Reply #5: "The religious do not have monopoly on virtue..."

[DeSwiss]

The Abrahamic religions in-general and the Christian and Islamic religions in particular have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with virtue. They may have been considered virtuous back in the Neolithic/Bronze Age when barbarity was more regularly practiced. And even though many of these religious sects may take part in various charitable activities which are generally beneficial to society, what they do is hardly exclusive or virtuous simply because they're being carried out by some religious sect. This is particularly so since what they do is also done by secular and humanist organizations without any pretense about being ordained by some god with showy displays of its magnanimity.

And yet religious beliefs (for those who have actually taken the time to read and learn about them) are themselves barbaric by today's standards. Because a deity who can only engender "fealty, love and devotion" through coercive threats of eternal hellfire and damnation is not virtuous in the slightest and anyone who thinks this is so, hasn't a clue what the word virtue means.

The Abrahamic religions are and have always been about promoting ignorance, division and hatred against "The Other" and it is these repulsive and ugly character traits of these institutions, that have been advanced throughout history under the guise of some higher knowledge and/or virtue.

However, these religions aren't about virtue. They're all about MANIPULATING and CONTROLLING people. And getting people to ignore their own intellect and reason in favor of hoo-doo, ritual and emotional blackmail and by evoking FEAR OF THE UNKNOWN & DEATH.

"Integrity and honesty, not objectivity and certainty, are the highest virtues to which the theological enterprise can aspire. From this perspective, all human claims to possess objectivity, certainty, or infallibility are revealed as nothing but the weak and pitiable pleas of frantically insecure people who seek to live in a illusion because reality has proved to be too difficult. Papal infallibility and biblical inerrancy are the two ecclesiastical versions of this human idolatry. Both papal infallibility and biblical inerrancy require widespread and unchallenged ignorance to sustain their claims to power. Both are doomed as viable alternatives for the long-range future of anyone." ~Bishop John Shelby Spong, Resurrection: Myth or Reality?

{That's Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain, not Ted Haggard! LOL!!!} ;)

K&R