I find it odd that the religions that claim to be “religions of peace” often tend to have the most violent believers. Sure we can point our fingers at Islam and all the beheadings that Muslim extremists are so quick to execute, but Christians aren’t much different. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that all Christians are violent gun nuts, but I am saying that if you know a violent gun nut, he or she is probably a Christians.
Could there be a worse mix of obsessions? Religion gives people a sense of singular purpose, dogmatic certainty, and alleviates their fear of death. Believing that God has your back and multiple weapons of mass murder have your front is a recipe for a whole lot of dead people. It is pretty difficult to talk someone out of committing violence when he or she believes they are on a mission from God.
Now sure, there are religious believers who abhor violence and they will point to a small spattering of Bible verses in which Jesus talked peace. Those verses are out there and they are very good verses but they are nothing compared to the entirety of the Bible which is probably one of the most violent books ever written.
When God has a problem with people, he smites them or orders other people to smite them for him. When God has a problem with a lot of people, he just drowns the entire world killing everyone except this one dude’s family. God kills Job’s kids just to prove a point to Satan. At the end, God doesn’t even bring those kids back to life, he just allows Job to have more kids as if that fixes everything.
There is a story in the Bible of kids who make fun of a bald guy. God decides that the best punishment for those kids was to have two bears maul them to death. There is a reason why fundamentalist religious believers are the ones who support corporal punishment of children and capital punishment for adults. That reason is that those things are advocated for in the Bible.
Jesus didn’t come along to stick it to the old man (in the sky). No, Jesus said that he agreed with everyone his sky daddy was doing. In fact, Jesus’s idea of love is to demand worship at the threat of eternal torture. So is it really all that surprising that gun enthusiasts tend to be fundamentalist Christians?
As an atheist, I’m skeptical to say the least when it comes to claims of an afterlife. It seems pretty obvious to me that when people die, they are dead. There is no evidence to the contrary.
I love life. I don’t want to die. Passing out guns to everyone seems like a bad idea to me. There are just too many religious nuts out there who have a sense of singular purpose, dogmatic certainty, and who aren’t afraid to die. When people don’t care about evidence or facts, how do they settle disagreements? How can a Christian and a Muslim settle who is correct? Either they have to just agree to disagree or it comes down to violence. If it comes down to violence, then he who has the most and more powerful guns wins. The only peace comes when one side has annihilated or converted all others.
