On Sun, 8 Apr 2007, Allen Esterson went:
On 7 April 2007 Stephen Black wrote, quoting Steven Weinberg:
"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good
things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do
evil things, that takes religion."
My view on religious belief, broadly speaking, is similar to
Weinberg's, but that is not one of his most perceptive
utterances. It is massively refuted by the history of the twentieth
century. If I need to give any clues for what I have in mind, try
reading Arthur Koestler on his early political experiences.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/koestler.htm
I think this argument was nicely countered by someone on a discussion
board I follow. I'm going to quote him, with the caveat that I'm not
attempting to direct his anger at Allen!
"I'm getting more than a little tired of the anti-atheist canard of
dragging out Hitler, Stalin, and Mao as examples of atheism. They were
not atheists at all, but people who created religions with themselves
in the position of the god/prophet/leader. They exploited the
credulousness of their people and the hierarchy, dogma, and symbolism
of religion in order to further their quest for power.
"Can you imagine Hitler, Stalin, or Mao getting anywhere in a society
of irreligious, rational freethinkers? The idea is preposterous. They
would have been laughed out of town.
"And in the case of the Nazis, Hitler explicitly invoked God in
speeches, plus remember the Nazi slogan, 'Kirche, Kinder, Kuche'
(Church, Children, Cooking). And Mein Kampf is full of fanatic
Christianity, most of it mystical Catholicism. Only later in the Nazi
era, after Hitler saw the Pope and other Christian leaders as rivals,
did they drop much of the explicit Christian references."
Again, the above material is quoted, not mine. I wouldn't say that
Nazism, Stalinism, and Maoism were religions, precisely, but I would
say that they occupied religion's psychological niche (a niche that
freethinkers either don't have or don't fill). For example, each
incorporated the idea of a future paradise (an earthly one, but a
paradise nonetheless) that justified interim inequities or atrocities.
--David Epstein
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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