Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!microsoft!uw-beaver!cornell!vax135!ariel!houti!hogpc!houxm!ihnp4!inuxc!pur-ee!uiucdcs!uiuccsb!eich
From: eich@uiuccsb.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: religion in general... - (nf)
Message-ID: <3803@uiucdcs.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 13-Nov-83 04:37:57 EST
Article-I.D.: uiucdcs.3803
Posted: Sun Nov 13 04:37:57 1983
Date-Received: Mon, 14-Nov-83 01:41:48 EST
Lines: 15

#R:hou2a:-17300:uiuccsb:11900009:000:655
uiuccsb!eich    Nov 13 03:05:00 1983


Do you consider Lenin and Stalin to have been religious?  Mao?  These
men shed a great deal of blood (of course they did so with 20th-century
means).  Were they (at least ostensibly -- I doubt Lenin believed what
he preached) not `true believers' in Hoffer's sense?  (By the way, Hoffer
seems to have been a sometime-religionist.)

What I am driving at is that if you tar all the leaders of great movements
as religious because those movements caused bloodshed through fear and
hatred, you are debasing the word `religion' unto meaninglessness.  The
quote from Voltaire sounds pretty bloody-minded -- perhaps he was in the
thrall of some `religion' too?