Welcome once again to Fandango’s Provocative Question. Each week I will pose what I think is a provocative question for your consideration. By provocative, I don’t mean a question that will cause annoyance or anger. Nor do I mean a question intended to arouse sexual desire or interest.
What I do mean is a question that is likely to get you to think, to be creative, and to provoke a response. Hopefully a positive response.
For this week’s provocative question, I am going to do something I haven’t before done in my provocative question prompt. I’m going to post something a fellow blogger wrote. In this case, the blogger is Judy Dykstra-Brown, and in one of her recent posts she wrote,
“I do believe that more evil has been done in this world by those absolutely sure of the rightness of their faith and their beliefs.”
So my question is this: do you agree with what Judy wrote? Why or why not?
If you want to read Judy’s full post in which this quote appeared in order to gain context, click here.
If you choose to participate, write a post with your response to the question. Once you are done, tag your post with #FPQ and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments.
The issue with pingbacks not showing up seems to have been resolved, but you might check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, please manually add your link in the comments.
This, That, and the Other 
Hmmm, this is an interesting question and quite provocative too.
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I do not believe in knocking anyone’s Faith, but there are times when I have to question the humanity of it.
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Absolutely agree!! People have been using righteousness as justification for evil acts for eons!
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Somebody’s faith is fine when they hold it to be true for themselves. In fact, many faiths can be a good blueprint for life in this respect. I think the problem starts when they expect other people to hold the same beliefs as they do. Nice to find your blog, a little break from working.
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I’m glad you found it, too. And I agree with your assessment about faith and beliefs.
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It does kinda beg a follow-up question: why does a person feel it is important, what somebody else believes? If they’re happy, if they’re not hurting anyone, isn’t that enough?
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If they’re happy and not hurting anyone, yes, that’s fine. But if they’re trying to convert someone to their faith or to make “war” against those whose beliefs are different, that’s not fine.
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I agree with Marilyn, that it’s a rough world for faith. I also agree with the wisdom (Havel) that one would want to keep the company of those who seek truth (yet would [tend to] run from “those who are sure they found it.” — Shared by someone else.) Even so, I have faith… and tend to avoid people pushing a church or a political fanaticism (while I do still think the United States experiment and ideals, particularly post-Lincoln — including the later amendments — are a good effort… but not as reinterpreted in deranged minds as theocracy). I have to acknowledge (and have indeed faced) the fact that incalculable harm has been done by many and probably most who say they hold a faith… but are fighting for something else. I’ve swum upstream in terms of many areas, big and small, including contrary to medical tendencies but also pop health fads (like hydrogenated margarine being better than butter, which later became an article of medical faith… but has passed). That’s about as succinct as I can be on the topic.
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https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/V%C3%A1clav_Havel
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I agree with Judy’s statement and it is a bold one. I posted something along that line with a quote from a Game of Thrones character. People need to be able to believe what they want or need to, especially here in the United States of America. It is the reason many people came to this land in the first place. It is horribly, sadly ironic that the indigenous people already living here were not treated the way the newcomers wanted to be treated. I believe the “Golden Rule” no longer is applied, even though it is a basic premise in all faiths.
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I agree; I think doing evil goes hand in hand with believing to be in possession of the absolute truth and power.
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The “ping” worked, but here’s the link too… just in case! I don’t have ‘faith’ in WordPress these days.
http://sparksfromacombustiblemind.com/2019/07/17/fandangos-weekly-provocative-question-32/
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https://tessacandoit.com/2019/07/19/fandangos-provocative-question-32-fpq/
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