**It's Not True
The headline "Majority Of Muslims That Attend Mosque Weekly Feel Torturing For Their Cause Is Just" got your attention, didn't it? It's not true, I made it up, but the thought of it probably already angered some. It wouldn't surprise me, however. After all, religion, organized religion, has tried to oppress me, as a gay man, as well as all women throughout the world, for years. And more people died during the 300 year Inquisition in the Name of the Lord, the Crusades or the Salem Witch Hunts than in both world wars. Now, it's time America wake up to the fact that Christians in this country have become just as radicalized (albeit in other ways) as those who pervert Islam (or insert religion here) elsewhere. In fact, it's time we reassess this idea of a Christian nation and start the honest debate of how does having these often radical theologies of organized religions tied up in our government and public fabric actually benefit our nation or national dialogue as a whole.
The real headline is "Majority of Christians That Attend Church Weekly Feel Torturing For Their Cause is Just." A majority of those in the survey that identify as Christian or Catholic are, in fact, not in line with America's values and ideals in the 21st Century (or 19th, for that matter) with their stance on torture. According to a new study from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life more Catholics and Evangelical Protestants, more good, God-fearing, church-going pious Americans think torture at some times or some point is acceptable. Those that find torture unacceptable (or "rarely") are in the minority: 42% of Catholics (can you say Inquisition?) and 49% of Protestants.
Conversely, those that identify as secular oppose torture and are in line with America's ideals and values, without divine intervention. 57% of atheist, agnostic, spiritual, non-religious, secular Americans think, as does President Obama, that America and Americans should not, do not, will not torture.
Now, this story is buried in the news. The media is making a huge deal over a flu that will not harm most Americans and not making a huge story out of the fact that within our midst are blatant hypocrites with no real moral compass of their own that bring little to nothing positive any more to the national table or debate.
Think about religion, the source of hope, love, acceptance, the panacea for this life and the next if you read the literature, religion saying that taking a human being and simulating drowning is all right. Imagine people that believe in a risen Lord, a Lord that himself according to legend was tortured at the hands of those that wanted him to denounce his cause, a Lord that forgave the thieves next to him and ministered to those that were outcast, imagine them believing hurting another is acceptable. In their stories it was noble to die at the hands of oppressors, not become one, or so I thought. Imagine that those that preach the sanctity of life, of legal contracts like marriage, allowing their government to perpetrate inhuman acts, acts that no other species on the planet does to one another, in the name of freedom, liberty and justice, in the name of love, kindness and prayer? It's beyond hypocritical, it's mentally unstable, to profess such piety and wisdom, to profess to have answers and real solutions, to espouse goodness and blessings from the divine and then even think that hurting another human would be acceptable in any deity's eyes. Perhaps the unenlightened ancestors of their faith didn't know better, but we've evolved over the hundreds of years that religion has tried to run amok or should have. Actually, the survey proves many have not.
And as for religion's place in the United States as a whole, all it does is divide the people, instill hatred and violence and distract politicians and population alike from the real work of the nation. Millions spent opposing a woman's right to choose or gay this-or-that while millions go hungry, homeless, victims of poverty, of the economy, of illness, under-insured and under-served, and yet these behemoth tax-exempt entities get to enter politics any time they like with their might and money and ability to mobilize their masses. And now, it appears, these righteous churchgoers have weighed in on terrorizing other humans for information for their cause. They have shown they are, in fact, able to be radicalized easily to go against the very ideals of their country and values of the civilized world (not to mention a few treaties and conventions). Torture is illegal but what's worse, it's immoral. It doesn't work. It's not civilized. And it certainly isn't Godly.
So when does America, and Americans start realizing that faith, prayer, belief in a divine, worship, fellowship and dogma are fine when kept in check; but when left to their own devices that history has shown that each and every one of the stringent religious ideologies pervert in to hypocritical entities that seek power and control and that will bend their doctrines or their beliefs to suit the rigidness of their overall goals? If it's all right to torture under some circumstances, is it all right to kill? Some Muslims, Irish Catholics, Protestants, Jews...well, some of every religion have thought so. Is abortion wrong if you're aborting a future sinner? What other arguments for unspeakable acts will they condone in the name of the Lord and from a place of blessed goodness? Killing women for having men in their house, beheading people for loving those of the same sex? These are all good, religious principals in some parts of the world. The Pope said we should embrace aliens as Children of God but not those with which he disagrees. Go figure.
As Miss California goes around with visible augmentation to God's original design professing piety in the name of institutionalized bigotry, as 50 people die in Iraq because some religious fool has a point to make, as Sunnis fight Shias, Catholics battle Protestants, as women are imprisoned under Sharia law for nothing, or eight year old girls have to divorce their 50 year old husbands in unions blessed by Allah, and as Americans go hungry and homeless as the pious spend over $500 million nationally to fight "immorality" by tax paying Americans in the form of marriage amendments and another half a billion to prevent women from seeing their doctors for legal medical procedures, as religious institutions stand accused and convicted of covering up sexual abuses on American children and those that perpetrated them by order of their robe-clad hat-wearing then Cardinal now Pope...as all of this continues we now see that more of them than not think torture is fine as well.
It's no surprise, but it's my last straw. Organized religion has no credibility when it comes to its productive place in the national body politic or conversation. On a community level, perhaps there's a need, but I can't think of one thing a church does for a community that other community members don't do every day and not in the name of the Lord. Caring for one another, helping, gathering, ministering, sharing isn't relegated to those that believe in a God nor are the two mutually exclusive. Americans care for each other, or should. Humans care for each other, or should, without any impetus from the divine. The fact that we're all here together at this point in time trying to survive should be enough.
