I wanna see Dick Cheney wearing a dolphin costume.

And I love this post. Well written, Julianne.

However, the alternative is not necessarily harmless either.

In the guise of communism, atheistic ideology killed some 35 million in Soviet Russia, ~ 1 million in Cambodia, and tens of millions in Mao Zedong’s China.

These were peacetime deaths.

Religion is often blamed for wars that were primarily economic or political in nature.

On the other hand there are terrible cases of religious ideological murder, as with atheistic communist ideology.

Both atheistic and religious ideology are not harmless, it would be dangerously naive to be ignorant about the dangers of either.

Garth

If you aren’t paying attention, it’s easy to ignore how religion seems harmless. But it isn’t.

Crusades. Endless battles over ‘holy land’ that find peaces measured in days. Jihad. Kosovo. Hate crimes. Bigotry (the bible is still sexist and racist because it hasn’t changed), Hitler shaking hands with the Pope. And more.

Hope you consider my post.

Letting people believe in what makes them happy sounds harmless enough – but when their “Holy Book” has chapters like the Christian New Testament “Apocalypse” which talks about the end of the world, things get more problematic. Especially if you know that the Reagon administration did not fear a nuclear war because the (christian) advisors were of the opinion that then this would be the biblical Armageddon. And at this moment US Congressmen hold similar ideas (luckily only a minority).

Religion was acceptable in a world of swords and lances – but it is _not_ acceptable in a world of nuclear bombs, where irrationalist thought can extinguish civilization.

One more distinction may be of important: personal religions can be tolerated if they are simply spiritual/mystical beliefs. East Asian religions like buddhism or taoism are well suited for these purposes.

But every rational person has the duty to oppose monotheistic religions with books of revelation. They are so inherently intolerant that their potential for harm is simply too great a risk in modern society.

Regards,
Peter

Hey, I do have a sense of humor about all this. Your theory is clever, and when I think of how f***ed up this joint can get, I find much sympathy for the old Gnostic heresy of the evil or incompetent demiurge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demiurge

In any case, Happy New Year to everyone, and have a terrific Allmess too!
(That is the new holiday I made up that is every other holiday, including whatever you want to make up, all mixed together! By definition, you can celebrate it any time, anywhere, in any manner you want!)

Maybe you are right, about yourselves (scientists etc.) as well. I get the impression, from the simplistic and often fallacious (or at least inadequate) attempts at philosophical treatment here by skeptics of “conditional” concepts of the universe’s existence, that scientists literally aren’t happy thinking about questions of ultimate meaning and purpose (for the universe itself.) It certainly isn’t because “rational thought” actually supports such a loose-end universe that just happens to be here (all of the “physical theories” which purport to do so just take the laws of physics or some equivalent as background to effect that outcome, without giving ultimate explanation to them.) I have brought up many arguments about this, but right or wrong or unknowable as they may be, few here even bother to engage.

Sure, maybe or maybe not there’s some uncaused being behind all this, I don’t call any of the pro arguments “proof” any more than the anti arguments. However, no honest rational person would at just “blow off” the peculiarly fine-tuned nature of our physical laws as something easy to dismiss. They certainly wouldn’t go around blithely tossing off concepts of “other worlds” that we can’t (in opposition to their own old tradition of scientific empiricism) even observe, yet at least, in attempt to avoid facing up to that. (And why must they try so hard to evade such notions?) There is a difference between just passing on something that seems unprovable, which is OK by me, and a directly anti-transcendent orientation. There is really no excuse for the latter.