How much blame can we place on religion?

here we go…grabs a seat and a snack

That all depends on what religion really is.
1) If there is a loving god then its likely we (humans) are the ones getting it wrong.
2) If religion is something man made, than you can blame it.
3) If I’m a brain in a vat and you’re all figments of my imagination, I suppose you can blame me.

@roundsquare

Yes, that is true. Sometimes I am a bit confused when people say “don’t blame the religion”. What do they mean? Don’t blame God? Don’t blame the Bible? Don’t blame the Church? Don’t blame the priests? Don’t blame the doctrine? It’s not always clear.

I think one needs to be careful between looking at “religions” and looking at the Bible. Many people who use the Bible in their belief system do not follow the strict reading of Leviticus.

Leviticans (not Christians, a real Christian would not do things like this) pick and choose portions of Leviticus to excuse their homophobic behavior. But they don’t follow every law in Leviticus, just the ones that helps hem justify their hate.

To the extent that their are a group of people who interpret the Bible in a certain manner, I can certainly blame the sect. The Westboro group claims to be “Baptist”, but I know of many real Baptists who think the Westboro group is sinful for what they do.

When a religion says it is ok to kill non-believers I give you permission to blame the religion.

As individuals we all still have free will, a choice in what we do. Religion is simply an idea.

Blame the individual who use the idea as an excuse, not the idea.

@DominicX another way of asking the same question:

“Who’s fault is it when someone misinterprets the intentions of an alleged holy book or philosophy?”

I would “blame” (whatever that means) the individual. If their understanding of things is skewed, everything they do will be motivated by that skewed perspective.

@ninjacolin. That can go either way. If its confusing or hard to apply, can blame the writer.

True. maybe that’s the best answer.

That’s what I’m saying. Sometimes I can’t blame the individual if their religious text says things like that. Their behavior is expected based on what the religious texts say—that kind of thing. And like @roundsquare said, if the wording is confusing, if one has to study the history of language and interpretation to come to the more “liberal” understanding that many people have, I can’t blame them for not getting to that level and taking it more at the surface.

@DominicX I guess the counter-argument (to my own point no less) is that when the general philosophy of something is love and acceptance and all of a sudden you come across something that says “hate these people” you should at least pause and see if you don’t understand something properly.

Though, more realistically, most people have only a surface level understanding of the bible, history, language, etc…

Yes, I do frequently disagree with myself. Its my process.

“It is our function as artists to make the spectator see the world our way not his way.”

- Mark Rothko, Adolph Gottlieb and Barnett Newman

Ultimately, I agree with this. Can’t blame the people for your failure to communicate at their level.

@ninjacolin And yet, we can’t blame the artist for not being truly timeless. I mean, the bible is OLD. Is it any surprise that a direct, literal application of its principles lead to strange results?

whatever happened to an individual taking responsibility for their own actions?

@Blondesjon, I would say the world needs to grow out of that older idea. Responsibility sounds pretty but it’s unreasonable to expect an ignorant person to know better.

@Blondesjon Seriously? This is America, the country of lawsuits.

Okay, to be more universal, the fact of the matter is that people depend on religion to help them make tough choices. Its not unreasonable since often humans don’t do it well if they take each situation case-by-case. That being said, if the rules are bad or poorly interpreted, that causes serious problems.

Ignorance as defined by who?

Religion is a man made thing, so technically, it may be blamed (for the good and for the bad) as a by product of the human mind in action.

@roundsquare said: “Is it any surprise that a direct, literal application of its principles lead to strange results?”

only when the old book is claimed to be 100% applicable and beneficial for all of humankind across milennia.

@Blondesjon, Ignorance as defined by the accuser.

@ninjacolin Well, it depends on exactly what that means. Are the exact rules applicable? Are the general concepts applicable?

Lawyers might argue that what we need to do is apply dynamic statutory interpretation.

sigh. youth.

@Blondesjon There is a basic concept of ignorance that is fairly universal. In any event, I think the relevant definition here would be ignorant with respect to the historical context of the bible (or whatever book, etc… in question).

