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 The Branch Davidians, a religious sect led by David Koresh, clashed with federal agents in 1993 in Waco, Texas.
April 28th, 2013
06:00 AM ET
When religious beliefs become evil: 4 signsBy John Blake, CNN (CNN) - An angry outburst at a mosque. The posting of a suspicious YouTube video. A friendship with a shadowy imam. Those were just some of the signs that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, accused of masterminding the Boston Marathon bombings, had adopted a virulent strain of Islam that led to the deaths of four people and injury of more than 260. But how else can you tell that someone’s religious beliefs have crossed the line? The answer may not be as simple you think, according to scholars who study all brands of religious extremism. The line between good and evil religion is thin, they say, and it’s easy to make self-righteous assumptions. “When it’s something we like, we say it’s commitment to an idea; when it’s something we don’t like, we say it’s blind obedience,” said Douglas Jacobsen, a theology professor at Messiah College in Pennsylvania. Yet there are ways to tell that a person’s faith has drifted into fanaticism if you know what to look and listen for, say scholars who have studied some of history’s most horrific cases of religious violence. Follow the CNN Belief Blog on Twitter “There are a lot of warning signs all around us, but we usually learn about them after a Jim Jones or a David Koresh,” said Charles Kimball, author of “When Religion Becomes Evil.” Here are four warning signs: 1. I know the truth, and you don’t. On the morning of July 29, 1994, the Rev. Paul Hill walked up to John Britton outside an abortion clinic in Pensacola, Florida, and shot the doctor to death. Hill was part of a Christian extremist group called the Army of God, which taught that abortion was legalized murder. Hill’s actions were motivated by a claim that virtually all religions espouse: We have the truth that others lack. Those claims can turn deadly when they become absolute and there is no room for interpretation, Kimball says. “Absolute claims can quickly move into a justification of violence against someone who rejects that claim,” Kimball said. “It’s often a short step.” Healthy religions acknowledge that sincere people can disagree about even basic truths, Kimball says. The history of religion is filled with examples of truths that were once considered beyond questioning but are no longer accepted by all followers: inerrancy of sacred scripture, for example, or the subjugation of women and sanctioning of slavery. If someone like Hall believes that they know God’s truth and they cannot be wrong, watch out, Kimball says. “Authentic religious truth claims are never as inflexible as zealous adherents insist,” he writes in “When Religion Becomes Evil.” Yet there’s a flip side to warnings about claiming absolute truth: Much of religion couldn’t exist without them, scholars say. Many of history’s greatest religious figures – Moses, Jesus, the Prophet Mohammed – all believed that they had discovered some truth, scholars say. Ordinary people inflamed with a sense of self-righteousness have made the same claim and done good throughout history, says Carl Raschke, a theology professor at the University of Denver in Colorado. The Protestant Reformation was sparked by an angry German monk who thought he had the truth, Raschke says. “Martin Luther’s disgust at the worldliness of the papacy in the early 1500s inspired him to become a radical revolutionary whose ideas overturned the entire political structure in Europe,” Raschke said. So how do you tell the difference between the healthy claims of absolute truth and the deadly? Scholars say to look at the results: When people start hurting others in the name of their religious truth, they’ve crossed the line. 2. Beware the charismatic leader. It was one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in Japanese history. In March 1995, a religious sect called Aum Shinrikyo released a deadly nerve gas in a Tokyo subway station, leaving 12 people dead and 5,000 injured. Two months later, Japanese police found Shoko Asahara, the sect’s founder, hiding in a room filled with cash and gold bars. Kimball, who tells the story of the sect in “When Religion Becomes Evil,” says Asahara had poisoned the minds of his followers years before. Asahara demanded unquestioned devotion from members of his sect and isolated followers in communities where they were told that they no longer needed to think for themselves, Kimball says. Any religion that limits the intellectual freedom of its followers, he says, has become dangerous. “When you start to get individuals who are the sole interpreters of truth, you get people who follow them blindly." Charismatic leaders, though, often don’t start off being cruel. Jim Jones, who led the mass suicide of his followers in South America, was a gifted speaker who built an interracial church in San Francisco that did much good in the community. Few people at the beginning of his ministry could predict what he would become. As time went on, though, his charisma turned cruel as he tolerated no questions to his authority and became delusional. “Charismatic leadership is important, but in healthy religions, there’s always a process where questions are encouraged,” Kimball said. Weaning followers away from corrupt charismatic leaders and bad religion can take years, but it can be done if one knows how to speak their language, says Ed Husain, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Countries such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt will often deploy imams to reach out to young men in prison who have adopted “Islamism,” or extreme forms of Islam sanctioning violence against civilians, says Husain, who has written about Muslim extremism. These Muslim clerics know the Quran better than the extremists and can use their knowledge to reach extremists in a place that logic and outsiders cannot penetrate, Husain said. “The antidote to extremism is religion itself,” Husain said. “The problem is not to take Islam out of the debate but to use Islam to counter Islamism.” 