On Wed, 18 May 2005 19:04:22 -0700, Warren Ockrassa wrote > The attempted genocide (alleged, to be fair) of American aborigines > in the 19th Century was possibly acceptable to many in the context > of its time...
and > The concept itself is rooted in the idea of a deity, of course, > which is an unprovable (unfalsifiable too) hypothesis. I think the important lesson from this and other seeming contradictions among actions, religion and morality is to see that there is no religion that is more or less likely to endorse immoral behavior. Despite the fact that I'm an adherent to a particular religion and I do recommend it, I don't believe that we are any more or less likely than any other religion to endorse violence and terror. For example, here's a declaration by a Japanese coalition of those peaceful folks, Buddists, in 1937: "In order to establish eternal peace in East Asia, arousing the great benevolence and compassion of Buddhism, we are sometimes accepting and sometimes forceful. We now have no choice but to exercise the benevolent forcefulness of 'killing one in order that many may live'... We believe it is time to effect a major change in the course of human history, which has been centered on Caucasians and inequality among humanity. To realize the true happiness of a peaceful humanity and construct a new civilization, it is necessary to redirect the path of world history's advances from this false path to the true path." I'm a bit surprised to find that I believe that in this very important sense no religion is more or less likely to do good. Nonetheless, it seems to me that because religious institutions are human inventions, each has an equal ability to deceive itself and pursue immoral actions. On the other hand, this isn't surprising, since it seems obvious that great violence and terror have been sanctioned by religious organizations convinced that they possessed the truth. I think that to have faith that one can surrender to the truth is quite a different thing from believing that one possesses the truth. Faith is stewardship of something so large that no human, no docuemnt, no book can hold it. Nick _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
