Why do religious beliefs make people close minded and full of hate? Mainly the Christian wackos.?

Question

Why? Christians have made me an Atheist.

Answer 1

What came first? The chicken or the egg?

Pol Pot was a Buddhist monk before he was a mass murderer.

Stalin actually had the church on his side in the beginning also and he raised a Catholic...He turned on them when it became a political liability... Learn your history.

Answer 2

I doubt Christians made you an atheist, you chose that path, don't put the blame on someone else. I love how people call us "closed minded" simply because we don't accept every doctrine and belief system as valid. We have a filter system called Scripture. I know and have know more believers than you will know in your lifetime, hate is not part of their makeup. Hate is not a part of Christianity. I know it is a way to stifle discussion by calling someone who disagrees with you as a "hater". It is such an immature and knee jerk response.

Answer 3

Look in the other corner of the world not just in your neighborhood. And do not act as if you are the only sane and intelligent person around them. Maybe a certain respect from both sides could be agreed between you and the Christians you keep calling WACKOS.... INSULTS BEGETS HATE SO THINK ABOUT IT.....

Answer 4

By your statement it sounds like you are close minder and full of hate. You call Christian Wackos. Are you not doing that same thing you claim Christian are doing? I am a christian and I believe everyone has a right to their point of view.

Answer 5

That seriously just breaks my heart, I absolutely can not stand all the stereo types against Christians, yes majority of them are nuts. Hypocritacal, snotty and hateful. But not all. I do not believe in organized religion but I do believe in God and his teachings. And it hurts my soul to hear of some one being treated so poorly that it makes them loose faith. I was where you are. I hated all the things I saw going on in the church I was raised in. When I was about 16 I started on my own journey to find God for myself. I began to study religions, all of them. Any of them to include Wicca and Satanism. Just so I could have an understanding, how could I understand my religion if I didn't understand others. 14 years later I have a very strong faith and I still study religions. I do not say any religion is wrong or right, we all have the right to believe what we feel is right for us. I hope that some day you will find what is right for you and I am sorry that people treated you so badly.

Answer 6

How can Christians be closed minded when we believe in something that can't be seen. You have to have an open mind to believe in God. How are we full of hate. Christians try to convince other's to conform out of love. We don't want to see you go the wrong way. We want you to spend eternity with the Father. Anything hateful is not of Christ.

Answer 7

Where are you experiencing Christian hate? Do not confuse hatred with discernment. We are taught to HATE the sin, not the sinner.
I do not hide from the fact that christians can and do take a principled stand on issues. Just because we live in an era of relativism doesn't mean that everything really is relative!

Answer 8

You've got the correlation wrong. Being closed minded often leads to following a bs fairytale religion. The only ones who aren't are the ones who were raised that way and had no choice.

For those bringing up dictators - the only reason they have denounced religion is because it competes with their own power over the people.

Answer 9

I think you should have your own belief - there is no one religion for every person! Different persons have different levels of life experiences and your view differs from everybody else. Believe in something, be a good person, promote kindness & philantropy, and create a sacred geometry of love! I TOTALLY agree with you! The more they are close minded, the more intolerant they become and they segregate themselves & close the doors for everyone else!!! (they are only kind amongst themselves - and that's a shame - they don't practice what they preach).

Answer 10

Basically, their brains work differently than the brains of rational people. There are some subtleties involved, having to do with the nature of 'belief'.

A rational person might say "I believe in the Big Bang." A religious person might say "I believe in creation, as described in Genesis." But these statements are not even remotely similar, with respect to what is meant by the word 'believe'.

For the rational person, the statement of 'belief' in the Big Bang means that they understand that the concept provides a scientifically and mathematically consistent explanation, congruent with the evidence, which accounts for the evolution of the universe from a fraction of a second after the initiating event, up until the present. When the 'inflationary model' came to the fore, rational people said "Well, good... that clears up a few questions and makes things even more coherent." NOBODY threw up their arms and wailed "Oh, no... oh, no... ain't so... ain't so... the Big Bang is the inerrant truth... not this ridiculous, atheistic 'inflationary' model."

