fundamentalists

From the vantage of a mid-1970's consensus that regarded the United States as having entered a post-Protestant era, the rise of a Religious Right dominated not only by Protestants but by fundamentalists was not the way the story was supposed to go. People like Jerry Falwell looked like party crashers who, rather than slikinking from bar to buffet in hopes of going unnoticed, demanded that the vegetarian, alcohol-imbibing hosts serve meat and tell the bartender to go home.

But if subjective pietism is not the real crux of this all-important Gospel, if it is instead belief in the plan of salvation, how are we not dealing with "salvation by (cognitive) works" and Gnosticism (salvation by special knowledge)? Fundamentalists hotly deny it, but isn't it finally a matter of believers in the right religion being saved and everyone else being disqualified?

If one does not have the basic conscientious capacity to refute the primitive textual verses of the scriptures that demand one to kill or torture another being for holding a different belief system than one's own, then that entity is no being of the civilized human society, it is merely a pest from the stone-age.

If to a person religion means reading books and obeying every single word from it without the slightest bit of reasoning, then such perception would only bring destruction upon the person and the world. Also there are people who use the words from those books to justify their own filthy actions. Let__ take a conservative Muslim, for example. Say, the conservative Muslim male Homo sapiens (I won__ call such creature a human, regardless of the religion, since his action here shows no sign of humanity) is found to be beating his wife. Now, if someone says to him __his is wrong_, he would naturally reply, __his is a divine thing to do, my book says so_. Now, if a Christian says __y book is older, so you should stop obeying your book and start obeying mine_, there will come the Buddhist, and say, __y book is much older still, obey mine_. Then will come the Jew, and say, __y book is even older, so just follow mine_. And in the end will come the Hindu and say __y books are the oldest of all, obey them_. Therefore referring to books will only make a mess of the human race and tear the species into pieces.

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.