I’m not going to pretend I’m a very religious person as that would be a lie. I’ve always been very pragmatic and influenced by my secular surroundings and environment. In the past, I remember I used to think; “Religion is a crutch for weak people. What is the point in believing in a higher power if you have confidence in yourself!? Pathetic.”
Perhaps this is true for many cases. Religion is a crutch for many weak people and many embrace religion for self serving reasons as a source for drawing mental strength (to feed their weak emotional state f example during illness, death, poverty etc.). Since I am not a hypocrite, I’ll say directly that this is my agenda as well.
If praying will act as an additional mental boost/soothing it is the pragmatical thing to do. I guess I will find out … If there is a God I will be allowed to enter heaven as all other martyrs for the Church in the past. I am pursuing religion for this very reason and everyone else should as well, providing it will give you a mental boost.
That is not the testimony of a “fundamentalist Christian,” much less a credible profession of faith. Upon closer examination the “cultural Christianity” that Breivik briefly refers to elsewhere in his manifesto is merely ideological window dressing. At bottom, he’s just another philosophically/politically driven sociopath who refuses to be subject to any law higher than himself. One of the reasons I say this—beyond the sheer horror of his brutal, murderous actions—is that even now Breivik doesn’t care a whit about what Norwegian society thinks of him, let alone the judgment of Christian ethics. Strip away the quasi-religious cant and this guy is basically a clever variant of an anarcho-terrorist. He tarted himself up with a lot of medieval Catholic symbolism and juiced himself with anabolic steroids to role play the self-appointed secret identity of an avenging, modern-day “Knight Templar,” acting out in real life his own twisted version of a “World of Warcraft” video game.