See... when we say "I believe in the Big Bang", we don't really mean the same thing as the religious person means when he says "I believe in creation, as described in Genesis," or "I believe in God." Our 'belief' in the Big Bang (or anything else) isn't really a 'belief'... it is more properly a 'paradigm'... a useful way of looking at something, or thinking about something. If additional information is uncovered that adds to the conceptual model, that is a good thing... not a disaster. If part of the conceptual model is discovered to be incorrect, and must be tossed in the trash and replaced with something completely different... that is also a good thing... not the end of the world as we know it. And often, no matter how highly confident we may be of the accuracy or completeness of a particular paradigm, we may have reason to apply a DIFFERENT paradigm to the same thing, in an effort to tease out new insights; for example, we might want to contemplate the potential implications of a change to a theory from the perspective of the Tao Te Ching, the Gaia hypothesis, or ecological homeostasis. We KNOW that all theories are approximations... and that is OK. We KNOW that we don't have all the answers... and that is OK, too. There is nothing wrong with saying "We don't know... yet; but we're working on it."

But these modes of thinking, perceiving, contemplating and understanding are utterly alien to the 'religious' mind. For the religious mind, a 'belief' is not a paradigm... not a useful way of thinking about something... it is an internalized conviction that one knows the absolute 'truth' pertaining to some aspect of existence and/or fundamental reality. 'Beliefs' are one of the key interpretive component filters of the religious person's 'self-description'... a part of what DEFINES them as a person... the very thing that creates their world-view... an underpinning of their 'subjective reality'. Any challenge to one of these internalized 'beliefs' is perceived and interpreted as a vital threat... an attack upon the 'self-description'... and an assault upon their subjective reality.

And here is the key difference: When there is a change in one of the paradigms dealing with a scientific concept, or a new insight into the workings of the universe, to the 'rational' person it merely constitutes an interesting new piece of knowledge and understanding... a new insight. However, if that same new insight, or piece of information (a feature of the universe, for example) seems to threaten a tenet of Christianity, everybody goes to battle stations, goes into 'damage control' mode... for fear that the whole edifice will come crashing down. And, ultimately, it will.

So, when a fundie disparages evolution, for example, it really has nothing to do with a genuine, intellectual dispute regarding scientific details... they are generally scientifically illiterate, anyway. Any 'scientific' arguments that they present are inevitably not even understood... they are just lifted from the pre-packaged lies and misrepresentations that are found on dozens of 'Liars for Jesus' (LFJ) web sites, and parroted. They are in a battle. They are trying to sink science before science sinks them. They are desperate... and science is (mostly, and unfortunately) oblivious to the fact that they are even in a fight, and that somebody is trying to sink them. They are just blithely bopping along, doing what science does... figuring out how nature works.

No... none of this has anything to do with a mere disagreement pertaining to evidence and understanding. It has to do with minds that deal with fundamental issues in an entirely different way. It has to do with a flexible, open-minded, intellectually honest (willing to question and doubt one's own presumptions) curiosity about the universe, contending with a rigid, unyielding world-view that depends from a certainty that certain delusional faith-based (willful ignorance and magical, wishful thinking) 'beliefs' represent the absolute 'truth' of reality.

We might as well be talking to an alien species, from a distant planet.

When the religious enter a venue like this one, they are (generally) NOT seeking answers, or new information... these might cause them to QUESTION their beliefs, or might put their beliefs at risk. No... they are seeking VALIDATION... of their beliefs, and hence, of their self-description.

Answer 11

in basic terms because of the fact some people have searched an entire life for solutions, stumbled on the solutions for which they have been finding, and now stand at the back of them, would not unavoidably mean they're close-minded. I frequently discover that folk who call people close-minded are often close-minded themselves. With love in Christ.