John Hancock

David

You misread my reference to technology. I only meant that with the financial witheral of oil money Islam has managed to gain a very close equity in weapons and communications.

What I find infuriating is US arms Manufactures supplying weapons (they a the major player in that field) to various regimes. Then the USA must purchase these dealers new and improved models to police the world for the economic interests of multi-nationals.

That big assed military budget is theft from the mouths of babes.

Martin

David M. Payne

Yes, if we could end the arms race, we could put that economic resource to a much better purpose for humanity. Authoritarian governing regimes, secular or religious, prevent this by their very existence and desire to expand their power and influence. Authoritarian regimes are almost always a growth industry. And this state of affairs necessitated the need for the free societies to defend themselves against them and their voracious thirst for power. I think that if and when humanity rids itself of the shackles of authoritarian dogma and the resulting regimes, we will no longer need to pursue the arms race, and we will be on the road to long-term survival and growth as a species.

But it's a big if as far as getting rid of authoritarian dogma.


David

Ut

Of course, but even atheists have different interpretations of what is just and what should be done (this is what the God concept boils down to in this case). I offer this whole forum as a proof.

I honestly don't understand. You begin by saying that a secular power avoids this problem. Then, you point to theocracies which are authoritarian. Finally, you point to Marx and Hitler, who, lo and behold, promoted a secular authoritarian ideology.

I won't defend theocracies. They are indefensible. But the problem in relgious authoritarianism is not to be found in the religious, it is to be found in the authoritarianism.

Look closely at the sentence you post next:

It's wrong for Muslims to believe the world would be better if everybody would be Muslims, but it's all right for you to believe it
would be better if everybody would be atheists?

That is the distinction. We must target the religious Zelts (not for being religious, but for being Zelts). The ones that are dangerous are the ones that actually use or condone violence, with or without state support, to further the spreading of their religion. The ones that, like everybody does, merely wish the world would adopt values closer to their owns are not dangerous, they're just humans.

John Hancock

UT

I believe you've over stated David Payne's position. Which I believe is in keeping with intent of our Constitution. "Tom J. and the boys", had witnessed the folly reeked by European State Religious justification. They wise chose not to empower any religious sector.

Martin

David M. Payne

But I also said: "In the end humanity needs to get rid of the God/religion biz and live our lives in the world of a democratically run secular reality."
Marx and Hitler didn't promote democracy, they promoted a state run by their party. Communist or Fascist party control of the state was their goal. We agree that authoritarianism is the main problem, but how do you separate religion from authoritarianism when that is an integral part of the basis for the belief? After all, the Abrahamic religions are based on the belief that they follow the word of God, who is the ultimate authority, and the ultimate authoritarian figure.

Well yes Ut, I do believe that the history of religion is also the history of war and conflict. The Abrahamic religions have had two thousand years to get it right as far as bringing humanity together, and they have failed. Time to wake up and smell the reality of religious failure to bring any kind of peace to humanity. History shows us that religion is divisive, and we don't need that anymore as a species. (For good examples of this, see the Irish, the Philippines and the Middle East where we have Semites fighting Semites, and all of them are killing each other in the name of God/religion, with some political and economic reasons thrown in too.)
I'm not an atheist by the way, as The Wailing Pool makes clear, but I'm close. Would the world be a better place without religion? In the long run I think so, but like any addiction you need to wean the addicts off their drug carefully.

As long as we have these religious Zelts pushing their philosophy on everyone they can, there will be conflict, as 9/11 and the attack in Saudi Arabia yesterday showed us.

The problem with religion as practiced even by the moderates is that it provides the pool from which the Zelts emerge. (This was one of the main themes of "Bob.") This belief in God is in effect the enabler of the Zelts. If we can get rid of this fairy tale being and all that has been constructed around him, we have a chance to help humanity move on to what ever the future holds for us. As long as the religions have such a major role in the fabric of the human experience, we will have these conflicts. And sooner or later I fear they will end in the use of WMD against all of us by some wacko group like al Qaida. The sooner we become a secular species, the better for us all.


David

David M. Payne

Right on MB.

David

Ut

But as we saw, religionists can't even agree on what the word of God actually says (just as Marxists can't agree on what actually Marx says ). Instead of arguing on what is the best way of managing society, they argue on what is the best way of interpreting what the word of God says about managing society. Didn't we just trade a dollar for four quarters? The authority of God doesn't look very menacing if He cannot enforce it Himself and the believers can't even agree on what to enforce. You can't say you never heard some Christian trying to weasel about how the Bible supported human rights and democracy!

Not only that, but some religionists don't want to enforce anything from God (like in the "Islam without Islamic Law" text). They only believe the word of God should be a personal, voluntary ethic not to be enforced by earthly powers. I would say they have compelling arguments from a theological point of view, but I'm not going to start a GRD discussion on this.

I would say the history of politics has a closer match to the history of war. I mean, what about the War of Independance, Civil War, WWI, WWII, Korean War, Vietnam War, Gulf War I, Gulf War II?

Of course religion, in and of itself did fail to bring universal peace. Does that mean we need to get rid to religion in order to have peace? Not necessarily.

You're right about Isreal and the Philippines, but Ireland? C'mon. No serious political analyst thinks it has anything to do with religion. I don't think the Loyalists are pissed at the IRA for accepting the Pope as spiritual authority Here, the labels "Catholic" and "Protestant" are best understood as cultural, not religious, labels.