@Blondesjon, all I’m saying is that mistakes of any variety are mistakes. They aren’t willful acts by any significant means. A person who mistakenly thinks that violence is appropriate is a person who willfully acts but only according to misdirection. That’s where the concept of responsibility has an issue. Today I was reading in the papers about children who grow up violent. I’ll write an interesting quote from psychologist Toby Rutner:

“If a child is lucky enough to be born in to a solid family with what we would consider good, socially appropriate values and customs, then the child learns to tell the truth.. to settle disputes rationally using compromise and fair play.” But if the child grows up in a household where violence and aggression are used by authority figures, Rutner said the child will think this is normal behavior. “We’ll see a four or five year old child punching other kids, not necessarily because there’s anything mentally or emotionally wrong with him, but in effect, they’ve been taught to do that.”

Then none of us are responsible for our own actions. Sweet.:)

lol, I agree. Well, I think we need to reexamine/redefine the concept of responsibility for sense-making purposes anyway. I don’t think it’s far off.. but it is a little off at least.

@Blondesjon @ninjacolin Its somewhere in between. We don’t understand human nature enough to figure out where. (By we I mean humankind).

for the record, I don’t claim to be so ignorant about human nature. I think (i could be wrong of course) I understand human nature enough to at least begin the task of reinventing a practical understanding of the responsibility mechanism, one that I could apply at least to my own behaviors.

Plenty.

The bible in my opinion is a book created to subjugate people, without a doubt. It was created to politically influence, besides it is all word of mouth-you know how that goes.

Personally, I blame religion for a lot, but as a by-product of man (religion is man-made).

What is so interesting to me is that those who are killing people (or even just discriminating against people) because they’re gay aren’t killing people for, say, eating lobster. Or wearing polyester. Or any number of other things mentioned in Leviticus right alongside this particular ‘abomination’. If they were truly ignorant, we’d see a lot more beatings and killings (and discrimination) over a lot of other ‘abominations’, too. So there’s definitely plenty of blame for the individuals responsible for these reprehensible acts, too.

There’s this great quote from Papillon, Dustin Hoffman’s character Louis Dega says….“Blame is for god & small children.” Now, i’m not religious (fence sitting agnostic here) but I do have children & a degree of common sense. In short, I agree with the aforementioned quote. Besides, it sounds cool & that’s good enough for me.

It all boils down to violating the Golden Rule or not.

“To act or speak violently out of spite, chauvinism, or self-interest, to impoverish, exploit or deny basic rights to anybody, and to incite hatred by denigrating others—even our enemies—is a denial of our common humanity. We acknowledge that we have failed to live compassionately and that some have even increased the sum of human misery in the name of religion. We therefore call upon all men and women to restore compassion to the center of morality and religion and to return to the ancient principle that any interpretation of scripture that breeds violence, hatred or disdain is illegitimate.”

http://charterforcompassion.org/site/

We can blame religious people who ignore all this. But we can’t blame religious people who don’t.

These ignorant thoughts didn’t just pop into the heads of all these people. Religion is not the sole reason of course. There’s lack of education (which religion also has a part in), children raised in poor environments etc., but I see religion as that catalyst that helps the process of ignorance move forward.

@Blackberry Makes sense. Religion inspired blind faith, which doesn’t really open one up to seeing other points of view. Education can help this since, if done correctly, it can open one’s mind to different points of view. (I hope thats what you meant. i don’t want to misconstrue your meaning).

@roundsquare Yep. And you can also add improper education to the list.

Religion is dynamic not static. It changes with the evolution of humanity. You can blame the people who interpret any ‘holy book’ (not just the Bible) to mean hateful messages and practices. You can blame those who blindly follow the hateful messages and practices without personal investigation into the religion. Religion itself is not to blame; the blame rests solely on those who preach and practice violence, prejudice, injustice, exploitation and self interest as all or part of a religion.

@Blackberry Add it to which list? The list of things that are good or bad?

P.S. When I said said “correct” what I meant to exclude was “hateful education.” For example, teaching history by showing all the bad things done in the middle east without talking about the good/beautiful things and therefore basically forcing students to conclude that the middle east is full of horrible people. I’m fine with “informal” education for many thing.

The content of the Bible and the Quran does not change with the evolution of humanity. And that is the entire problem, because these books are largely horrific and false.

Christians and Muslims can “interpret” these books in such a way that they only pay attention to things that line up with post-enlightenment morality and ignore the bronze-age stuff… but this is an intellectually dishonest way to interpret the texts.

