Religion, by far, is one of the most dominant forces the human race has ever seen. It has influenced and continues to influence billions of people all over the world. It has driven some of the most beneficial cooperative humanitarian efforts and some of the most heinous acts of violence anybody can perpetuate on another human being. In his book, When Religion Becomes Evil, Dr. Charles Kimball explores the causes and slippery slopes that lead to these kinds of atrocious behaviors. Many of his points were incredibly well thought out and valid, but one repetitive phrase that Dr. Kimball used caught my attention: “authentic religion.” This one phrase contains so many troublesome presuppositions that it is impossible not to question. One such question, …show more content…
One other concept that goes against this authentic religion notion is modern day sex-ed. I can’t even begin to count the number of times I have heard a pastor make an analogy about how a person, in particular women, are deemed less valuable because they have had sex. They are likened to a chewed piece of bubblegum that nobody wants. Sexual repression also makes people feel terrible for having completely normal and healthy thoughts. This completely flies in the face of the described pursuit of human dignity. It actively makes a person feel a sense of shame about themselves. Sexual repression also does not help in forming “compassionate, constructive relationships” (Kimball 139). Speaking from personal experience, the sexual repression that was enforced upon my current girlfriend and I in our Baptist upbringings has not helped foster a loving relationship. All it has done is hold us back and make us feel awful about loving each other in a physical manner. This isn’t just my story though. Even one of my friends that I used to go to church with still runs into problems with his girlfriend with this very same issue. This kind of doctrine does not bring people closer together. It pushes people away and makes them resent themselves for being a normal human being, and as soon as one party begins to fall into those sexual, completely normal urges, then they are taught to remove those people from their …show more content…
For example, a verse in the bible reports Jesus saying “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law— a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household. Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:34-37). For many Christian denominations, this is a very real problem. Being kicked out of the house for not holding the same views as the parents is a common occurrence today in sects like Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons. Even in some more “moderate” denominations like Baptists, of which I was raised, exile is still an issue. This notion doesn’t even have to go that far though. In my first relationship, we were having issues, which extended into our summer camp at Falls Creek. I was irritated that my girlfriend did not want to work on it, and when I finally approached her about it, she told me that she could not focus on our relationship because this was her time for God. This idea that God takes precedent over earthly relationships does not help foster caring relationships, but most people, and possibly Dr. Kimball himself,
Religion is a part of society that is so closely bound to the rest of one’s life it becomes hard to distinguish what part of religion is actually being portrayed through themselves, or what is being portrayed through their culture and the rest of their society. In Holy Terrors, Bruce Lincoln states that religion is used as a justifiable mean of supporting violence and war throughout time (Lincoln 2). This becomes truly visible in times such as the practice of Jihad, the Reformation, and 9/11. The purpose of this essay is to show that as long as religion is bound to a political and cultural aspect of a community, religious war and destruction will always occur throughout the world. A historical methodology will be deployed in order to gain
H.J McCloskey’s article, “On Being an Atheist,” is an attempt to show atheism as a more practical alternative to the Christian belief. McCloskey reasons against the theistic beliefs of the cosmological argument, the teleological argument and design. He references the presence of evil in a world created by God and the absurdity of living by faith. This article is an attempt to reason that God does not exist because He is perfect and the world is not perfect; evil exists therefore God cannot exist. McCloskey’s article labels these arguments as “proofs” and concludes none of these arguments would be evidence of God’s existence. I find McCloskey’s article to lack logic and coherence which only serves to invalidate his arguments. I find this little more than an attempt to justify his own atheistic worldview.
Why I Left the Church” by Richard Garcia is a poem that explores the ongoing and conflicting relationship between a child’s fantasy and the Church. Although the majority of the text is told in present tense, readers are put through the lenses of a young boy who contemplates the legitimacy of the restricting and constricting nature of worship. It is a narrative that mixes a realist approach of storytelling with a fantasy twist that goes from literal metaphors to figurative metaphors in the description of why the narrator left the church. The poet presents the issue of childhood innocence and preset mindsets created by the Church using strong metaphors and imagery that appeal to all the senses.
The God You Thought You Knew: Exposing the 10 Biggest Myths about Christianity is a 203-page book written by Alex McFarland and published by Bethany House Publishers. It discusses ten common misconceptions about God and Christianity, and what the author thinks are the truths that refute those myths.
