Religious fanatism does not belong to any religion

Submitted by Anthony Manoli (United States), Jan 15, 2007 at 20:47

I came to look for some information on religious fanatism, and found this self incriminating statement.
The truth is that all religions can lead to fanatism, no one is spared.
A religion has to do with a deity, and a deity is all controlling, because people see power in it. Any one who believes in any god will have tendency to do whatever the god ordains, or at least what that person thinks he ordained; and therefore he will be considered fanatic according to the extreme he goes about it. If the God ordains peaceful means of adoration, like prayer, monasticism, nobody reacts. It is certainly more concerning when the people start killing each other in the name of that god.

The Romans, the Greeks, the Egyptians were idolaters, as well as most of the religions in time, because they did not comprehend things due to lack of knowledge and comprehension. In the book "King Solomon's mine" the tribe in Africa thought the scientist visitor a god because he prophesied a solar eclipse.

The Romans used to kill the Christians if they did not denounce their Christian God. The Jews were constantly attacked by neighboring countries , and persecuted. As a matter of fact they are still persecuted to the present time. The ancient Egyptians used, once a year at the time of the flood, to sacrifice a maiden to the Nile god to appease him. The Moslems invaded the whole middle east and forced them to either convert or pay a special tax . Most of the present Moslems had Christian ancestors, and they are the product of this persecution, and now they fight the religion of their ancestors. The christians also had their own fanatism specially demonstrated in the Irish Catholic- English fights.

But really fanatism is not something to be proud of, it should not be allowed or tolerated, because we are the same people, were created free by the Creator. To believe or not is up to the individual relation with God, who never forced anybody to believe, and may be because he can take care of it himself, if he needed to. God does not need a person or a group of people to do his work, and killing someone does not make him believe in that god, but send the person to the real God to judge him. Remember Sodom and Gomorrha, the whole two cities were elliminated by celestial fire. The flood decimated the whole world except for 8 people. Out of the million adults Egyptian Jewish slaves that left with Moses, only two reached the promised land. Thus it is futile to kill in the name of God, because then one wonders why did that God, who supposedly knowing all, decided suddenly to send someone to kill that person he just created. It is inconsistent with logic and reason

In short God needs no one to kill for him. He is powerful enough, and strong enough to decimate countries, and even the world if he wanted to, and he can do it very neatly. Remember the Tsunami, and Hurricane Katrina, could that be some of his doing? They both killed much more people than terrorism in a few hours.

Religious fanatism does not belong to any people, it is the product of an unhealthy mental attitude, and brain washing, no matter who it is done by and against. It is endocrinated as a command from God, which could not be further from the truth. The proof is seen, when the people who believe in this horrible idea are examined medically by any psychologist or psychiatrist. May be those who believe in fanatism should expose their belief to psychiatrists from their own religion, and find out what they have to say about it.

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".