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Tag: religious extremism

From Faith to a Pernicious Idolatry

From Faith to a Pernicious Idolatry

1. You shall have no other gods before me. 2. You shall not make for yourself any carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations…

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Why are you a Christian (Muslim, Jew, etc.)?

Why are you a Christian (Muslim, Jew, etc.)?

Much of what I have to say is critical, but I do not mean any disrespect to my family and friends, or any one else of a particular faith. The purpose of this short essay is to further my project of trying to understand religious belief and to cultivate a certain kind of humility that I find lacking in many religious people. The latter may seem condescending, though I certainly do not intend it to be. When asking for the…

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The Dangers of Religious Extremism

The Dangers of Religious Extremism

In my last blog post, I indicated that I believed that the religious extremes that dominate public discussion of religion are dangerous. Here I will briefly give reasons for thinking that is true. To begin, I consider atheism and agnosticism to both be religious perspectives simply because they concern religion or religious issues. So one can be an atheist and still be a religious extremist. In my last post I wrote: “On the one hand, there are those who openly,…

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Escaping from Between two Extremist Poles

Escaping from Between two Extremist Poles

My concern is to promote the middle ground between these two poles. I take that middle ground to consist not necessarily of belief in God (though it by no means excludes it) but in taking religion and man’s religious yearnings seriously, while at the same time seeking to approach the issues as rationally and charitably as possible.