Posted on 07/16/2018 7:40:09 AM PDT by davikkm
Ask just about any diehard atheist what the most dangerous part of human nature is, and they will tell you it’s religion. In all honesty, this used to be me. And to be fair, religion has inspired people to commit some of the obscenest atrocities in human history; The Crusades, the German Peasants’ War, French Wars of Religion, and the Thirty Years’ War, to name a few.
But what major acts of violence have been committed by major nations in the name of religion in modern times? There have been sporadic occurrences of religious violence by the underdeveloped world. For example, the Sunni and Shia wars in the Middle East, the Nigerian Civil War, the First and Second Sudanese Civil Wars and the Lebanese Civil War were all fought over religion. However, there is now something far more malignant in human nature than religion. In the modern world, political ideology has replaced religion as the main dogma that leads people to commit heinous acts.
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Political ideology is religion.
Tribalism.
Many centuries ago the religion and the politics were one and the same. The ruler was head of the army and the ruler was in charge of the religion.
Neither one is “bad”, we just all need to mind our own business.
People who rail against Religion, have a penchant on wanting to do things the Bible frowns upon. Or, college has pounded into their heads that people and government are what counts, and everything else is a “fable”.
People join political parties or ideologies based on the ones that agree with what the individual wants and needs.
But rub enters when atheists want everyone to believe, or not believe, like they do...and if you don’t, you’re a ignorant, bigoted, redneck.
And, when one groups harbors hate for another that doesn’t share their ideology.
If we would all mind our own business, worship (or not) where we want, and vote how we please, we’d be much better off.
If you attack me - a Trump supporter - in a restaurant, it will not change ANYTHING Trump and/or Congress does. It will not alter who he picks for SCOTUS, it will not change his mind on climate change, and he won’t resign.
On the other hand, you could be arrested and get some cooler time to think it all over.
If I live life as well as possible, pray, and go to church, it does not hurt the atheist in any way, shape, or form...except maybe his/her feelings because you can’t be brainwashed to see it their way.
If a candidate says he’ll raise my taxes, cut my income, abolish jobs, etc., I won’t vote for him. IF enough people agree with that s/he’ll win. Otherwise, the competition will win.
MYOB and live your life...I do not grant you permission to run, control, or direct my life in any way.
Stupid question indeed. But ask young people, and most have been unable to think beyond the massive Communist brainwashing that they have received.
If you check wikipedia regarding all the wars by millennium you will find that wars were mostly political.
To me it seems that the common thread in each war is a battle for the land to grow food...and space to carry out the daily functions of life. If there are different religious or political views involved they just get folded into that conflict.
“Powerful”? In proper faiths, people do not surrender their minds. This does not include cults such as Islam, which share much in common with socialist state techniques.
What is most dangerous is theocracy, where both are involved.
I separate “power” from “dangerous” because I see them as different things. Christianity is powerful, but not dangerous.
Japan deified their leader and it led to suicide attacks. Islam leads to suicide attacks. Hitler’s Germany and the Soviets did not have that kind of power over the individual.
And for me, it is, at the end of the day, all about the individual.
. . . in recent years observer after observer has been impressed by the unforeseen consequences of socialism, the extraordinary similarity in many respects of the conditions under 'communism' and 'fascism'. As the writer Peter Drucker expressed it in 1939,'the complete collapse of the belief in the attainability of freedom and equality through Marxism has forced Russia to travel the same road toward a totalitarian society of unfreedom and inequality which Germany has been following. Not that communism and fascism are essentially the same. Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion, and it has proved as much an illusion in Russia as in pre-Hitler Germany.’
____________— F A Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (May, 1945 Reader’s Digest Condensed Version)
When you have a political ideology posing as a “religion”, the potential for mischief is vastly multiplied.
Islam is identified as a “religion”, when it is nothing of the kind. It is a crude form of socialism, a command-and-control agenda that uses as one of its props a vengeful deity that directs men to do things without mercy, without any form of justice, and no possibility of appeal from decisions made, supposedly by “inspired” individuals, who at the basic level, are suffering from various kinds of mental disorders, most commonly a form of schizophrenia, in which all acts, no matter how atrocious, are justified because they are done “in the name of Allah”.
So much for purity of motives. A few at the top do pretty well, the rest are considered to be useless pieces of wasted protoplasm.
Political ideology ended slavery too... and created the concepts behind our rule of law and Bill of Rights.
;;;; ;;;
Actually, those concepts were rooted in the Natural Law which informed the laws in the Courts of Equity, run by the Catholic Church as a court of appeal in the laws of England before the “ Reformation”.
The Crusades were a defensive response to 600 years of muslim conquest.
Since WWII, the US has killed more than 20 million people in the name of democracy.
I was just thinking the same thing. Religion and Ideology are really the same thing. There is a huge difference between being religious and being Christian. A rather large number of people who consider themselves "Christians" are actually just practicing the Ideology of Christianity while missing the central truths of Christ's teaching
I'll add that these political ideologies didn't exist in some space that was somehow devoid of or indifferent to religious views. For example, communism has distinct views about religion.
(Also notice that your friendly atheist neighbor thinks that your aunt--who never willingly misses church, reads the Bible daily, and prays often--is just like those Violent Religious Bigots, but he never uses the same "logic" against himself.)
The Crusades, despite their excesses, were wars of self defense against Islam that had for centuries been hammering the world, killing, destroying, slaving, raping and all that.
Their excesses were simply because they were men of their times. Islam did far worse.
The Crusaders only waged limited war, fought a relative few battles, they accomplished their goals and then stopped, giving the Muslims menace time to recover and rearm, eventually to resume their aggression.
The Crusades were entirely justified.
The great tragedy of them is that they didn’t stop till Mecca was a burnt ruin never to be rebuilt and as many peoples of the East had been freed from Islam’s boot as could be freed.
Islam is not a victim. Islam is the victimizer, it can be nothing else, it’s just a progrom for conquests disguised as a religion. The only “good thing” about Islam is that people in general (not just Muslims) make bad disciples. When a Muslim doesn’t emulate Mohammad that’s much better for themselves and everyone else than when they do
“Powerful”? In proper faiths, people do not surrender their minds.
I mean people will usually follow the instructions of a god more than the instructions of a man.
i.e. if some man had told Abraham to kill his son, he probably would not have made the journey.
However, organized religion is more persistent. The Soviet Union lasted only a few decades. This is a blink-of-an-eye in comparison to the 1400 years that Islam has been a thorn in the side of civilization, with no end in sight. And it took about 1700 years for Organized Christianity to evolve variants (e.g., in England and the Netherlands) that were compatible with the kind of government that most of us would want to live under.
Good point.
What’s dangerous is power, which is why the constitution limits it for the government.
It’s also why God warned the Jews about having a king, because it wouldn’t be a great idea to give one man power over another.
It’s also a great reason to have a gun, in case someone tries to exercise power over you, who may be physically stronger or better trained at combat.
When the Church had king-making power, it drew all sorts of evil people to it. Now, with mostly governments having that power, that’s where the evil people are drawn, like bugs to a light on a warm summer’s eve...
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