Genesis

As we mark the 1-year anniversary of the
September 11th attacks on America, we are
reminded of the evil of belief in God. It
can give one the courage to commit suicide
and many, many counts of homicide.

waj

The worst actions of theists are no more proof that religion is evil than their best actions are proof that it is good.

Jayhawker Soule

What waj said.

Jamie_L

What Sept 11 does prove is that religion is not the solution to humanity's ills. People are capable of great evile and great benevolence with or without religion.

Jamie

tergiversant

<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0,1300,552388,00.html" target="_blank">http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0,1300,552388,00.html</A>

Worthy reading from vocal atheist Richard Dawkins.

[ September 11, 2002: Message edited by: tergiversant ]</p>

Jack the Bodiless

This atrocity wasn't just carried out by people who happened to be religious: in this case, several thousand people were killed BY religion, as directly as (for instance) those burned at the stake for witchcraft or heresy were.

I appreciate the sentiment that we shouldn't blame all theists (or even Muslims specifically) for this, but nor should we be excessively PC in absolving religion of blame. Especially as many theists have no scruples whatsoever about exploiting the event for their own purposes: we should not hesitate to fight back, even if we find this distateful.

It needs to be said.

Vorkosigan

It certainly does, but probably in the misc forum.

Wyz_sub10

I was treading the responses to the article. I knew that the topic of "Dawrinistic evolutionary dogma" and "atheistic evolution" would come up somewhere.

ManM

Wouldn't it be much better to analyze what particular aspects of religion are purely evil?

waj

I find two major flaws in Dawkins' article.

First, he presupposes that a rational actor will always value self-preservation over anything else, and so an act that doesn't respect self-preservation must have an irrational motivation. That seems far-fetched to me. I can think of cases where rationality is even the force which overcomes the self-preservation instinct -- Socrates' execution, for instance.

Second, he assumes on insufficient evidence that the September attacks were religiously motivated. This isn't an unreasonable hypothesis, but it's hardly proven. We have no statements from the hijackers themselves about their motives. What we know of the hijackers' lives suggests that they were not very devout Muslims: they went around with their heads uncovered, they had credit cards, they drank alcohol. We can't be certain that they believed in an afterlife, never mind show that it was their primary motivation.

This statement seems to imply that just as theists and warmongers twist the meaning of the terrorist attacks for their ends, we should do likewise. I disagree.