The danger of religious zealotry
Nowadays, unease with religion is a sentiment that is increasingly being voiced. That's for darned good reasons. For example take these comments from NYT opinionator Ezra Klein's opinion directly states the concern (not paywalled):
Religion is one of the most dangerous forces on earth.
If you’ve ever encountered true fundamentalists, you know why. When you combine eternal stakes with absolute certainty, it produces the kind of people who are happy to be cruel in the name of God.
In fact, they can view their cruelty as a form of kindness. If they treat you with decency, doesn’t that make you comfortable in your sin? It’s important for them to take opportunities to confront people when you can — in other words, to tell people that they’re wrong, often in the most strident of ways. How else will they understand the gravity of their own sin?
To the fundamentalist, disagreement is proof of apostasy. But it can be even worse than that — if you’re wrong, then you might lead other people into error, and that makes you dangerous.
That’s one reason fundamentalists of all stripes are often such zealous censors. A fundamentalist can see every person who’s wrong as a kind of Patient Zero in a potential pandemic of paganism.
Patient zero? Yup. Some of those are lurking around here somewhere. As the Daleks like to say, Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate!
A true believer dealing with patient zero
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