They exist somewhere between the Preoperational Stage and the Concrete Operational Stage.

The part that gets me is that they've taken a religion ostensibly all about compassion, and built a shambling compassionless Frankenstein version of same without even being aware of creating an unholy abomination. Not that they're fooling everyone -- young people in particular are painfully aware of the incompatibilities between the Sermon on the Mount and the Religious Right -- but they've certainly buffaloed a generation or two.

I am by no means pretending there was ever a Golden Age Of True Christian Compassion, but in the past, it was at least commonly understood that the poor are to be pitied, or something, rather than demonized. These days you've got your Paul Ryans who have a thing for both the Bible and Ayn Rand; even Ayn Rand saw her teachings as incompatible with the Bible.

I tend to think that religion is never the real reason for crazy behavior, merely the excuse they use. I could be wrong, though.

"it was at least commonly understood that the poor are to be pitied.."

Made especially clear by the church's recent attempts to leash up the nuns. The NUNS--the only part of the church left that actually gives a fuck about the poor and sick.

Of course religion makes people do terrible things.

If your child was sick, would you take them to the doctor? If the doctor told you your child needed chemotherapy, would you give it to them?

The difference between that and paying a guy your last dime to hammer nails into your child's head has nothing to do with your morality as a parent. It has everything to do with whether or not the soul is a real thing, and whether or not hammering nails into your child's skull is the only way to save it and by extension, your child. Those beliefs are religion. Religion turns good people into monsters.

It's an easy mistake to make in America, because despite all the people talking about how Christian they are nobody believes a fucking word of it. A pretty good way to measure how many actual believers there are is to look at how many people are traveling to states like Texas to murder baptized infants so they can get the death penalty. I haven't even heard people speak positively about Andrea Yates. She risked hell to save her children. While what she did was technically wrong, it's wrong in the same way that it was wrong when that kid in Schindler's list blamed the guy the guards just shot for a theft.

Any real Christian would consider her a hero, unless they didn't really believe that she sent those kids to a magical paradise at great risk to herself.

Any ideology used to indoctrinate the impressionable is going to end up dangerous. I am loathe to single out religion, nor do I believe that indoctrination is inevitable, though I certainly won't deny it is often used that way.

The Andrea Yates thing is a little off because it assumes we know the criteria by which people are chosen for heaven or hell, and that killing children assures them a place in heaven. A clearer example would be the response to abortion: if abortion really is a modern day Holocaust, then that demands meaningful action. If you're into the Book of Matthew you'll support sex ed classes and hand out condoms to people. If you're into Revelation you'll buy a white horse and go around shooting abortion doctors. If you do neither, you're a god damned liar. (And if you believe that children automatically go to heaven, then you'll be in favor of mandatory abortions, at least before the 54th trimester.)

Correction - it's not a matter of a complete lack of empathy - that would at least be somewhat respectable.

It's that despite their empathy, they're still rigidly attached to the concepts of social hierarchies, and their allowance of those hierarchies to supersede all other concerns, including their ability to empathize.

Okay, I'm done typing for the night. That was nearly illegible.

haha wow you're dumb

lets review:

1 (one) gmork, otherwise totally liberal in all views, shows opposition to gun control laws (that aren't relevant to the guns that caused this knee-jerk reaction to begin with) and suddenly now i'm BARACK OBAMA HUSSEIN LIMBAUGH HITLER THE THIRD

wonderful

ask me my opinion on abortions, gay marriage, alternative fuel sources, etc

or just go into any random gun-related video and say "gmork blah blah blah". that's got to be the laziest and least consistent character assasination plot i've been involved with, and boy have I been involved with a few! whoops maybe I shouldnt have said that!

you are such an idiot

trolled HARD

On the one hand it was about the laziest comment you could possibly make. On the other hand it got Gmork babbling about character assassination of fucking poeTV.

If we can't reduce each other to lazy caricatures for a couple of cheap laughs, then you may as well just shoot me right now with one of your thirty-nine guns.

but I don't own a firearm

also it's not a successful troll if I respond flippantly and unflapped!

oh, gross, is that what horrible internet people actually think?

WHOOPS

If only the Reply link had a gun...

dont forget the LAZY part!

You'll see your kids again in heaven, you only have one life to enjoy your guns.

Are you insinuating there won't be guns in heaven?

In heaven, your hands are guns.

^^^^^

Which version of Gmork is the angry one? The one that uses capitalization or the one that doesn't?

Shouldn't you be out there somewhere banning Gay Marriage?