Quote:
Originally Posted by cardboard adolescent
I think it's a perfectly valid question, and I also think if people truly believed they wouldn't get upset over having their beliefs challenged. Challenge a Buddhist's beliefs, for instance, and there's nothing you could do to get them heated. Call the Buddha a donkey's ass... they'll only think you're making an ass of yourself. I think the real reason people must be so sensitive is because they don't actually believe, or to some degree think it's absurd to believe.
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You're essentially describing the very nature of religious fundamentalism, which is essentially a fear-based defensive posture aimed against anything challenges or seeks to usurp a believer's existential paradigm.
I'm echoing previous posts I've made in this thread, but the dichotomy between religion and science needs to be reconciled. The idea of spirituality and science being antithetical to one another is dangerous to both religion and science, and the dangers of fundamentalism and the pseudo-science of creationism, and religious apologetics in general, are two fold.
One, the idea that religion and spirituality are somehow exempt from evolving as a result of scientific discovery is absurd and counterproductive. The Idea that God, however you wish to interpret that word, is static and unchanging contradicts everything we know about the natural world and physics in general. To augment this the idea of God being supernatural, an oxymoron, further complicates things. The atheistic viewpoint, which is every bit as defensive and fear-based as fundamentalism, only seeks to widen the chasm by adamantly refusing to acknowledge the the intangible and the potential of what lies beyond the limits of human observation and understanding.
Two, a lot of what is considered dogma within religious texts is really so contextual that to apply a literal and fundamentalist interpretation of such scriptures defies the intended meaning and nullifies any wisdom inherent in it. The idea of "mythology", in its truest sense of the word, becomes threatening to the mind of the fundamentalist. The idea of a scripture being an allegory used to convey wisdom that is otherwise ineffable is abandoned along with any notion of intellectual honesty. Logic and reason become the enemy and antithesis of faith, except for in those cases where logic and reason can be misaligned for the sake of apologetics.
In both opposing camps, those of atheists and fundamentalists, the defensive reaction is one of doubt and resistance to what could serve to progress and expand the consciousness of each respective viewpoint.