Many countries chased the overly pious and religious organizations out, and some like France and Canada continue to crack down on the power and scope of churches and their members.
Torturing someone is mean and mean people suck, which means more Christians and Catholics in this country now suck.
We don't need mean people in power any more. Cult worship is bad and leads to extremism. The proof is in.
Now what America? Maybe we should pray on it.
***
Care to document that with historically verifiable statistics rather than rhetorical hyperbole?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition#Death_tolls
A fact that the Catholic Church did not record, and which is therefore excluded from the Wikipedia article and other superficial accounts, is that every murder and atrocity committed in the "New World" by Spanish and Portuguese conquistadores was endorsed by the same "theology" that committed the Inquisitions (Spanish, Papal, Episcopal, Roman, etc.). The slaughters by English and Dutch colonists were likewise pardoned by their churches and cultures according to the same standard, that non-christian meant non-Human. Once a church starts one of those killing sprees, it bears fault for every death that results, not just the ones the church admits in its official records. Such is the moral hazard of claiming to be the only moral authority.
However, I'm sad to say it's way more than roughly 45 percent of the population--in fact, 71 percent of all Americans believe torture is at least rarely justified. Only 25 percent flat-out oppose it. (Four percent opted out of thinking.) See pie chart: http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/04/30/religion.torture/#cnnSTCOther1
Those who would consider torture justified in ANY situation or context are not, in my book, opposed to it, and I therefore don't understand why either the pollsters or the press chose, at any point, to group "rarely" with "never," save to maximize any confusion that might result. I know it's standard procedure for poll data to be looked at from a variety of angles, but that doesn't justify the press telling the story in a different form each time--their job is to establish the scope (citizens of the U.S.) and nature (torture, pro or con?) of a poll prior to reporting on breakdowns by demographics or topics. Large to small, general to specific. Don't they learn that in journalism school??
You don't start by confusing the issue. Unless, of course, you're the press.
The analysis is based on a Pew Research Center survey of 742 American adults conducted April 14-21. It did not include analysis of groups other than white evangelicals, white non-Hispanic Catholics, white mainline Protestants and the religiously unaffiliated, because the sample size was too small.
Considering the population of the USA is over 300 million, that's a VERY small sample - so small, it's practically meaningless.
This statement is astoundingly ignorant. where in the world did you get THAT from?
If you're going to make historical statements, you should read at least one book about it. This is just embarrassing.
I'm going to leave the obvious one-sidedness of your post alone (are you actually unaware of the positive social movements which have had religion as their driving force? Like abolition and Civil Rights?). But raw facts are something else. You have a responsibility as a columnists to not publish plain falsehoods.
t's hardly surprising that most folks didn't come down on one side or another, especially if they could conceive of a situation in which torture might be "okay." I'm not one of those people--I consider torture wrong in any situation (disclosure: I'm a mainline Protestant Christian).
And good job of NOT mentioning that a significantly higher number of mainline Protestant Christians oppose torture than do evangelicals. And why doesn't your tirade against blind faith address the problem (unique to the past half-century or so) of the deification of data? I fear for the collective intellect of a culture that accepts, without question or examination, whatever the latest yes/no poll has told us.
By the way, the former Pope very loudly and publicly opposed the invasion of Iraq, something few Democrats thought to do. One Dem (Obama) who famously DID weigh against it is a Christian. Go figure.
Always, it's the same thing--religion is defined as conservative faith. Then, come the next sentence or so, conservative faith has magically morphed into the worst kind of Republican behavior, at which point the sleight of hand is complete and the reader is nodding his or her head to the falsehood that "religion" equals voting for Bush. Doesn't your side ever grow weary of this tactic?
Re "behemoth tax-exempt entities," what are those? If you're referring to churches, then I'd suggest to you visit an average church sometime for a reality check.
If you insist on condemning a group of people by basing the worst possible conclusions on data that can kindly be described as inadequate, then at least tell us, say, how religious people as a group fare next to the entire population. Because I strongly suspect that people of faith, as a group, think no differently about this issue than does the public at large, especially given that the religious are no minority. And polls are severely flawed in their basic either/or format, and never mind that five shades of yes are offered alongside five shades of no--yes or no equals yes or no, no matter how many times we slice it up. This crime is compounded when commentators run wild with the data, shaping it to fit whatever they happened to believe in the first place. If that's not the essence of dogma, what is?
I
As for your other unsubstantaited allegations: Fact: Muslims kill more people in one year than in all 356 years of the Spanish Inquisition combined. See http://plancksconstant.org/blog1/2008/09/difference_between_muslim_and_catholic_pedophilia.html
Example1: Title of article: "Swine Flu should be called Muslim Flu"
Example 2. Title of article " Why too many Muslims in a country is dangerous"
The end-timers believe this is a religious war, and, of course, add to it by MAKING it such.
'Onward Christian Soldiers" - and I do mean the military-deeply embedded with these type of 'believers'.
This should have been handled as an INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL SYNDICATE from the beginning. Period.
The injection ON BOTH SIDES of the esoteric "heaven battle on earth" paradigm is KILLING U.S.
Literally
Let them fund their OWN private crusades with PRIVATE money & mercenaries.
Opus Dei moment of zen wakeup call, folks.