Yep, Patel is covering for him

Which is pretty warped if you think about it - shouldn't the whole point of religion be to learn how to live well?

Surely not the whole point, since you don't need religion to do that. This is a question that philosophy has been tackling for thousands of years.

One big problem that I see is people neglecting the good life on earth for their anticipated good life in heaven. Why bother trying to live well on earth when you're only going to be here for a short time, and you'll have an eternity of living well in heaven?

What I think is flawed with the religious MAGA is that they forget one of the biggest fundamental thing of christianity: forgiveness. They don't care about that. They just use their religion as a basis for their hatred towards others so they can create their perfect world. It's like they only want to be a good christian if the setting is up to their standards. And they are willing to do anything to reach that setting, no cost is too great. Christian values only apply when you're dealing with other Christians. When they aren't Christian (exactly the way you want them to be, like white cis hetero) you can dehumanize them and do whatever you want to them with a clear conscience. Like, how fucked up are these people?

Religion is a way to show people how to live. Many people need it so they don't have to think about it themselves. They need the structure. Sure, I can understand, even though I think it's dumb. Why the need to believe in something unnatural, a fantasy, to know how to live like a proper human and how to treat others? But ok, sure some people need that apparently. But MAGA does that only selectively, whatever fits their agenda. It's the same with pseudo-science. Instead of trying to find ways to destroy your theory (and if that fails, the theory becomes more solid) they try to find ways to support their theory while neglecting the rest. This is nitpicking. That's not how it works.

Either you're a christian or you're not. You can't be half christian and use it as support for your actions, while your actions go against everything christianity stands for. Same goes for other religions of course. But there are always extremists who abuse it. Whether it's a religion, a system, whatever.

Let’s instead imagine the most Christ-like and righteous person in the world. What if they don’t believe in Jesus? According to Christian doctrine, they will burn in hell for eternity.

That’s not just a moral failing of judgementalism over actual morals, but a logical inconsistency

This guy disagreed with that tradition and tried to reset his church toward empathy, care, morality

• https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2013/05/29/187009384/Pope-Francis-Even-Atheists-Can-Be-Redeemed

Eh, I'd wager alot of these people got seduced by self-righteous outrage. It makes people feel good about themselves.