Religion and Change

Should we change simply to suit other people? I would say no, at least generally. 

Don't misunderstand me. I'm not against legitimate and necessary change. Indeed, we cannot become better people if we aren't open to becoming different, even to altering ideas which we may have thought were at the very fiber of our being. But the operative term here is the word simply, in the sense of changing only to satisfy someone else. 

It's fair play to ask: maybe they're the ones who need to change. Maybe you aren't the one who should become different in a given area, but they. That's an important point.

That's the reason I'm skeptical of those who argue that religion should change to fit their worldview. Have they considered, honestly, openly, and fully considered, that maybe they're wrong and religion is right? Because if so, the need to change is on them.

The demand for change simply to suit you may be nothing more than indulgent and selfish. And we should not want to be that.

Atheism More Deadly than Religion

The Independent, a British journal and website, has posted an article about research by one Frank Dikötter which has concluded that the genocide of Chinese peasants during Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward of 1958-1962 was the worst atrocity of the last century. 45 million people were systematically killed in an attempt to bring the Chinese economy into the then 20th Century. Mr. Dikötter compared the mass murders to the gulag of Stalin and the Russian communists (as well as their other various purges and genocides) and the Holocaust driven by the Nazis. He even alludes to the Leap as on a scale of World War II, where around 55 million were killed.

Toss in things such as the Cambodian genocide of more recent times and even the 37 million killed during World War I and what have we? An awful lot of deaths at the hands of bloody revolutionaries, power mad tyrants, and even some through downright human stupidity. Yet other than the terrible human cost inflicted by the perpetrators of these heinous actions, what do each and every one of horrible events have in common?

The answer is as easy as it is obvious. Not one was committed by the hand or at the order of a religious sect, movement, or leader. They were all set in motion by wholly secular, atheistic forces. And we have not even delved into the many other yet lesser noted horrific initiatives which occurred during the same era.

Whenever someone tells you how bad religion is for the people, just remind them of the 1900's. Those years alone well display the fallacy of believing in a purely secular and atheistic worldview. God saves. Secularism kills; godless atheism kills as much as the atheist claims that religion does. It's really as simple as that.