I watched a great video today... And it had a great quote in it.
The video was of a presentation by Sam Harris. Sam Harris also wrote a book entitled "Letter to a Christian Nation" which I read the other night. Very eloquent, well written and rational.
Anyway... One of the main criticism of Atheism is that it is responsible for some of the most horrendous crimes of the 20th century. And usually there are reference made to Hitler, Stalin and people like that.
I thought Sam's response to this was dead on...
“The problem with fascism and communism, however, is not that they are too critical of religion; the problem is that they are too much like religions. Such regimes are dogmatic to the core. Auschwitz, the gulag and the killing fields were not examples of what happens when human beings reject religious dogma; they are examples of political, racial and nationalistic dogma run amok. There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.”
That statement also holds the key as to why Atheists won't ever be able to unite and usher in fundamental changes to the government of the United States. We can't be led, and generally we can't be swayed by appeals to emotion. We're reasonable rational people, and we're going to vote for the candidate which we feels best matches our ideals. And ideals change from person to person.
I fully agree. It's not that these people don't believe in a God, but elevate themselves to the status of God themselves. "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
ReplyDeleteA very good reason to reject non-empirical belief systems, including religions.
ReplyDeleteWith regard to war and oppression, perhaps the emphasis should be on authoritarian belief systems (of which some religions are a subset) rather than just religion. This encompasses totalitarian communism as well as oppressing forms of religion, which share many characteristics.
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