Bad news, Good news, Great news, Weird news, etc.
September 25th, 2006So I have not posted in a very long time. Bad me. That doesn’t mean that nothing has been happening – on the contrary! Here is a brief summary.
Bad News – A good friend of mine was diagnosed with a cancerous growth in the bone on his leg. This was a very scary thing to hear, for both his family and for all of us that know and love him. It’s terrifying to realize that in my twenties I kept hearing about different friends getting married or having kids … and now in my mid thirties the news is about illness, divorce and death.
Good News – The cancerous growth was removed and the prognosis is excellent! The expert opinion is that he is going to be A-OK and with some monitoring and follow-up, will live a good long time.
Great News – My brother has proposed to his new girlfriend and given her a beautiful engagement ring!
Weird News – my gf and I went to see Body Worlds 2, at the Boston Museum of Science. It’s a display of real human bodies and body parts that have been ‘plastinated’ and put on display. It was interesting to walk around and see human skeletons, bones, brains, hearts, lungs, livers, and much else besides. It was more then worth it!
Etcetera – A co-worker / associate of mine wanted to point out that his latest blog entry contained some clever ‘atheist’ quotes from famous historical people. The quotes are thought provoking, and the page is low-key and non-pushy.
What annoys me about this and most other efforts by atheists is the interestingly filtered view of history they tend to display. While very few Christians are or have ever been rabid, violent, or offensive – that is ‘Christianity’ itself is displayed. While the Crusades and the Inquisition are often mentioned, I rarely ever see a reference to the Abolitionists, Women’s Suffrage, the Red Cross, or the modern Civil Rights Movement. These were all organized by Christians and supported by Christian values and advocated from Church pulpits.
Do you know what else I rarely see a reference to in all of this ‘xtians just leave us poor little atheists alone’ material? I rarely see references to Mao, Pol Pot, or Stalin. These were Communist atheists who attempted to create new ‘perfected’ states and killed millions of their own citizens. The combined (estimated) body count? 34 million people. So, ‘godless’ governments killed more people and in significantly fewer years then all of the Crusades and the hundreds of years of the Inquisition – combined. Funny, how this rarely comes up.
So, on the one hand not all Christians (or religious folk in general, regardless of faith) are the intolerant devils poisoning our culture and retarding the liberalizing progress of our society; and on the other hand not all atheists are the thoughtful, progressive, tolerant vanguard trying to pull society up and out of the tar pits of superstition and violence.
I think the main difference is this..
Things like the crusades or the inqisition, or terrorist do things in the name of god and are part of something religous (in some cases with or without the permission of said religion).
Atheist do not have a central structure to do that. Sure, stalin was an atheist, but what he did was not based on some atheist ideals or as part of some atheist group.
The crusades on the other hand were specifically to force religion on people.
Excellent point. The murders weren’t in the name of atheism. They were just murders. Likewise, I doubt that many of the leaders involved in the crusades or other religious murder campaigns actually believed in the religions they espoused. Much like GWB has co-opted the religious right– I doubt he actually believes in god at all.
At the same time, out of all of these heinous crimes committed in the name of God, who really believes that the people or the acts themselves have anything to do with any God at all? It’s ridiculous to blame Christians & Christianity or Muslims & Islam for the horrible things that were and are done by select groups of zealots that claim to know the will of their deity and choose to act upon this perception in a horrible, violent way. It’s human failing that’s wrapped up with an attempt to predict the will of a supreme being that is the issue, and not any Gods or Goddesses command or desire for these awful things to happen. With those that do not believe in a supreme being or beings, the crimes are still committed through their own human failing…whether it is lack of empathy & judgement for their fellow man, prejudice, megalomania, etc…it all comes from their own faith base – whether that is other people’s influence of thought, or science, or whatever. Any horrible crime or series of crimes are committed with layers of the killer’s own twisted reasoning attached to them, and whether the killer believes a deity was involved or not does not make the crimes greater or less than those committed that are coming from a different kind of faith, and it also does not necessarily mean that anyone else involved in the same religion is responsible.
That said…
It is an entirely separate argument on whether or not many “religious” (not spiritual) teachings are, in their very nature, conducive to promoting those things that create false realities in already unstable individuals minds, by promoting exclusivity, restrictive belief systems and the whole “chosen of God” issues.
But that’s really more about power and money and keeping them, isn’t it? Are we talking about organized crime or religion? I forget.
But these are other discussions for another day…