You can’t, you can only place the blame on those who twist it into a shadow of itself to allow themselves to find some sort of benefit from it, whether it lay in killing, exhorting, etc.

The Bible explicitly commands you to kill people, @Winters. No twisting required.

@roundsquare Oh, I didn’t make it clear in my answer lol. The list of things that add to ignorance.

@Qingu can’t be sure that someone twisted it at one point or another, can you? Hell, shit that goes down with religion could just as easily go down with atheism.

What do you mean “at one point or another”? It’s in the text. Deuteronomy 13:6 tells you to kill anyone, even your family, if they try to convert you to another religion. 13:12 tells you to commit genocide against towns in the holy land who de-convert. Dt. 20:10 explains how to fight wars and, if those wars take place in the holy land, orders you to commit genocide. The entire book of Joshua, along with much of Judges, Kings, and Samuel, is simply a victorious description of such God-ordered genocides. That’s a huge chunk of the Old Testament.

What am I twisting here, @Winters?

@Winters ???
“Hell, shit that goes down with religion could just as easily go down with atheism.”
?

@Qingu I’m not saying you are, after all it’s not like God was controlling what men decided to write down/ translate for the bible (Not that there is a God anyways).

@everephebe you have no idea how many different types of atheism there are, do you? Also, as you see some Islamic/Christian/Whatever-Damn-Religion-You-Like head figure rowdying his mob of followers to go kill the nonbelievers, you could get atheists to do the same “kill the nonbelievers,” or “kill the ignorant fools who can’t accept reality.” Oh what the hell am I saying, Nietzsche’s sister already did it which resulted in one of the largest genocides in the history of man.

@Winters I suppose it is possible that someone wrote down the wrong stuff in the bible or someone changed it… but thats only a possibility.

The bible being altered is nothing new, and a good many of the translations are extremely biased towards how whoever was in charge of it wanted it. For example, You’ll see in some translations it’ll say that a woman raped by a man must marry the man whereas in others the man has to be punished, in some cases paying a lot of money in damages to being outright shunned from his community, to branding.

”...you could get atheists to do the same “kill the nonbelievers,” or “kill the ignorant fools who can’t accept reality.” Oh what the hell am I saying, Nietzsche’s sister already did it which resulted in one of the largest genocides in the history of man.”

Really? Your equating Nazis to atheists? It’s not like atheists gather and listen to Dawkins preach atheism on Saturdays or Sundays or any day of the week.

Atheists ≠ Nazis. Sorry @Winters that shit doesn’t fly, it isn’t even aerodynamic.

@Winters if I am so ignorant of the “types of atheism” why don’t you enlighten me. I missed the “Let’s kill the believers because we’re atheists,” meeting, I’m sure I would have enjoyed it.~

@Winters, I agree that there is no God and that people wrote the Bible. I’m still not sure what your point is. Are you asserting that Deuteronomy and most of the texts after it in the Old Testament were “altered” from some pristine original form? Do you have any evidence of this whatsoever?

Also, a translation is not an alteration. We actually have very old Biblical manuscripts, in some cases dating from the first centuries AD. Those are the sources of modern translations.

I think that it is easy to blame religion for such hate crimes as killing homosexuals. Certainly, there are many religious adherents who would do such terrible things, and say that they were doing what God wanted them to do. Equally, there are a lot of non-religious people who do equally terrible (often the same) types of things. I doubt many of the “poofter-bashing” thugs in western society claim religion for themselves. The point is that there are good and bad people in every philosophical category.

Yes, the text you quote is hard to refute. However, there are a lot of things in the Old Testament that simply don’t apply any more, and this is one of them. You won’t find any reference to this type of behaviour in the teachings of Jesus, and that is what Christians are supposed to follow. I look at things like you have quoted as historical, while the gospels are currently relevant.

Jesus said you should follow all of the OT laws, and teach others to do the same, so you get called ‘greatest’ in the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:17). Paul said the law is “holy, just, and good” (Romans 7:12).

God also explicitly said in Deuteronomy 4:2 that the laws he gave are the best ever and other nations would look on them with envy and wonder.

