Defining Religion Re: [FoRK] More faith-driven insanity: kill the teacher!

[Jeff Bone]

On Nov 30, 2007, at 2:42 PM, Dr. Ernie Prabhakar wrote:

> Hi Jeff,
>
> On Nov 30, 2007, at 12:20 PM, Jeff Bone wrote:
>> Yeah, yeah, the Christians' secular daemons:  Hitler (who was  
>> religious in a very extreme sense, zzzzt, thanks for playing) and  
>> the Soviets.
>
> Um, no, you missed my point.  Germans didn't follow Hitler because  
> he was "religious", but because he was nationalist.  Your point --  
> if I recall correctly -- is that it is religious values *per se*  
> that make people act like sheep in the face of authority.  Right?

I don't believe I've asserted anything like that, though I certainly  
would not disagree that religion generally encourages conformity.

> Or is it simply your position that because lots of people had some  
> sort of religious beliefs, that therefore religion *must* be  
> responsible for everything bad they did -- but *none* of the god  
> any of them did?

Of course not.  If you're going to set up straw men, at least make  
them more interesting...

What I *am* saying is this:  since religion requires that one believe  
in (what would otherwise be regarded as) insane things, it offers no  
form of psychological or intellectual immunity against any other sort  
of insanity --- therefore producing a psychological environment ripe  
for fostering all sorts of bad behavior.

>> Boring, and pales in comparison to the history of slaughter in the  
>> name of "god."

It may or may not be possible to quantify in absolute terms the  
number of deaths historically attributable to religion vs. any given  
other cause;  however over the grand sweep of history there is simply  
no questioning the truth of the following statement:  religion has an  
established track record of *continuous* conflict between different  
groups of believers.

jb