(June 6, 2012 at 1:54 pm)Gendarme Wrote: What you wrote applies to religious fanatcs, not people who merely believe in God and pray to him every now and then. You don't necessarily have to believe in Heaven or Hell to believe in God.
Which religion are you talking about specifically? Because for most of the majors (Christianity, Hinuism, Islam etc.), surely the whole point is that they believe in heaven and hell...?
Plus, those people who pray to a god "every now and then" aren't religious by definition. They are simply seeking an option after life other than death, and occasionally praying to a deity is just their way of making themselves feel better. Infact, I put it to you that the crazy fanatics are the ONLY religious people left, as they follow their holy books to the letter, rather than cherry-pick the fluffy bits and believe in them.
On another note, what I wrote doesn't even apply to the fanatics. For example, the people in Nigeria were just regular, run-of-the-mill, impoverished, uneducated, penniless Africans until those Christian pastors started blaming it all on the "witch childeren"; the women being suppressed, cut off and even stoned to death in the East are just average women from average families. That's just the way it's done out there; creationism being taught in some schools rather than evolution is only as a result of "nice, normal, Christian families" slitting the intellectual society's collective throats with their proofless beliefs. These things aren't as a result of any obvious fanaticism, but from teaching childeren not to question a fictional character's will.