Religion gives rise to and is born with the unreasonable and uninviting desire to make man at home in what seems to be very close to an uncaring world. With this being
In today’s culture, the idea of there is perfect and divine designer that made the earth and everything that entails with it, really pushes people away. Not only has this idea been conflicted about in today’s culture. It has been especially trivial in past decades, an example of this is seen by H.J. McCloskey. McCloskey wrote an article about it called “On Being an Atheist”, which attempts to defeat the notion that there is a God. McCloskey first addresses the reader of the article and says these arguments he is about to address are only “proofs”, which should not be trusted by any theist. He then goes and unpacks the two arguments that he believes can actually be addressed, the cosmological and teleological argument. McCloskey also addresses the problem of evil, free will, and why atheism is more comforting than theism.
Many scholars see the passage, Ephesians 5:20-6:9 as the author’s mirroring of these codes to assure secular authorities of the respectability and conformity of Christian family life. The passage Ephesians 5:20 and 6:1-5 states, “Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church… and he is the saviour of the body… Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right… Slaves obey your earthly masters with the fear trembling in singleness of heart, as you obey your Christ.” Many people and scholars say that Paul wasn’t really supporting patriarchy because of this passage. Instead, in this letter he asked each of the three pairs addressed masters/slaves, fathers/children, and husbands/wives -- to radically transform the meaning of these legal structures; renouncing the requirements of the flesh to achieve a higher
In the first chapter of Nathan Hatch’s book, The Democratization of American Christianity, he immediately states his central theme: democratization is central to understanding the development of American Christianity. In proving the significance of his thesis, he examines five distinct traditions of Christianity that developed in the nineteenth century: the Christian movement, Methodists, Baptists, Mormons and black churches. Despite these groups having diverse structural organization and theological demeanor, they all shared the commonality of the primacy of the individual conscience.
Religion, which is meant to enhance the faith of it followers, has done the opposite. The practices of religion have become overwhelmingly factual that the faith component of religion has vanished. In order to be a genuine beliver one must comprise an authentic faith. Both religious leaders and followers must realize that their religion is not factual, but sustained through faith. The key to the gates of heaven is faith, not facts.
In John Perry's book Dialogue on Good, Evil and the Existence of God, he used three characters in the dialogue in order to clarify the positions of the three characters (Weirob, Miller, and Cohen), the arguments they provide in support their positions and the "end state" of their discussion. This allows us to examine our understanding of the good, evil and the existence of God.
According to Merriam-Webster, religion is based on “an organized system of beliefs, ceremonies, and rules used to worship a god or a group of gods” (“Religion”). In every part of the world there is a struggle between individual religions that are trying to institutionalize their “system of beliefs” on each other, and within those individual religions there is also a struggle of sects that claims that their teaching should be the basis for that religion, not the teachings that is presented by other believers of the same religion. These religious sect later go on to create religious organizations. The first thing these religious organizations try to propagate to their followers is that anyone that are not a follower of their doctrines is corrupt and needs a divine deliverance from themselves. This deliverance cannot be given to the individual in another religious organization, it has to come from them. One of the biggest organization that has openly declared themselves as the divine judgers of men from God is th...
The sociology of religion is easiest to define by understanding the core of sociology. According to Ronald Johnstone in Religion and Society, the goal of sociology is to “[understand] the dynamics of group life” and “[understand] the influence of groups on individual and collective behavior” (Johnstone 2). This goal is sought under the assumption that “people become human only in groups” (Johnstone 4). Thus, the sociology of religion is the study of religion from the perspective of humans as communicative and influenceable beings, both on an individual level and more importantly, as religious groups. This means that the sociology of religion is less about specific religious belief systems and more about the implications and influence of religious
Charles Kimball’s book When Religion Becomes Evil states, “It is somewhat trite, but nevertheless sadly true, to say that more wars have people killed, and these days more evil perpetrated in the name of religion than by any other institutional force in human history.” (Kimball 1). According to Kimball, an assurance to rite for needing proving, for no evidence support attempted. If one challenges to prove it, one will need recognizable evidence from other institutional forces over the course of study with a concept of religion.
Smith states that the concept of “THE religion” and the idea of each religion having its own essence is recent and are of western origin. And he claims that the danger of making this definition created by the west a universal one, is simply putting the power in the hands of the west (Goosen 2015:18). This is what we saw happen in the past during the colonial era, religion became a pawn that could be controlled for the gain of only one party. Here Smith states that we should stop speaking of “THE religion” and the “essence of religion” in order to avoid such predicaments repeating
Throughout the semester we learned that people have different opinions about religion and hold different beliefs about what really happened during the time of Christ. Many question whether he truly exists. We briefly discussed a famous individual named Sigmund Freud, who held a much different belief about religion than most. By comparing his views to catholic, Thomas a’ Kempis, we can see exactly how different his views were. Freud’s beliefs about our personality and our death drive are important to understand in order to know how he felt about religion. Some of Freud’s theories of religion relate to mastering the Oedipus complex, a reaction to infantile helplessness, and a universal obsessional ritual.