How can religious people be so stupid

During the meeting, Trump had reverently bowed his head in prayer while the pastors laid hands on him. In speeches and interviews, Trump routinely lavishes praise on conservative Christians, casting himself as their champion.

The president is also well known for joking and his terrific sense of humor, which he shares with people of all faiths. From the outset of his brief political career, Trump has viewed right-wing evangelical leaders as a kind of special-interest group to be schmoozed, conned, or bought off, former aides told me.

Though he faced Republican primary opponents in with deeper religious roots—Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee—Trump was confident that his wealth and celebrity would attract high-profile Christian surrogates to vouch for him. It helped that Trump seemed to feel a kinship with prosperity preachers —often evincing a game-recognizes-game appreciation for their hustle.

In a September meeting with about a dozen influential figures on the religious right—including the talk-radio host Eric Metaxas, the Dallas megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress, and the theologian Wayne Grudem—the then-candidate was blunt about his relationship to Christianity.

We still have to confront his arguments on their merits; it would be arrogant to dismiss them contemptuously as stemming from his psychosocial needs. Why should anyone fake hypocritical tolerance and empathy toward a religion that in its essence is against tolerance?

We have to speak the truth and stop trying to curry favor. There is no God and belief in him is stupidity. Rogel Alpher Feb. Updated: Apr. Get email notification for articles from Rogel Alpher Follow. Click the alert icon to follow topics: Judaism Orthodox Jews. Haaretz Cartoon. One of the most common charges laid at the door of organised religion is that it makes people stupid.

But he misses the rather important point that these people are already stupid or, to be slightly more charitable, they are afraid to think properly. Dawkins is also unquestionably right about the fact that there are no such things as meaningful religious answers to scientific questions. Science succeeds in making the incredible progress it does precisely by excluding certain types of questions from its investigations and calculations.

It limits itself to finding out through observation, hypothesis and experiment, how the physical world works. Nor is religion particularly good at answering specific moral and social questions. Employing religious arguments sheds absolutely no light at all on whether I should support legalised abortion, or which party to vote for at the next election.

In fact, as a day-to-day detailed guide in decision making, religion is more often than not completely useless. This is evidenced by the fact that, within my own Church, there is absolutely no consensus on most detailed political, social, medical or ethical dilemmas. Well, for me, religious belief is, first-and-foremost a form of consolation.

Leaving aside the details, everyone would tend to agree that existence is either a meaningless brute fact that ends in total non-existence or the product of a supremely wise and good supernatural intelligence that has purposes beyond our grasp.