Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
Gol Darned Religion Today
I watch, as folks like Bill Maher and the atheist Richard Dawkins, and so many others, wage war upon all religion. It's no wonder. We've regressed as a society over the past decade. I remember in the 2004 elections, when the pundits would say, "wedge issue" when referring to things like abortion, stem cell research, Terry Schiavo and gay marriage. Like it was something to jam in between the two parties, and get religious with politics, but not to address the really important matters we should have been screaming about, like wars and the destruction of the financial system, or the loss the civil rights and the considerable consolidation of power the US government has gained. They're much bigger now. I also have not heard the term "wedge issue" in the past five years. It seems that we've gone backwards, and we've been swimming in religious politics, and we've lost all sense of our contrast with it.
Speaking of slow, steady transitions... For an 18-year-old today, technically the PATRIOT Act is now their parent's legislation. In another 10 years on the same path, the freedoms that we presently have may have slipped as much more again. It's like sticking a frog in a pot of cold water and bringing it to a boil. (FYI, The frog doesn't notice the gradual change and just sits there and boils to death) The FBI has started conducting arrests in 4 Midwestern states - they are arresting anti-war activists, which is a federal violation, and which they say constitutes terrorism. One theory is that they're just dipping their toes in the water to see how this one rolls out over time.
Meanwhile, religious war abounds. It's the crazy Muslims. It's a Christian holy war upon the crazy Muslims. It's the fate of the Jewish people. That and 50 cents will buy you a cup of coffee. How about traditional government tactics? How about crowd control?
Question... Is religion the cause of the problem?
Answer... Try this for an illustration. The New Testament is directly contradicted, and I would have to guess in the loudest possible way, with waging war. It appears that Christ wouldn't stand for it. How is it possible that Christians are calling for these wars? I have an explanation. I think it's ignorance. We have a large enough ignorant population today to perhaps combine with, say, the core of one of our political parties, to gain political power. I would say that first and foremost it is ignorant masses that go for this sort of thing.
Now, if you take the religion away, will people be smarter? Will they know more about how their world works? I suppose it may be possible, but I think more likely that what we're really talking about is ignorant people, and the government taking them for a ride. Or the government taking any (blacked out) uninformed population and rousing them and telling them lies and nonsense, which ignorant people can be led to believe. I think it is ignorance, not unlike our media blackout, that makes all of this possible. My answer, then, is that this is not religion. Besides, millions of peaceful Christians never make the news. They didn't do anything.
Without polarization and radicalization, people of all faiths coexist peacefully. In the Ottoman Empire (Middle East), Muslims and Jews coexisted side-by-side in peace for centuries, up until 1916. And people don't tend to want to kill this and that without radicalized mobs at play. As for the root cause of the violence, I'll go with consolidation of power, crowd control and a total information blackout. Like history.
Cheers -
Mark
Speaking of slow, steady transitions... For an 18-year-old today, technically the PATRIOT Act is now their parent's legislation. In another 10 years on the same path, the freedoms that we presently have may have slipped as much more again. It's like sticking a frog in a pot of cold water and bringing it to a boil. (FYI, The frog doesn't notice the gradual change and just sits there and boils to death) The FBI has started conducting arrests in 4 Midwestern states - they are arresting anti-war activists, which is a federal violation, and which they say constitutes terrorism. One theory is that they're just dipping their toes in the water to see how this one rolls out over time.
Meanwhile, religious war abounds. It's the crazy Muslims. It's a Christian holy war upon the crazy Muslims. It's the fate of the Jewish people. That and 50 cents will buy you a cup of coffee. How about traditional government tactics? How about crowd control?
"Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government;... whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights." - Thomas Jefferson
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." - Also Thomas Jefferson
There is one other religious war we are now experiencing, and that is the rising atheist movement shaking it's fist at religion. Check it - science is agnostic and atheism is a belief. Frankly, I don't blame them for how they must feel, but from what I've seen, even actual agnostics are shifting to atheist - sounds to me like war. We've regressed as a society at the hands of our leaders. It's all polarized, it's all warring parties now."If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." - Also Thomas Jefferson
Question... Is religion the cause of the problem?
Answer... Try this for an illustration. The New Testament is directly contradicted, and I would have to guess in the loudest possible way, with waging war. It appears that Christ wouldn't stand for it. How is it possible that Christians are calling for these wars? I have an explanation. I think it's ignorance. We have a large enough ignorant population today to perhaps combine with, say, the core of one of our political parties, to gain political power. I would say that first and foremost it is ignorant masses that go for this sort of thing.
Now, if you take the religion away, will people be smarter? Will they know more about how their world works? I suppose it may be possible, but I think more likely that what we're really talking about is ignorant people, and the government taking them for a ride. Or the government taking any (blacked out) uninformed population and rousing them and telling them lies and nonsense, which ignorant people can be led to believe. I think it is ignorance, not unlike our media blackout, that makes all of this possible. My answer, then, is that this is not religion. Besides, millions of peaceful Christians never make the news. They didn't do anything.
Without polarization and radicalization, people of all faiths coexist peacefully. In the Ottoman Empire (Middle East), Muslims and Jews coexisted side-by-side in peace for centuries, up until 1916. And people don't tend to want to kill this and that without radicalized mobs at play. As for the root cause of the violence, I'll go with consolidation of power, crowd control and a total information blackout. Like history.
Cheers -
Mark
0
Comments
No, PEOPLE are the cause of the problem. Always have been and always will be.
I know plenty of deeply religious people who have more logic and ethics in their little pinky than some of the most zealous atheists I've recently met. I also know some deeply zealous monotheists who are the most hateful, miserable. grudge holding people ever born. The only thing ALL the miserable/mean ones have in common is that they are people *shrugs*
In metta,
Raven