Tag Archives: blind faith

No Mercy

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I do not struggle with the idea of people having faith in an almighty being. In fact, I will defend anyone’s right to believe in the God of their choosing. We deserve religious freedoms and a choice to worship any deity we choose… or don’t choose as the case may be. Religion can be a powerful force of good in the world. I know a few very religious people, and they use their faith as a cornerstone for their integrity. They are honourable, respectable, good natured friends, neighbours, and citizens to their core.

I also see religious fanaticism as a significant problem in our world. A problem which fosters hate, and forces people into indoctrinated, evil beliefs. Beliefs which permits them to do unspeakable acts that are not only extremely harmful, but also an embarrassment to humanity.

Both of these can coexist simultaneously, across multiple religious beliefs. It’s not necessarily the religions themselves but misguided humans choosing to blindly follow interpretations of doctrine that bring out the worst in faith and humanity. And so the paradox of intolerance comes into play… we need to have intolerance for bad faith actors, while insuring we are remaining tolerant of good people of all faiths, even if especially if they are different than ours.

And this leaves me with two things for which I find myself less and less tolerant:

1. Uninvited preaching

There have been a few very public examples recently of people preaching their gospel on airplanes. They take advantage of a captive audience and without invitation decide that they will evangelize. I have the utmost tolerance and even acceptance of them believing what they want to believe, and I think they have every right to evangelize inside the confines of their church. But I’m intolerant of this idea of evangelizing to a captive audience who did not choose to listen but are stuck doing so.

Solution: Sing a song like ‘Row-Row-Row Your Boat’. Almost everyone knows the lyrics and people who don’t want to listen to preaching can easily join in and drown out the preacher (who is ultimately being rude). I understand that the singing wasn’t invited either, but I truly believe this is a lesser of two evils. The video examples demonstrate that even trying to complain permits these people to continue to evangelize, and then even claim religious persecution… making themselves out to be the victim rather than the social delinquents that they are. You can’t argue with fanatics, so just drown them out so no one can hear them.

2. Proclamations of God’s work

I’m not going to share the sources of the next examples, because like many of the commenters, (who are the reason these came across my feed), I have nothing kind to say about these posts. A reverend shared the image of a lone green house that withstood the horrific floods in Nepal, caused by the breaking up of a large glacier. His caption with the image said, “This house withstood all the flood challenge in Nepal. It’s all about the mercy of God and not necessarily the ingenuity of the Architectural work.”

What an ignorant and hateful thing to say.

Here is another example, this one came with a video showing the devastation all around the same green house, “I believe God decided to save them. It wasn’t because of the engineer who built the structure or because the structure was strong enough to protect them. I believe it was simply God’s intervention that kept them alive.”

So cruelly insensitive.

Thousands of people dead, many with no opportunity to escape the impending floodwaters. So many lives ended, so many more will continue to suffer in the coming months, and you brag about your god being merciful and saving one family, one house? It’s embarrassing that in a tragedy of this scale, this is where you see your god! The insensitivity is at a scale that can best be described as horrific. Imagine a Nepalese neighbour, who survived the flood, but lost family members, reading that post. I shudder to think of how hurtful it would be to see people praising their god for this.

Solution: I’ve already seen this in the comments. Ridicule anyone who praises the ‘God of the gaps’… call out the hypocrisy of thanking god for a shimmer of compassion in a river of devastation. If your all-powerful god is so selective in his mercy, he is vindictive, mean-spirited, and hateful. And if you are going to spew hurtful ignorance, you deserve the backlash that you get.

I struggle to not sound upset and angry when I share these ideas, but that’s the nature of the paradox of intolerance. We cannot extend tolerance to the intolerant, and religious zealots uninvitedly proselytizing or people seeing the hand of god amongst hurt and devastation is cruelty disguised as mercy. This is unacceptable, and we can’t sit by and let it happen. It’s not contributing to our society in any positive way… and it’s not what any kind, loving god would want.

Keeping the faith

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Religions around the world are losing followers. But people are seekers, they want to believe in something. And while there are downsides to religion, including fanaticism and blind following of misguided faith leaders, there is also a warmth of community, a comfort of shared values, and a wonderful sense of belonging.

Atheism and often the path it can lead to nihilism don’t fill the voids a loss of religion can leave behind. And I think that’s why we see blind faith emerging that doesn’t seem to make sense to many.

Why on earth would someone in 2026 join a community of flat earthers who have to literally ignore volumes of data in order to believe what they believe? Maybe because the community is so inviting to anyone who believes?

Why would someone defend unnecessary violence, or even terrorism in the name of God or country? Maybe because they feel othered, or fear being othered. Maybe they feel hurt and seek vengeance? Maybe they feel the government is too heavy-handed or not heavy handed enough?

Why would someone follow a leader who does things they would previously have been upset about? Maybe there is one pillar that leader stands on that supports their beliefs more than any other transgression that leader might be accused of? Maybe they feel community, shared values, and a sense of belonging are all missing in their lives because their waning beliefs in a broken religion can no longer fulfill these needs.

When people can’t seem to hold onto their religious faith, where else do they put their faith?

It seems today that it goes to all the wrong places.

We need a new kind of religion, one that is inherent in most faiths already, but often masked by evangelical fervour, threats of secularism, misinterpreted scripture, literal interpretations of metaphors, among other reasons justifiable by the keepers of the faith. That inherent idea common to all faiths, the somehow lost idea, is that we are all the children of God, and that we should be kind, caring, and even loving to all God’s children.

If that was the underlying premise of ‘our belief systems’ (intentionally plural) then the best thing we could do is to keep the faith. But when religions and more specifically religious people, focus on differences, and when charismatic leaders decide that hate, separation, and false prophecies are the goal, well then our belief systems rise only to crumble.

This is the path we are on, not an increase in atheism, because atheism is not a belief system to swap another religion for. A thing to ‘not believing in’ is not a replacement for a faith. And so what we are seeing is a rise in people looking in all the wrong place to feel safe and then blindly, misguidedly keeping the faith.