3. The end is near. In 1970, an unknown pastor from Texas wrote a book called “The Late, Great Planet Earth.” The book, which linked biblical prophecy with political events like Israel’s victory in the 1967 Six-Day War, predicted the imminent return of an antichrist and the end of the world. Author Hal Lindsey’s book has sold an estimated 15 million copies and spawned a genre of books like the “Left Behind” series. Many people are fascinated by the idea that the heavens will open soon because the end is near. That end-times theology can turn lethal, though, when a follower decides that he or she will speed up that end-time by conducting some dramatic or violent act, says John Alverson, chairman of the theology department at Carlow University in Pittsburgh. “A religious terrorist mistakenly believes that God has ordained or called him or her to establish the will of God on Earth now, not gradually and not according to the slow and finicky free will of other humans,” Alverson said. Yet this impulse to see God’s intervention in human affairs now and not in some distant future can also be good, he says. There are vibrant religious communities that teach that political and economic injustice must be addressed now. Liberation theology, for example, was a movement among pastors and theologians in Latin America that called for justice for the poor now, not in some future apocalyptic event, Alverson says. “Hope is a good breakfast but not much of a supper,” Alverson said. “We can’t just live on the hope that justice will happen; we have to actually experience justice from time to time so that our hope can continue.” 4. The end justifies the means. It was one of the biggest scandals the Roman Catholic Church ever faced, and the repercussions are still being felt today. In January 2002, the Boston Globe published a story about Father John Geoghan, a priest who had been moved around various parishes after Catholic leaders learned that he had abused children. It was later revealed that Catholic officials had quietly paid at least $10 million to settle lawsuits against Geoghan. Kimball says the Catholic scandal revealed another sign that a faith has turned toxic: Religious figures start justifying doing something wrong for a higher good. “The common theme was trying to protect the integrity of the church,” Kimball said of some Catholic leaders who covered up the crimes. “You get all of these rationalizations that we can’t let this scandal bring the whole church down, so we have to pay off this family and send the priests off to rehab.” Religion is supposed to be a force for good. Still, it’s common that everyone from suicide bombers to venal church figures finds ways to justify their behavior in the name of some higher good. Those rationalizations are so pervasive that religious movements that avoid them stand out, scholars say. Jacobsen, the theology professor from Messiah College, cited the civil rights movement. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and his fellow activists renounced violence, even as they were attacked and sometimes murdered. “They were willing to lay down their lives for what they believed in, but what’s incredible is, they practiced not retaliating when they suffered violence,” he said. “Those people really believed that God created everyone equal, and they were committed to the point of death.” In some ways, it’s easy to say we would never adopt a form of religion that’s evil. But when we use the word “evil” to describe those who kill in the name of their faith, we’re already mimicking what we condemn, Jacobsen says. In his new book, “No Longer Invisible: Religion in University Education,” Jacobson writes that calling a religion evil is dangerous because “bad or wrong actions can be corrected, but typically evil needs to be destroyed.” CNN’s Belief Blog: The faith angles behind the biggest stories “To label someone or something as evil is to demonize it, putting it in a category of otherness where the rules of normal life do not apply, where the end often justifies almost any means,” Jacobson writes. And when we do that, we don’t have to read about radical imams or look at angry YouTube videos to see how easy it is for someone to drift toward religious extremism, he says. We need only look at ourselves. soundoff (3,810 Responses)« Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 Next »
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The CNN Belief Blog covers the faith angles of the day's biggest stories, from breaking news to politics to entertainment, fostering a global conversation about the role of religion and belief in readers' lives. It's edited by CNN's Daniel Burke with contributions from Eric Marrapodi and CNN's worldwide news gathering team.  |
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Let us make a deal with every atheist, after death we have a promise with heavens but you have
nothing,so if this is the truth we will win and you will lose, if it is not the truth we will not lose and you
will not gain.
so in both cases you are the loser,much better if you return back to the light of religious and God.
