religion.
 
BOOKS CONSULTED
A Catechism of Christian Doctrine, Catholic Truth Society, London, 1985
A Common Faith, John Dewey, Yale University Press, Connecticut, 1968
A Primer of Necessary Belief, Dawson Jackson ,Victor Gollancz Ltd, London, 1957
Apologetics and Catholic Doctrine, M H Gill and Son Ltd, Dublin, 1954
Faith and Ambiguity, Stewart R Sutherland, SCM Press, London, 1984
God and Philosophy, Antony Flew, Hutchinson, London, 1966
In Defence of the Faith, Dave Hunt, Harvest House, Eugene Oregon, 1996
On Being a Christian, Hans Kung, Collins/Fount Paperbacks, Glasgow, 1978
Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, Simon Blackburn, Oxford University Press, 1996
Reason and Belief, Bland Blanschard, London, George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1974
Reason and Religion, Anthony Kenny, Basil Blackwell Ltd, Oxford, 1987
The Balance of Truth, EI Watkin, Hollis & Carter, London, 1943
The Case Against Christ, John Young, Falcon Books, London, 1971
The End of Faith, Religion, Terror And The Future Of Reason, Sam Harris, Free Press, London, 2005
The Faith of a Subaltern, Alec de Candole, Cambridge University Press, 1919
The Fundamental Questions of Philosophy, A.C. Ewing, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1985
The Future of Belief Debate, Ed Gregory Baum, Herder and Herder, New York, 1967
The Student’s Catholic Doctrine, Rev Charles Hart BA, Burns & Oates, London, 1961
Unblind Faith, Michael J Langford, SCM, London, 1982
What is Christianity? Very Rev W Moran DD, Catholic Truth Society of Ireland, Dublin, 1940
What is Faith? Anthony Kenny, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1992