RELIGIOUS TERROR ATTACKS GET OXYGEN

FROM HYPOCRITES BEFORE THEY ARE CARRIED OUT

Boris Karloff in one of his thoughtful moments said that horror and terror are not the same thing.  Horror is a response to some bad material reality such as plague.  But terror speaks to an inner sense that you have that something malevolent and supernatural is taking place.  If so, then an atheist can be a religious terrorist and not realise it or fully understand it.  If so, a lot of those who combat terror are in fact part of the problem for not admitting its religious side.  Also, though religion says God is wholly love it also says that the wicked respond to his love as anybody else would to malevolence or say potent black magic.  It is terror to them as Karloff defined it.

If there is hypocrisy then in how people talk about terrorism, it is no surprise if they tell further lies.

People who say Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with real Islam have a lot of confidence in man-made religion. If man has violent tendencies they will be in at least some of the religions he invents.

And how many people claiming to be Muslims will bomb and maim before anybody admits that their being Muslim or their faith in Islam is the main problem or the problem? Faith in a religion is distinguished from the people who make up the religion even though you cannot really belong to the religion without it. Faith and the people in a religion cause problems in their own way. If they are not real Muslims that does not get the Muslim faith off the hook. The Bible of Jesus, the Torah, is full of God sanctioned violence and has very little love. Surprise surprise! And what does it say about him that he had to honour a book like that as sacred and his foundation. Those who say that religion is always good are talking a pile of shite. If one religion says Jesus is God and other says he is not one of them is not in tune with the truth and corruption always starts with failing to give priority to truth and to follow where it leads. And corruption leads to violence in one form or another.

A secular force causing war and terrorism is one thing. A religious one doing it is another. The two may do similar things but that does not make them the same. To say they are the same is dangerous. Accuracy in discernment is crucial. Those who deny they are the same are often motivated by a wish to pretend that religion never harms. That motivation is bad and religion is not a good thing if it inspires people to put their heads in the sand like that.

A religion does not always show its true face. What does? A religion that, in some subtle or indirect way, makes a few people turn terrorist is a bad religion regardless of how many good people seem to be in it.

If you take the word religion to refer to a community and a community only, then you cannot say, "Okay if they do harm in the name of the religion that does not mean the religion bad or untrue".

Some politicians extol religion because they think find it nonsensical but nevertheless useful for manipulating the people to keep public order. Even that approach leads to intolerance and persecution of dissenters eventually.

Read the works of the philosopher of religion Brian Davies. He believes in God but says that the notion that free will means we can go against God is wrong. We supposedly have this freedom BECAUSE of God and not in spite of him. So God is somehow responsible for everything you do. That Muslim couple certainly seem to think that what they are doing is not a sin or much of a sin for God is enabling them. For a God who is bigger than evil and against it he is not doing much about it.  Their personal faith in God was to blame even if their religious faith can be exonerated. Their faith in God was to blame even if their Muslim faith can be exonerated. And it can't. It still commands death to apostates from Islam and do not forget the religion says everybody is born Muslim until led astray. The innocent people who would have died at the hands of those terrorists were not innocent in the eyes of Islam.

The notion that God is at work even as we sin for he is bigger than our sin is not the same as saying he condones and agrees with what we do.  But it is too close.  Don't put the nuclear button among the concrete blocks you are carrying around your development.  Human nature is going to read it as being no big deal.