What are the ROOT CAUSES of religious hate, intolerance and then violence?
Religions are just ideas about how the universe operates. They are bad ideas. Bad ideas do not deserve respect. Bad ideas should be ridiculed at every opportunity. People should be respected. The issue with religious intolerance is that although most religions agree you should treat all people equally they disagree on who are people. Christians(now) define people as those that follow a God Although in the past only those that followed the Christian God were considered people, Man, woman or child. Jewish tradition defined people as Jews man or woman, although women a little less people and children as well…not quite people. Islam only male Muslims are considered people. The rules in the “holy books” regarding how to treat people are very clear, just as the definitions of who they consider people is very clear.
The most violent religions are from text from hundreds if not thousands of years.Some believe this doctrine regardless of consequences.Promoting violence is a crime.Some teach hate to promote what beliefs they have .This gives them more reinforcement by brain washing them.Most of these religions are not violent.They aren’t the most numerous.The hard thing to fix is the hate that they are taught.
The root is ignorance, usually willfull ignorance. Refusing to even look at anothers religion. If a religion is insulting to others, it deserves to be insulted. I can’t sit by and watch people use their religion to justify hatred of others just because they don’t believe. The abuse I have seen done by some of these people is not something to respect. In fact, it is something that needs to be fought against, to show that they can not hide behind their gods while mistreating others. Respect is not given, it’s earned. And only people can earn it. Only an individual can earn respect from another individual. And I don’t hand that out freely.