I guess you disagree with God, Jesus, and Paul? (I do, too… of course, I’m an atheist)

This has all been very interesting to read. I suppose I agree with @Qingu about the fact that the Bible doesn’t change to fit the times; it’s a static work. So when people read things that mandate the killing of homosexuals, as old as it may be, the Bible doesn’t change, so what it said that was true back then is still very true today.

But then of course you come to the interpretation problem, as in what applies today? Not always clear.

@Qingu, you cite several instances where the New Testament seems to support the following of the old law, but what of Galatians 3:24–25: “Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor.”

This is why I have trouble blaming people for “interpreting it badly”. It seems easy to interpret it a number of ways…

[mod says] This is our Question of the Day!

@everephebe I never said that Nazis = Atheists, they were heavily influenced by a particularly sick and twisted atheist (Who happened to be the sister of Nietzsche). Sure they weren’t atheists in all, but it took the encouragement of one Atheist to drive the Nazis into the belief that they were the Ubermensch (which was Nietzsche’s idea which his sister twisted once she lay claim to all of his works after he had his mental breakdown that destroyed him), that they were superior to all other races. Sure, the Nazis never were forcefully or completely atheist (many were under the belief that they were god’s chosen), however Nietsche’s sister was a smart girl and she knew she couldn’t shove atheism into the throats of her fellow Aryans as it was a bit too radical of a notion. All I said was it really takes one master of seduction atheist to create a mob willing to do what he or she wants. Nietzsche’s sister was a Jew hater (hated them, disliked all the rest), do you really think kill all the Jews was the idea of Hitler? Especially when he himself was half Jewish? It took one seductress to bend the 20th Century’s greatest political speaker (which was Hitler) a little farther from just Fascism to actively aggressive racism. The Nazis as a whole weren’t atheists, they were just beginning the dream scheme of one. If I wanted my shit to fly, I’d be a pigeon.

@Qingu I think @DominicX puts a valid point as to the inconsistent translation issue. Also you need to remember that history is never as straightforward as many believe it to be, especially that which occurred before Rome. Ex. The Battle of Troy may have just as easily been a Celtic resource war that occurred in Britain as it could have been as we were taught in Turkey. There are many things that pop up (especially with BC related stuff) that point to our current understanding being wrong of what happened then. And you can never be sure about people, there are many people who wouldn’t mind defacing, I mean editing written history.

@Winters Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche’s atheism isn’t what drove her actions, it was her antisemitism. Which is a completely different word even though it also starts with the letter a. Her other ideologies are what drove her, not her atheism. Non-belief does not translate into belief. There were many other factors at play. It would be as fair to say her actions were the result of being a woman or German or being raised Lutheran (in fact her father was a pastor). And as if she is the sole person to blame? Even with her “heav[y] influence.” *Sure they weren’t all atheists… 98.5% weren’t. But now, 1.5 % unbelievers, is still a lot, huh?

The word Nazi comes from a shortening of Nationalsozialismus. National being the first part of the word, and it was a demented nationalism that was behind some of the horrendous ideas of purity they had. Ideas like Positive Christianity were to blame not atheism. Look up what they actually thought of atheism. Or read the whole article, especially the first paragraph.

With religions one member is a representative of the group, like it or not. I really don’t think this can be said of atheism. Atheists aren’t “members.”

@Winters Unless you cite some sort of evidence of atheism being behind the genocide (if at all involved), you’re talking out of your ass. And therefor will hear more poo related metaphors from me.

@DominicX, I don’t think there’s actually a good answer to that question… because I don’t think the New Testament is entirely coherent on the issue. Christianity has been sectarian from the beginning.

Paul, obviously, feels that not all the Law should be followed. In the same letter he gets rather pissy with a rival Christian sect that is advocating that Christians get circumcised. Matthew, on the other hand, is much more stringent about following the law; the Sermon on the Mount is essentially Jesus saying the law is so important not to break that you shouldn’t even think about breaking it. Some scholars even think the author of Matthew was taking potshots at Paul (referring to him as “the least”; Paul was known as the “least of the apostles.”)

I’m also not sure that Paul, himself, was coherent on the issue. He isn’t a very coherent thinker in his letters.

That said, Paul is basically saying you don’t have to follow the Law, because Jesus saves you now. Similarly, as an adult, you don’t have to look both ways to cross the street. In most cases you should look both ways, though. And it’s certainly never wrong to look both ways.

