So I have a two mormon girls that I meet with a couple times a month. They know I am an atheist, so mostly we just discuss the big questions. Last time I met with them, I asked them how they justify the genocide god commits directly or by proxy in the bible. They responded by saying, "It is better to kill one man than for generations to suffer." They also said that it is okay because now they are in the 'spirit world' and have a chance to learn the gospel. WOW. I tried vehemently to point out how dangerous this thinking is. If you can justify righteous killing, then all you need is to believe god told you to kill someone. Especially since god is beyond question for them. That "his ways are greater than ours" mentality. Now I know the mormons are a peaceful bunch, but this is the kind of thinking that justifies horrors.
Now, after watching this one, can you say religion doesn't induce madness?
Lets hope their "God" doesn't instruct them to kill nonbelievers. How old are these girls?
Did you expect different? That such an answer is good enough to sustain their convictions only supports the notion that they don't aim particularly high, regarding their standards of evidence. Would also be interesting to hear what questions they pose to you.
Religion by its very nature is a psychosis and you can't argue with crazy people
i love when they say to you "Are you afraid of my words? They are stupidly convinced that God is real.
That is truly scary as I am 100% sure they are quoting stuff they learned in church!
I'm not shocked at all. Believing in a creed requires a certain amount of willing moral ambiguity. Whether it's a tribe with a sacrifice ritual or a crime family or secret society or.. an organized religion.. they all seem to require a sharing of a crime as part of an observable loyalty pledge or behavior,
In the case of your co-workers, they have bought into the notion of their god's righteousness which allows them, as a collective, to accept inhuman action by an inhuman entity as having a higher purpose over self.
I love quoting Christopher Hitchens for this type of thing.
Good people will always find a way to be good. Bad people will always find a way to be bad but to get a good person to do something evil, well that takes religion.
The Cult of Personality has to be recognized here. An individual that has a message that resonates in the mind of the masses can have the same effect as a religion; with the same violent results.
Did you give their names to the local mental health clinic?
Once had a friend that was a Mormon. He is now an atheist. He told me many stories about how many in that church had seriously mental health issues and were heavily medicated.
@NoMagicCookie Well, the answer these two ladies provided show some kind of mental "cookeness".
This video may explain few of the mental health issues your friend mentioned to you.
@DUCHESSA A good video. I was expecting him to reference the cat scans that demonstrate the region of the brain that is responsible for logic is not as active (strong) as the regions responsible for fantasy when compared with non-theists.
@NoMagicCookie I couldn't get said video.
@NoMagicCookie THIS ONE HAVE SOMETHING INTERESTING AS WELL:
They don't seem to have a clue. But then, neither do so many young Mormons out gospelizing. Ask them about being a regular murderer, in the Mormon church as opposed to an equally staunch evangelical one (Mormons claim murder is an unpardonablle sin, some will as it is church doctrine, while most avoid the topic or don't understand themselves).
BTW, now that you have become friendly, do they know your full name? If you pass away, they, and the Mormon church, can write down your name in their book/list and pray you into heaven. You may remember a number of years ago the Church was holding an organized "pray in" for all the jews for whom they had names (millions) killed in the Holocaust to get into Mormon heaven. Many Jewish people got upset and made a fuss. I found the whole incident ridiculously funny.
The whole "God has to intervene or else..." is a flawed concept, even from a biblical perspective. Intervention only makes sense without any prior knowledge of the chain of events that will unfold should a specific individual be allowed to spawn from the earth in the first place. An all-knowing omnipotent God is in direct contradiction with the need to intervene.
Very dangerous.
Abraham with Isaac: case in point. That's the god all these people believe in.
A better question, since "god" is omnipresence, why would he have to kill a few bad seeds? Couldn't he just have removed the few bad ones, and allowed the rest of the world to live peaceably?
But you are VERY correct. That frame of mind is incredibly dangerous. It has sparked more than one war.
I keep trying to tell people the war across seas is s religious war. Unless you persuade them different they will continue to radicalize other human beings.
Tell them if they don't adjust their thinking, they'll have to go back to Palmyra, New York where the whole nonsense started.