Hi Platt, Steve: You had said that you had a problem with Harris because he wrote about the bad results of religious belief but not the bad results of atheism.
I asked: >> >> >> What are the bad results of not believing in God? >> >> Platt: >> >> >National Socialism, Fascism, Communism. >> >> >> >> Steve: >> >> How are these the result of not believing in God? >> >> >> >> I'm sure that you can follow the logic that if one believes that Americans >> >> are infidels and that God will reward him in Heaven for participating in >> >> sacred bombings to kill infidels, then such belief would constitute >> >> motivation for "bad results." Perhaps you can explain how not believing >> >> inGod results in Fascism? >> >> Platt: >> >By substituting belief in the supreme value of God to belief in the supreme >> >value of the state, e.g., "Deutschland uber alles." >> >> Steve: >> Okay, but belief in the supreme value of the state isn't atheism. Atheism is >> just >> not believing in God. Platt: >OK. But if you believe in the supreme value of the state, you can't believe in >the >supreme value of God. If you believe in state supremacy you are likely to also >be an atheist. Steve: You are arguing that people who believe in God are more likely to believe in God than people who believe in the supremacy of the state. That is obviously true, but irrelevent. What you need to be able to argue is that people who don't believe in God are more likely to turn into fascists, communists, etc. than those who believe in God. I would say it is a lot easier to take people who already have a set of dogmatic religious beliefs and twist their religion into a worship of the state (which is what I think is often done in totalitarian revolutions) than it is to take people who have rejected religion as unreasonable to accept the supremacy of the state. This also all seems irrelevent to the original issue which was that you have a problem with Harris criticizing religious belief without also criticizing Fascism and National Socialism and Communism. If there are no national best sellers out there right now criticizing these things, it is because we all already agree that these are bad. We also don't have any popular books out saying that slavery is wrong. Harris doesn't want to be called an atheist. He doesn't want to be defined as in opposition to religion. He is a supporter of reason and in oppostion to dogmatic belief. The enemy is uncritical loyalty to any set of beliefs. If National Socialism was a big issue today he'd probably be writing about it instead of religious faith, but it's not. Crazy religious beliefs that lead to people blowing themselves in public squares is. Regards, Steve Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