So I do think that Christians who believe it would be wrong to follow God’s laws are not entirely on the level with their holy text.

@Winters, DomincX didn’t say anything about translation issues. What are you talking about?

I also don’t know what your point is about history. I agree that the Bible’s account of history is legend at best and outright bullshit in many cases.

This isn’t the issue. You can think that the Bible is wrong, factually inaccurate, morally repugnant (I do). That doesn’t somehow mean it’s “mistranslated,” or there is some nuanced interpretation that is less wrong or morally repugnant.

I apologize because it is extremely difficult to think clearly past my meds, I’m going to shut up and return when I can start thinking a bit more clearly

@everephebe I have at least one book that discusses the inside workings and what drove who to do what inside the Nazi Inner Circle, I’ll get back to you sometime next week or later, looks like I may be rechecking into the hospital for a bit.

@Qingu – The passages you refer to are upholding the 10 commandments (as found in Exodus 20), not the ones such as quoted in this question. The 10 commandments say not to kill, etc. No, I don’t disagree with Jesus and Paul, as they were not referring to these passages. To imply that Jesus was referring to such things is to take the gist of Matthew 5 out of context.

Two bits of clarification:

(1) Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche was not an atheist. When she and her husband tried to establish a colony in the Americas to promote their Nazi ideals, one of its foundations was Lutheranism. While Elisabeth certainly did her best to connect her brother’s work to Nazism, it was through a campaign of selective editing and forgeries that she did so. Indeed, the historians assigned to Nazi propaganda campaigns considered Nietzsche to be highly troublesome to their cause.

(2) The Nazis were almost completely uninfluenced by Nietzsche. Hitler’s favorite philosopher was Schopenhauer, and he had only minimal exposure to Nietzsche in his life. The Nazis, however, were quite interested in appropriating every bit of German culture they could for their cause; and by the time of WWII, Nietzsche’s reputation had grown significantly. Thus their blatant attempts to forge a connection between Hitler and Nietzsche (e.g., the photo of Hitler contemplating a bust of Nietzsche when visiting the Nietzsche-Archiv—a visit made against his will, for what it’s worth).

@Harold, you think Jesus is only referring to the ten commandments in this passage?

Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

Give me a break. You’re grasping at straws so you don’t have to admit that Jesus is just as much in favor of pro-slavery and genocide laws as his father/alter-ego.

@Qingu – I don’t THINK He was referring to the 10 Commandments, I KNOW He was. The passage you have quoted says so.

Thank you for assessing my motives and reading my mind. I suggest, however, that you would do a more accurate job of looking at your own motives…................

@Harold, the passage says no such thing.

@Harold On what grounds do you think you know that the passage refers to the Ten Commandments? There are at least two obvious indications against this. The first is that Jesus is speaking of “the law [and] the prophets.” Whenever he does this in the Bible, he’s speaking of the entire Jewish tradition and not just parts of it.

Furthermore, the Greek text does not support you. The word translated as “commandments” in @Qingu‘s translation is εντολη. This is not the word used to describe the Ten Commandments in Exodus. That word is προσταγματα—though it was originally not a Greek word at all, of course, but rather the Hebrew word מצוה. Neither the Greek nor the Hebrew, however, use a technical term reserved for special laws. Both are quite general and apply very broadly.

Now, it is only fair to mention that there is a reading of the Bible on which the Jewish identity laws do not apply to anyone who is not ethnically Jewish even if they are Christians. This does not mean that Jesus eliminated any laws, though, as those laws never applied to non-Jews in the first place and are still in force on this reading. Moreover, this loophole does not seem to affect those laws with which @Qingu is concerned.

@Qingu – You forgot to finish the sentence. The passage says no such thing as referring to the whole of the Old Testament.

@SavoirFaire – I disagree with your interpretation, but you’re entitled to your opinion. Contextually it is obviously the 10 commandments. The old covenant was dispensed with at the cross, otherwise we would still be required to sacrifice lambs, etc. The text that the original question in this thread refers to is part of the old covenant. That this law is distinct from the 10 commandments is obvious when you look at their place in the ark of the covenant. The 10 commandments were the only law placed inside the ark, and covered with the mercy seat. The rest of the old covenant laws were written on a scroll and placed in the side of the ark. There is plenty more evidence that it is the 10 commandments which would never change, not the Mosaic old covenant.

