When Religion Become Lethal Book Review

David Barton’s Original Intent: The Courts, The Constitution, and Religion, breaks down the significance of how religion was intended in the First Amendment and its effect on the phrase, “Separation of Church and State.” Barton well illustrates how the founding fathers incorporated the position of religion into the First Amendment. Barton explains how the House Judiciary Committee believes, “The founders did respect other religions; however, they neither promoted pluralism nor intended that the First Amendment do so” (175). They continue to discuss how the founding fathers were all Christians and they expect it to remain that way in the lives of the citizens. In Barton’s views of the First Amendment, he believes it has changed dramastically

Huston Smith in the final chapter of his book, The World’s Religions – A Final Examination challenges his readers to look back and see how this book has related religions to each other or how they been proven to be different. Smith introduces three main topics to show the relation between the religions that were discussed in the previous chapters. Even though he points out certain aspects of these religions his readers can sense that he leans toward one relation more than the other. There are many things that I was raised to do but I was never raised by having to believe in a certain religion. This book allowed myself to learn about new religions and explore my options about what religion I want to practice. Smith

From the start of civilization, religion has played a crucial role in the development of most societies. The proof of its influence is evident in the way daily life was carried out. Religion had the power to affect everything from social status to common law, thus dominating a large portion of the culture. In ancient Egyptian, Islamic, and Indian society, religion had the capacity to establish how the average person would conduct their daily life.

“A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.” - Albert Einstein. While Albert Einstein is most certainly correct about the idea of religion not being a necessity for an individual or a society as a whole, religion still has a large influence over society whether it is necessary or not. And with the large influence of religion comes the large importance of religion.

In this paper I will be discussing what I learned about Christianity and Islamic faiths. How that even though these two religions have differences that they have core similarities and history that show that they have more in common than they do not have in common. I will discuss my interview at a Christian church and what I learned from it. Then I will discuss how much all the religions I have studied in this class have in common. Touching on their philosophies, beliefs, virtues and traditions and any areas that show areas they have in common.

America is constantly evolving and redefining itself. Those who oppose a separation between church and state claim that because this country was founded on religious principles, our government should continue to base its laws on a Judeo-Christian God. An article entitled, “Standing up for Church-State Separation in Difficult Times,” states that, “Religious Right groups are crowing and insisting that they have some sort of mandated authority to make their repressive agenda the law of the land,” however, we no longer live in the 1700’s (13). Times are changing and America is no longer predominantly white, Christians. Furthermore, some believe that public

The first section of the article is about church and state in the United States. While religion has been a catalyst for social change as it has been with racial justice, religion has also impeded the progress of the American democracy in that politicians remain heavily influenced by their religious backgrounds (Wienclaw, 2009). Therefore, the author describes a conflicted and ambiguous relationship between religion and politics in the United States. The United States professes to have a secular culture that sidelines religion, but in fact, it has been impossible to practically remove religion from politics. The author points out that religion and politics have been entwined in the United States throughout the history of the union.

This semester we have learned about the intermingling of politics and religion and how that powerful mixture can leave a strong impact on American civic society. In the past, few months I have visited four churches, all in my hometown of Watertown, Minnesota. Watertown is a city of about 4,000 people and about a fifty-minute drive west from the campus of the University of Minnesota. The town has four main churches; Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, Trinity Lutheran Church, Peace Lutheran Church, and the Evangelical Church of Watertown. I decided to visit the first three and see how their teachings impact the politics of my hometown, state, and country.

“But government of law, not people, promises much more: to remove the human element from that enormous array of decisions and issues we turn over to judges-encompassing the common law, interpretation of statutes and the broad reach of the federal and state constitutions-by deferring to a higher source, so that we may be, in this large domain, free of ourselves.” (Kairys 1998) (2) The belief of God and of higher being has an important role in the creation and the interpretation of the laws that are in effect today. The judges being the interpreter of law are human beings who also practices religion. They render decisions that are free from bias and influence from their beliefs, religion and even the political climate of the moment but, more often than not, their decisions are primarily based on their own interpretation of the law, their beliefs and the religion that they are practicing. The morality of man comes into play. It become common for judges to have a different interpretation even if they are resolving a similar case with the same nature that had been resolved earlier.

Politics and religion in the world of today aren’t subjects that generally go hand in hand in our own society. This was not always the case however; in Europe the two were synonymous up until relatively recently, (recently meant in the loosest sense of the word,) and are still closely tied in foreign parts of the world, the most obvious example being the Middle East. The duos intimate relationship was exemplified during the late sixteenth century, extending into the seventeenth century, during a series of wars which would later on come to be called “the wars of religion.” But is this title completely appropriate? For wars claiming to be centered on religion, they seem to carry an awfully heavy load of political baggage. In fact, one

Christopher Hitchens the author of God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything uses his own personal experiences with religions and gives us an insight as to why he feels that religion is flawed. Throughout his book he uses arguments that is justified by modern science and social issues that uses religion as an excuse to execute unreasonable actions. His arguments are from the consumption of certain meats to the war against nations just for defending the righteousness of each religion. Hitchens thoughts of human religion is back up by evidence collected by modern science and studies that religion is arbitrary in their beliefs and it teaches people to be self centered and conceited. Hitchens explains how all religion has no true evidence of its actual existence but rather their followers must follow blindly through “faith”, which is induced from stories written by other humans. With science and reason in the modern age, Hitchens feels that the need for a strong belief in religion is no longer needed for individuals to live a quality and moral life.

Philip Jenkins was born in 1952 and is currently the Distinguished Professor of History at Baylor University and Co-Director for Baylor’s Program on Historical Studies of Religion in the Institute for Studies of Religion. He is also the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Humanities Emeritus at Pennsylvania State University. He received Ph.D. from Cambridge University in 1978. Jenkins is a contributing supervisor for The American Conservative and composes a month to month section for The Christian Century. He has also composed articles for Christianity Today, First Things, and The Atlantic.

In The World’s Religions Book, William A. Young describes two poignant ecological approaches. These two similar approaches are the Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism approach. Theravada Buddhism relies on “The Middle Way” for guidance for how individuals should assist in Earth’s ecological issues. “The Middle Way” proclaims the importance of the individual’s responsibility to “balance consumption” and “reproduction”. In a world where individuals abide by these guidelines will ultimately result in a world where “all can be adequately cared for materially, emotionally, and spiritually” (313).

Religion has been a powerful force in human history. Mankind has longed and searched for the answers to its purpose, the reason for being and the possibility of life after physical death. They reasoned that an afterlife would be a place of accounting and reckoning for the life they lived on earth. Religious belief systems seemed to give the answers as to how to prepare for the afterlife. Religion became the means of giving answers to those basic yet deep-seated questions of both life and death. Religion provided a format of rules and laws for conduct and treatment toward others based on the desires and wishes of a god or gods that people envisioned, imagined or invented. Religious belief systems have been a powerful force for good and bad...good in the sense that it provided a measure of individual behavior and order in society for the wellbeing of the whole, but bad in the sense that men of ambition who craved power and control over others would often use religion as a tool of manipulation and fear. A casual glance of history tells us that complete civilizations have been built, grown and maintained around elaborate religious systems, ancient Egypt being a prime example.

Is religion dangerous is a very hard question. Some are some aren’t but there is a scale on how dangerous a religion is. There are lots of different types of dangerous and Why are they dangerous. I am going to answer all of these questions. In my opinion I think that some religions are dangerous but some are not. I am an Atheist and I personally am very sceptical of some religions and one religion in particular.