I agree the world would be a better place without fundamentalist religion. I have no problems with liberal religion, which is reduced to a set of rituals and a set of beliefs on things outside science's reach. The only problem I have is when they try to apply their religion in the fields of politics and science. If they want to kneel daily toward the Mecca, not to drink alcohol and believe they will live eternally in paradise, they can be my guest.

If religion is a major part of the human experience and we remove it, the question is: what do we replace it by? As you know, Soviet-style communism is not the answer.

I know your answer is rather a democratic, secular and open society respecting human rights and I agree with that. I hope I don't misinterpret you, but you seem to believe this is incompatible with religion.

I want governments to make rational policies based on science and not superstition. I want them to promote through education, and to protect from religious assault, secularism and science. Is that what you envisioned by "weaning them off their drug"? But I wouldn't go any further than that.

Ut

Then, you have the following paradox. The American Founders gave no power to the religious sector yet you end up with fundamentalist Christians running the country. European states gave power to their churches (like England who made the CoE the official state church) and they ended up with a very secular government.

Sometimes, there is such a thing as getting hanged by having too much rope. (Let's just hope your Christian fundies are in the process of doing just that)

John Hancock

UT

If religion is a major part of the human experience and we remove it, the question is: what do we replace it by? Reason Thomas Paine.

David M. Payne

I'm not worried so much about a monolithic Islam (Or Christianity or Judaism) taking over the world, I look at the events going on since 9/11 and clearly see a religious war supported by large, powerful blocks of Islamic believers who see no difference between religion and politics, it's all the same to them. (That's why this discussion is in this forum, it's political as well as religious.) And there are plenty of Christians, Jews and Hindus, as well as some of us freethinkers around the world that are ready to rumble with them. The conflict we are in will be a war fought by an Islamic enemy that is willing to struggle for centuries using modern weapons as well as WMD. Their not in any real hurry, they have a lot of patience. This is an unconventional war in more than one way, it's being funded and supported by Islamic groups all over the world, as well as some states like Iran.

One thing I learned in Vietnam was that if you had the support of a small number of the general population, you could wage war for a long time. In the case of the Vietnamese, their war for independence started in 111 or so BC. Now they are free, except for the yolk of communism, and they'll eventually free themselves from that too, I'm sure. The goal of the Islamic terrorists is to kill as many innocent people as necessary to get us to do what they want, even if it takes a few centuries to do it. There are millions of Muslims who support Osama bin Laden. All Osama wanted was us out of his world, and for everyone in the west to convert to his brand of Islam. I don't want to go there, do you?



No, but humanity needs to put these religious artifacts of the ancient never-never land away and grasp the present and future. The Abrahamic religions are stuck in the past, seeking to capture/recapture a relationship with a God that never happened in the first place, because he is a myth, and always has been, IMHO. It's illogical to have part of your worldview based on myths, humanity needs to grow up and move on, pure and simple.

I work with a nice Irish lad, and he thinks all this religious conflict is bad, except in Ireland, where the Catholics need to kick the Protestants out and vice versa. You can say it's not a fight that doesn�t "Really" involve religion at all, but I don't think so. (See below for more on this problem of conflict.)

Its not so much that religion has failed to bring about universal peace, it that it keeps large blocks of humanity at each other's throats, all over a myth.

I was in Vietnam, in the marines (helicopters) and I distinctly remember that we were all being reminded of our duty to God and country to kill as many godless commies as we could. I'm sure you'd find that "fighting for God and Country" was a big part of the story for the troops, motivation wise, in the rest of the wars you mention. There is almost never just one reason for a war, you�ve almost always got political, economic, ethnic etc reasons to fight one too. One could make a pretty good argument that God(s) and religion, in addition to being a major reason for the war of 9/11, has sparked many wars in the history of humanity. Major or minor, it's almost always there in every war. That doesn�t mean that everything about religion is bad either, because it isn't, most of the people who believe in God/religion are good people, but the supernatural stuff needs to go by by, sorry. Some of what is in all the holy books is good, some isn't. We can keep the good stuff, and dump the bad and the mythical stuff. In the west we have managed to do that for the most part, but with Islam, it's hard to separate the religious from the political, as they are viewed as being entwined within the religion of Islam by millions of believers.






I agree with you view of fundamentalists, but I think that the power of all the Abrahamic religions to cause the kinds of problems we have seen worldwide needs to be curtailed. How can one rationally expect to base ones real worldviews on a myth? Plus this large pool of believers is the well from which the wackos like bin Laden and David Koresh spring. That power in the hands of religion needs to go away because of its ability to get us into things like 9/11. Sooner or later we are going to have some wacko authoritarian group, secular or religious, use WMD on humanity, for our own good of course. Right now it looks like the religious wackos have the best chance of pulling off the big WMD attack that dooms humanity. We need to move as far away from that possibility as we can. The way to do that is embodied right here in this forum, the Sec-Web. You can turn the light on for those who are trapped in the myth of God and the religions he had spawned, but you can't make them open their eyes and see the truth.

"I know your answer is rather a democratic, secular and open society respecting human rights."
Yep, that�s my answer, EDC or something like it. As for it being incompatible with religion, it would only be incompatible with religions that seek to usurp the power from the people for its own ends, no matter how noble sounding those ends are. Right now all of the Abrahamic religions are authoritarian in nature, depending as they do on the ultimate authority, God. (Who coincidently no one has ever seen or can get a hold of.) When they become more democratically structured, like a popular election, (secret ballot) for the Pope for example, then religion will have finally moved into the twentieth century. I don't think I'll live long enough to see that though.

I'm not sure what you mean by protection from secularism and science, so I won't go there now. Perhaps you can elaborate somewhat on that.

David