... Should'a known my reply would be too long for just the one post.
I wasn't offended, because it seems to me you're not so much talking about "religious types" as you are about "theists" (whether mono- or poly-). Like cmcmck I consider myself a Quaker, and believe in faith and practice ... I just don't believe it stems from any supernatural, incomprehensible force, God or otherwise.
All the same, I think you sell theists too short. Since you've already brought Godwin into the discussion, I'll counter with a couple anti-Godwins: Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. They were both committed believers, and their followers also went to the front lines of the struggle in the belief that "God is with us."
Solidarity, in Poland, drew great strength from its members commitment to Catholicism and love for the Polish Pope. (And this later bit them in the arse to an extent, as the post-Soviet government, in the interest of toeing the orthodox Catholic party line, proclaimed abortion illegal once it was in power.)
It's true, religious figures have been prominent in most of the world's great tragedies going back millennia ... just as religious figures have been prominent in the struggle against oppression for the same period.
As underlakers points out, while Hitler was Catholic, Stalin and Mau were atheists, and it didn't stop them seeing his bodycount and raising by a hefty margin.
In my Women's Studies class this Spring, we read an excerpt from a book titled something along the lines of The Rise of Secularism. It points out that secularism was originally touted as an antidote to religion because (as you point out) "look at all those wars and slaughters and general intolerance." Well, okay, many nations have adopted secularism to an extent, and, astonishingly enough, the net effect on wars and slaughters and general intolerance has been practically zero.
Where religion has gone out of fashion, the zealots and butchers merely adept their language to e.g. nationalism (now there's an odious ideological system for you). While the US is in some respects very much a Christian nation, my countrypeople (including large numbers who weren't even Christian) have historically been hugely susceptible to nationalist demagoguery when it comes to killing and dying throughout the world to free another country for US markets. The so-called Communist countries did much the same in their time.
Zealots and extremists crop up most everywhere, and they always take their cue from whatever's hot at the moment: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, nationalism, neoliberalism, Marxism, what have you. Nothing, it appears, is so sacred that it cannot be appropriated by the forces of bigotry and oppression.
part 1
I wasn't offended, because it seems to me you're not so much talking about "religious types" as you are about "theists" (whether mono- or poly-). Like
All the same, I think you sell theists too short. Since you've already brought Godwin into the discussion, I'll counter with a couple anti-Godwins: Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. They were both committed believers, and their followers also went to the front lines of the struggle in the belief that "God is with us."
Solidarity, in Poland, drew great strength from its members commitment to Catholicism and love for the Polish Pope. (And this later bit them in the arse to an extent, as the post-Soviet government, in the interest of toeing the orthodox Catholic party line, proclaimed abortion illegal once it was in power.)
It's true, religious figures have been prominent in most of the world's great tragedies going back millennia ... just as religious figures have been prominent in the struggle against oppression for the same period.
As
In my Women's Studies class this Spring, we read an excerpt from a book titled something along the lines of The Rise of Secularism. It points out that secularism was originally touted as an antidote to religion because (as you point out) "look at all those wars and slaughters and general intolerance." Well, okay, many nations have adopted secularism to an extent, and, astonishingly enough, the net effect on wars and slaughters and general intolerance has been practically zero.
Where religion has gone out of fashion, the zealots and butchers merely adept their language to e.g. nationalism (now there's an odious ideological system for you). While the US is in some respects very much a Christian nation, my countrypeople (including large numbers who weren't even Christian) have historically been hugely susceptible to nationalist demagoguery when it comes to killing and dying throughout the world to free another country for US markets. The so-called Communist countries did much the same in their time.
Zealots and extremists crop up most everywhere, and they always take their cue from whatever's hot at the moment: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, nationalism, neoliberalism, Marxism, what have you. Nothing, it appears, is so sacred that it cannot be appropriated by the forces of bigotry and oppression.