Pascal's wager......*yawn*.
If you don't get to spend eternity with jesus, how is that not a loss for you?
false choice, light(headed): there could be more than two choices.
but, by all means, beg all you want.....jeebus likes his little children to beg
Sign 1 that your religious beliefs can turn evil: You actually believe that any particular set of ridiculous fairy tales regarding gods, creation and the end of the world are real instead of stone age crap created by primitive humans who were afraid of what lurked in the dark outside the light from their fire.
Wow.... So the return can be that your non beliefs have reached the level that you are so sure that your Faith that there is not a God that you become no different than the extremist on the other side.
*sigh* When is your writing going to become readable, Piddles?
TomTom. As soon as you learn to not automatically dismiss the post of those that are not Atheist. 🙂
Ah, the fallacy of Equivocation again! Good one Mark! Try to do that phony confusion between theological faith and the other definitions.
Bananas are cowardly Asians because they are yellow.
lol
There is no logical answer to my question what is the difference between Christianity and Hinduism and Buddhism where everyone is waiting for the human God.
Any one of them to the right ?
In fact there is no answer to this question until the day of resurrection.
antichrist and the devil succeeded in convincing people that humans could be a God so the Antichrist can rule the world on t time
So we have to wait until the zombie apocalypse to find out? Bummer.
For your information the antichrist is in Istampul planing to get the leadership of Muslims countries and he will get it.
in the next days muslim countries will be under the Turkish leadership and the anticjrist will be on the head of this leadership.
the aim is to destroy muslims faith like what he did with the west
he has a nick name of two prophets,he is showing him self as a hero trying to persuade people they must live together in peace and justice.
the antichrist will be the leader of Muslims in the future.
Meanwhile, back in reality....There is no satan, or gods, and mens delusions will bring about more war and suffering.
sure no one will answer as this the first time for you all to face the truth or we can say the antichrist and satan ancient plan to accept the coming human God who will rule the world as the lord who is in fact the antichrist.
The ORIGIN story is bullsh-it...............so is the bible............... nasty !
From Soup to Cells—the Origin of Life
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/IIE2aOriginoflife.shtml
Scientists have unearthed the first direct signs of cheesemaking, at a site in Poland that dates back 7,500 years.
Human Evolution
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/IIE2cHumanevo.shtml
BBC. Planet of the Apemen. Battle for Earth 1. Ho-mo Erectus
And the talking snake in the grass..................with the red devil ................ no thanks to that though !
still no answer for one question,what is the difference between Christians and Hindus as both of them are waiting for the human god who will come to save them? who we must follow Jesus or Krishna or Buda or whom?
if you dint find the answer,read it in my first comment.
A cat having an epileptic seizure on the keyboard would write better than you.
Jesus only reveals himself to the illiterate. And morons.
I answered you with a coherent explanation...you just did not accept it.
Stop asking for information if you keep refusing to accept it.
when the antichrist appears to christians as Jesus with the same figure and same mirecles were before with Jesus how they will refuse him,especially that the strong and huge media in all over the world ruling by him will show him as a hero and as the real messayah and of cours as usual people will believe.
Learn to spell. It would help you look like less of an idiot. Not much less, considering your ideas, but a bit less.
"Lawrence
Faith – what's so idiotic about that? A god who refuses to show any evidence of his/her existence shouldn't need or expect acknowledgement, let alone worship."
that is true
still the question without an answer,who we must follow Jesus or Krishna?
Why do you think you need to follow?
it seems youdont have an answer to my question,then my first comment is the answer,the antichrist and satan plan to destroypeople faith and toprepare them to accept the antichrist as their lord.
one question i want to ask you all,what is the difference between Christians and Hindus as both of them are waiting for a human god to save them?
