rainbow walking

While the question of a god's existence remains hotly debatable, one thing remains factual: there are an inumerable host of humans who believe that such a being does literally exist. I suppose the christian version is the primary focus in this forum because there is rarely a proponent of the other versions available for debate, for example the muslim version.

What puzzles me the most is how easy it is to transform this mis-guided faith into mis-guided politics that ultimately lead to bloodshed, martryrdom and murder. How close a correlation can one draw between what one believes religiously about a god and what one believes religiously about a system of government?

It's fascinating how both subjects quickly lead to hot debate. The war in Iraq is a classic example. What is being depicted as a fight for liberation and freedom by one side is resisted ferociously by the other side on the basis of religious soveriengnty using Allah as the motivation for suicide.

Does Allah exist, and is he any less of a monster than the christian version? I would love to engage the Muslims in these discussions about the existence of their god. I firmly believe that until we engage and target these religious fanatics who are preaching death to the infidels we're never going to end the scourge of terrorism.

Ab_Normal

I'm just finishing Karen Armstrong's The Battle For God, an analysis of religious fundamentalism in Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. She posits that fundamentalists warp the core beliefs of their religions in a reaction to Western modernism. I highly recommend the book.

Jamie_L

My armchair opinion (worth the paper it's printed on):

Religion involves faith - both in your chosen god and in the authority figures and institutions that act and speak in his name. Typically, religion discourages doubt in one way or another. Finally, inherint in most religions is the idea that this is the Truth about the universe and everything in it.

What does that all add up to? Supreme confidence and often a lack of critical analysis. A very religious person tends to trust church authority and have strong conviction that their personal moral compass (as based on their religious instruction) is absolutely correct - not just for them but for everyone else.

It's not a stretch to see how this kind of thinking could easily carry over to other areas. Politics is especially similar to religion in some ways: it involves subjective, personal decisions. There are authority figures speaking out about what's right and wrong. Once a devoutly religious person latches onto a policy that they feel somehow is linked to their beliefs, then it becomes part of the Truth that is unquestionable. Those espousing such policies become as hallowed as the clergy. And those espousing different opinions are wrong by definition.

This, of course, is all generalization with a healthy does of exageration, but I think there's truth to it. Religion is really all about absolute right and wrong. When you mix that with politics, which is all about shades of gray, things can get squirely.

Jamie

rainbow walking

Hi Jamie,
There are likely many deep-seated roots to this phenomenon. I'm wondering how much difference there is between the Muslim's missionaries of terror from the old Catholic Jesuit priests who were dispatched to use what ever means necessary to bring foriegn governments under the sway and control of Rome. In those days they utilized many similar tactics and especially the threat of poison. Today they use munitions strapped to their bodies.

It seems to me that if truly free men were genuinely determined to rid the world of this scourge we'd target their mosques for destruction and their clerics and mullahs for assasination and begin a concerted campaign to undermine their religious fervor over this non-existent Allah. I really would like to see a Muslim visit this forum and subject his or her beliefs to the same scrutiny christians have and do here all the time. At any rate I must take my leave once again and regret not being able to hang around longer.

Long live the atheist and may skeptics reign.

Theli

Sorry to see you go.

Pyrrho

Aside from ethical considerations that make the murder of religious people undesirable, there is the additional problem that such tactics invariably encourages moderates to become more religious. This is because their persecution stories, instead of being mostly imaginary, are then very real.

We can take the former Soviet Union as a similar case: The official position was very much against religion (the exact nature of this varied over the years), but with the fall of the former power structure, we see that many were very deeply religious anyway. The government failed to stomp out the religion that they wanted to stomp out.

I am very much inclined to agree with Jamie_L in the post above, except that I disagree with the claim that it involves healthy doses of exaggeration. Poor habits of thinking affect all areas, not just those for which the poor habits are kept in place. William Kingdon Clifford's essay "The Ethics of Belief" is relevant to this:

http://ajburger.homestead.com/files/book.htm

A couple of words about it, in order to avoid some common misconceptions about Clifford, that are probably due, in part, to people reading severely abridged versions of his essay (read Burger's Preface for more on this).

When Clifford says "sufficient evidence", this does NOT mean "absolute proof":

So Clifford is being quite explicit in saying that we may believe things without an absolute proof. This occurs at the beginning of section III.

Another point worth mentioning is that Clifford does not confuse beliefs with actions:

This occurs in the second paragraph of section II. Since most reprints of Clifford's essay do not include anything except most or all of section I, many readers have been confused on these points.