Silur wrote:Personally, I find the current christian aggression to be a much bigger problem, since it has sofar had a tendency to fill the ranks among the fundamentalists from all the groups being oppressed - not only muslim. I still find the by dubbya ill-chosen word "Crusade" to be painfully accurate, except this time it isn't Jerusalem that needs "saving" from the infidels.
I'm as disgusted as anyone else when religion is used as a rallying cry to lead a nation into war. But let's put this in perspective. Religion is not really the cause of aggression. Greed, selfishness, ambition, hunger for power, etc. and in this case imperialism and dreams of capitalist expansion are the true underlying motives. I'm not saying that religious fervor is a "cover" for all of that, but rather, religion is used as a rationale for doing things that people would be doing even if they didn't have a "good reason" for doing them. What I'm saying is that when it comes to war, religion doesn't really make much difference.
Besides, Christian aggressors would not be able to threaten anyone at all if it weren't for
science and technology, which have enabled Western civilizations to conquer the world, exploit its resources, and keep grasping for more. I'd much rather blame science and technology for today's modern war machines. And don't try to tell me they wouldn't be used for evil purposes if it weren't for religious fanaticism. I don't trust the "godless scientists" any more than I trust George W. Bush to make the world a "safer" place.
Silur wrote:In difference to VonDondu, I view these three monotheistic religions as mostly bad. I can see pebbles of compassion, love and true caring in them, but unfortunately they are bathing in an ocean of blood. Even the "lightweight" versions, the secularized forms, are suspect, since even in these you foster unquestioning belief in something without proof, often from an early age, usually combined with prejudice and dichotomous "truths" on how to view the world. Sure, they're becoming morally and ethically better over time, but there is no force in society so conservative as religion - the last bastions of prejudice are almost always found in the righteously religious, be it womens liberation, racism or cultural differences.
I've never been able to put the following thoughts into a good argument, so please bear with me.
Human nature is the source of human aggression, not religion. In the complete absence of religion, would humans be any more peaceful? Would they be better-educated? Would racism, sexism, abuse, exploitation, and prejudice cease to exist? Would tribalism and nationalism cease to exist? If not, then clearly the world would not be any more peaceful if religion did not exist. To blame all violence on religion (which certainly can be used as a tool to promote violence, don't get me wrong) is to see the tree but miss the forest. Humans would not be better people if they were not religious. You're not being cynical enough.
I realize that you might be making the case that religion has been used as a tool to organize countries and other large groups of people to lead them into war, which has perhaps enabled kings and governments to launch bigger, more violent wars than ever before. I don't disagree with that. Religion has often been used as a device to maintain political power and to keep the populace in check, and clearly it has been used to motivate them to kill other people and sacrifice their own lives. But as I said above, science and technology have done even more than religion to make bigger, more violent wars possible, so you have to keep that in perspective.
Would an atheist President be any more unlikely to use nuclear weapons than a Christian President? I doubt it. Why would you believe something like that? Does NOT being a religious fundamentalist automatically make anyone a better person? Hardly. A non-theist is just as likely to be evil and dangerous as anyone else. It all depends on individual values.
I would argue that society would not have advanced as far as it has today if religion had never existed. Early attempts at science and philosophy were indistinguishable from religion. The awakening of the human consciousness was itself propelled in large part by the search to find one's place in the universe. Historically, the evolution of moral values goes hand in hand with religion. Science and ethics would not be where they are today if religion had not been part of people's lives.
But, you might say, now that we're where we are today, why can't we forget about religion and put all of that narrowminded mythological crap behind us and behave like truly enlightened people? Well, I for one would be completely in favor of that
if only it were possible, but it isn't possible. There's too much accumulated philosophical debris inside our heads--"knowledge" we take for granted, if you will--that we can't simply discard it by choice. We'd have to wipe our brains and start from scratch to get rid of it, and then we'd all be primitive again. No thanks, I'll stick with what we have and hope it gets better over time.
I don't want to defend ignorance, prejudice, and thickheadedness. As an atheist who wants to be rational by choice, I'm just as frustrated by religious morons as you are sometimes. But I'm too cynical to blame religion for ignorance, prejudice, and thickheadedness, because people wouldn't be much different in that respect if religion did not exist at all.
For the same reason, I don't believe that atheists and scientists are naturally virtuous. I don't mean to pick a fight with you or to be insulting, but I sense a small amount of prejudice on your part. So I would ask you, what makes you think that atheists and scientists are more virtuous and less likely to cause harm than anyone else?