Nothing really...sort of the same difference as flavors of ice cream...essentially the same thing, but a different flavor.
If you took a hindu new born, and a christian newborn and swapped them at birth, you would still have one more hindu and one more christian, the hindu born would then become christian, and the christian born would be hindu...in that respect no real difference...just a different flavor of delusion.
Both babies born atheist, then taught religion.
It's no wonder that CNN has lost many viewers with ignorant twits like John Blake on their terribly weak staff. Your lies will turn on you one day and will eat you alive. One cannot spout lies without retribution. You need to study Mr. Lindsay's works, which are much older than you.
Perhaps if you were able to think more clearly and for yourself, your words might not be scoffed at.
Get your mind right, son.
@Holman
Wow, I'm really convinced by all your reasoning and sound argumentation. /sarcasm
So in other words, M. Holman is not comfortable with the content of the article, therefore he will pretend that he has some sort of authority in an attempt to give his opinion false gravitas.
what will happen if some one told that he is the god? what will be the reaction of people?
of course they will kill him.
so the question is how most of the people will follow the antichrist when he announces himself as the god?
actually the antichrist and satan succeeded in persuading the people with one idea,the idea of ( the human god).
more than 02 billions of christians are belive in Jesus the human god,more than 900 millions of Hidus are believe in Krishna the human god more than 300 millions of Buddahs are belive in Buda the human god,and many others are belive in the human god who will come in the end of days to save the human kind.
every one of thos belive that they are the only correct one and the others are wrong.
also the antichrist put a specific picture for every human god to be easier for him to persuade the followers that he is the same god they were waiting for as he will appear for every one of thos at the same time in different places with the same picture and with the same mirecles they belive in.
so when he appears to them as he is their god it will be very easy for him to make them belive in him and follow him.
this is the plan they put before to garantee the success of their mission.
they are fighting to fix that concept in minds and hearts by many methods like media,books,scholarships,false stories...etc.
think with your mind not with your hearts to discover the truth.
First off...get back to english class.
Secondly...god created satan knowing full well the consequences. So if your satan character does anything, your god is OK with it,.
haroun yahya is the real antichrist
"That end-times theology can turn lethal, though, when a follower decides that he or she will speed up that end-time by conducting some dramatic or violent act, says John Alverson, chairman of the theology department at Carlow University in Pittsburgh."
Mr. Blake: Just wondering – where are the incidents of this happening based on Mr. Lindsey's writings and movies? It is disingenuous and dishonest of you – to say nothing of vapid journalism – to forge headlong into false equivalence. It is your type of shallow reasoning that makes me fear for this country. The press is supposed to be impartial and factual; your and Mr. Alverson's comments (if he, indeed, intended them to be associated with Mr. Lindsey) about these writings and movies are neither. And I am not necessarily a big fan of Mr. Lindsey. But your intellectual dishonesty in this one is too apparent to go unchallenged.
Mr. Blake, Cant you read? Jesus Himself said No one but the Father knows the return of Christ. Therefore a Christian who thinks they can influence the return of Christ is just ignorant. Like you.
And jesus said he would be back in one generation. 100 generations later and still no zombie lord.
"Charles
sam stone
It's interesting that most characters who end up becoming immortal in our literature eventually come to see their condition as a curse. I suspect that few Christians have actually tried to imagine living forever. If they do, they probably see themselves immersed in God's Presence like being on some kind of never ending LSD trip. Hardly my idea of "Paradise". Rather pathetic, actually.
Also, would you be the same person? Heaven is a place where there is supposedly no worries or angst but, personally, I can't imagine actually enjoying such an existence if I could still feel compassion for those in Hell. If I'm unable to feel that then being in Heaven would have changed me into something I consider less than human, or good. It wouldn't actually be "me" up there anyway, so why bother to step over people in order to claw my way in? It just doesn't make any sense."
i can assure u, u 2 have no reason whatsoever 2 b concerned about getting close to heaven
For all creationists and ID believers...............IT only takes minutes to figure IT out. No fairy in the sky needed !
