In which I display my complete ignorance about religion
September 5, 2010emily No Comments »I wasn’t raised in a religious household. I’m not a religious person. I haven’t read the Bible. So my credentials here are shaky, at best, is what I’m saying. But here goes. Certainly you’ve heard about a church here in Gainesville that plans to burn the Quran on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. It’s made national and international news, after all. [Insert rant about how researchers at UF who are doing groundbreaking work in their various fields can't even make local news, while a church that spews hatred and vitriol manages to get the world's attention.] Of the many things I don’t understand about this particular church (the same ones who printed “Islam is of the Devil” t-shirts and sent their children to school in them), certainly one of them is this: isn’t at least part of organized religion a message of love and kindness? From the little I know about the Bible, I understand that it has been used to justify a great number of things (among them, in this country, slavery). But aren’t there also injunctions to love thy neighbor? And edicts to ‘do unto others as you would have others do unto you’? How is spreading this kind of contempt productive in any way? Or do they just want attention?
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