Faith causes terrorism

[Ian David]

Religious believers are always making excuses for why some obviously religious believer(s) committed an act or acts of terror. “It isn’t religion” they say, “it was some other factor that is really to blame.” Some apologists even have the audacity to blame secularism for the crimes of religious fundamentalists.

Mainstream religious believers will claim that terrorist attacks are a misuse of religion. This is at least an acknowledgement of the obvious that religion does bear responsibility. But then they go on and make the excuse that we can’t blame all religion for the acts of a few fundamentalists. I think we can blame all religion… or at least all the faith-based religions for the terrorist attacks of fundamentalists.

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So how does faith cause terrorism? Faith provides a certainty without evidence. If one has faith that God desires a particular action, no amount of reason or evidence can dissuade that person from taking that action. There is no compromising with someone’s faith-based belief. Terrorists don’t say to themselves, “God wants me to kill this person, but maybe I should just scare them a little bit.” This is why faith is dangerous. It is unquestioning certainty which promotes a binary world of God’s army vs. the infidel, heathen, blasphemer, atheist, secularist, or whatever group Pat Roberson feels like placing blame on this week.

Many people have faith and obviously most don’t support terrorism. But their faith is just as uncompromising, just as unquestioning, and just as absolutely certain as those who do support terrorism. They still believe that God is on their side. The difference is that the God they have faith in doesn’t support terrorism. But what objective evidence is there that can tell us which side God is really on? None, in fact there is no objective evidence for the existence of a god at all.
Belief in God isn’t evidence-based. It is based entirely on faith. So who is to say that someone else’s faith is wrong? Who is to say that God wasn’t on the side of the terrorists? Where faith is concerned, it just becomes a matter of personal taste. With faith, anything is permissible. One thing is for certain, with faith God will be on your side… no matter what side you are on.



More:
http://www.examiner.com/atheism-in-national/faith-causes-terrorism

[darkstar3]

1. Controversial, and completely correct.

I wonder what would happen if you posted this in R/T?