New Device Can Extract Human DNA With Full Genetic Data in Minutes
May 6, 2013 — Take a swab of saliva from your mouth and within minutes your DNA could be ready for analysis and genome sequencing with the help of a new device.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130506132100.htm
And NO ANGELS then old pope KICKED them in OFF the TEAM last year !
From Soup to Cells—the Origin of Life
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/IIE2aOriginoflife.shtml
Pope's book on Jesus challenges Christmas traditions
By Laura Smith-Spark, CNN
updated 10:56 AM EST, Fri November 23, 2012
http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/22/world/europe/vatican-pope-jesus-book/index.html?iref=allsearch
May 8, 2013 at 5:02 pm | Report abuse | Reply
Science
And a tag along......from previous thread Bill ?
Did you forget this one Bill................... about the angels ?
And NO ANGELS then old pope KICKED them in OFF the TEAM last year !
From Soup to Cells—the Origin of Life
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/IIE2aOriginoflife.shtml
Pope's book on Jesus challenges Christmas traditions
By Laura Smith-Spark, CNN
updated 10:56 AM EST, Fri November 23, 2012
http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/22/world/europe/vatican-pope-jesus-book/index.html?iref=allsearch
May 8, 2013 at 5:01 pm | Report abuse |
Science
All these years Bill and there are suppose to be angels.......................then poof go the angels according to the old pope;.......
where are the morals there Bill ?
May 8, 2013 at 5:38 pm | Report abuse |
Science
Or is that to simple for you Bill ?
You know faith.................. no red devil with horns OK !
The End
Trifecta Health and Psychiatrist Dr. Fruitman offers Adult ADHD, Depression, Anxiety, Substance Abuse, Weight Management and Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) for depression in New York City.
Do you offer Religious Cult Deprogramming Services? How successful are you at extracting delusional believers from the dead jew zombie death cult aka christianity? What about the islamic cult, radicalized or "normal"? Please provide references.
The LAST DAY..............numbers ...........can you figure them out ?...............the fairy in the sky did not create US !
See for yourself below...........
Monkey Math: Baboons Show Brain's Ability to Understand Numbers ..........E = mc2..............(U-Pb) numbers do not lie !
May 3, 2013 — Opposing thumbs, expressive faces, complex social systems: it's hard to miss the similarities between apes and humans. Now a new study with a troop of zoo baboons and lots of peanuts shows that a less obvious trait – the ability to understand numbers – also is shared by humans and their primate cousins.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130503132719.htm
All religions on earth are fake and full of nonsense now,
so they inevitably lead to some kind of extremism and eventually self destruction and doom
in one way or another;
but there is only one Religion which is absolutely Real and full of Wisdom,
because it has substantial –Mathematic & Scientific– EVIDENCES, in the first place,
and it thus definitely leads to eternal Peace, Calm and Serenity:
http://www.holy-19-harvest.com
UNIVERSAL MAGNIFICENT MIRACLES
LAST DAY..............numbers ...........can you figure them out ?...............the fairy in the sky did not create US !
See for yourself below.................the sign in picture above is wrong !!!........The fairy in the sky did NOT create us !!!
Monkey Math: Baboons Show Brain's Ability to Understand Numbers ..........E = mc2..............(U-Pb) numbers do not lie !
May 3, 2013 — Opposing thumbs, expressive faces, complex social systems: it's hard to miss the similarities between apes and humans. Now a new study with a troop of zoo baboons and lots of peanuts shows that a less obvious trait – the ability to understand numbers – also is shared by humans and their primate cousins.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130503132719.htm
To LAST DAY...................have you figured it out yet...........E = mc2 or the (U-Pb) ?
All any supposed god has to do to prove its existence is show up. They never do, and its really easy to figure out why.
what an idiot
Faith – what's so idiotic about that? A god who refuses to show any evidence of his/her existence shouldn't need or expect acknowledgement, let alone worship.
Embrace and tell the Truth. However it is not ours to "enforce" or "crusade"...unfortunately we have not come very far since the days Clovis would invade villages and tell people chose Christianity or die...in nutshell-some dont digest the message. Easy to blame religion, but never forget all the evil perpetrated in the name of "freedom from religion"...USSR/China, etc for example killed because someone had the audacity to believe in a Creator more powerful than their government.