@Harold, I think you’re being completely dishonest, and you ought to ask yourself whether you’re bearing false witness.

When Jesus says “the law and the prophets,” there is simply no indication in the text that he is only referring to a subset of those laws. It’s like you’re arguing that police officers only have to enforce laws against murder, because “law enforcement” doesn’t specifically mention that they’re supposed to enforce “all the laws.”

Moreover, Jesus makes it abundantly clear he’s not just talking about the ten big laws. He specifically says you should follow even the least of the laws.

The fact that the ark contains the ten commandments doesn’t somehow magically make the other 603 or so commandments in the Bible non-laws. Moreover, God himself explicitly says that the rest of the laws are super-important, that they can never change, and that other societies would be amazed at their wisdom (aren’t you?). See Deuteronomy 4:

“You must neither add anything to what I command you nor take away anything from it, but keep the commandments of the Lord your God with which I am charging you. ... You must observe them diligently, for this will show your wisdom and discernment to the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and discerning people!’ For what other great nation has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is whenever we call to him? And what other great nation has statutes and ordinances as just as this entire law that I am setting before you today?”

(What other great nation indeed.)

@Qingu – No, entirely honest. I could spend a lot of time further proving my point, but it appears you have made up your mind, so I won’t waste my time.

@Harold Even if we ignore the fact that the language of the passages in question undermines your position, the context does not really help matters. First, let us look at the whole of Matthew 5. Here we read the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. We get the Beatitudes, the analogy of salt and light, and then the passage which we have been discussing regarding the law and the prophets. Following this, we get an expansion or reinterpretation of various laws. We start, indeed, with three of the Ten Commandments: murder, adultery, and the use of God’s name in oaths. As the Ten Commandments are rather important, this is to be expected. Because you brought it up, let us note that Jesus does actually mention the making of offerings in this passage as a quotidian task expected to continue.

The chapter then moves on from the Ten Commandments and discusses other laws from Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. We know these passages are still connected to the previous ones, however, thanks to the structure of the text. In the Greek, the construction here is of a list—an extremely popular convention in the language for making connections explicit—and this part of the Bible is a paragon of the genre. From the end of Matthew 5 and on through Matthew 6, Jesus expounds on lex talionis, loving one’s enemies, charity, how to pray, how to fast, spiritual vs. worldly goods, and faith vs. fear.

Surely, this provides enough context for us to see that the passage in question does not, in fact, refer only to the Ten Commandments. Nor does adding more context help your case, as Matthew 7 continues in the direction of Matthew 6. Jesus is clarifying or amplifying laws without changing them, and he is quite explicitly upholding the whole of “the law and the prophets.” If there truly is evidence that the Old Covenant with Moses changes, then, it seems all you have found is evidence of a contradiction in the Bible. This is why many prefer the reading I mentioned above, in which the New Covenant adds to—but does not subtract from—the Old Covenant.

turned out the meds were causing a dangerous chemical imbalance so they had to “flush them out” and EST to “CONTROL-ALT-DELETE” my brain. I don’t remember the last four months roughly (according to the doc “roughly”) and I am sorry to say that since I no longer remember any of this discussion and am officially withdrawing my argument for now.

@Winters Whoa. Sorry to hear that about your meds!

I’m certain that everyone would raise their hands if I were to ask.. How many here know it’s wrong to murder? To steal from your neighbor? To take that which isn’t yours? To falsely accuse? This is what you go by, your morality.. When a man tells you that you must also do things that make no sense, are incapable of achieving and are basically repeats of those rules then you must realize that their expecting you to be perfect.. This is what the rulers of religion is telling you that you must be perfect in order to be saved yet in that same tone tells us we’re all imperfect sinners.. So, yes.. It’s man’s interpretation of words that other men said they heard from a supernatural force.. This ‘force’ was in my opinion their own imagination, possibly coupled with hallucinogenics that I might add were legal and free in those days.. Then with an abusive behavior, the church leaders benefited from this through spreading fear and it still applies in some parts of the world when a mere human tells another human to blow up even more humans and as a reward the human bomb will be rewarded in heaven forever.. At the very least, this human can not guarantee such blessings yet the bomb still goes off.

In otherwords, @chewhorse:

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
—Voltaire