Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site pyuxd.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!pyuxww!pyuxd!rlr
From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: The Power of (Organized) Religion
Message-ID: <1906@pyuxd.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 18-Oct-85 13:46:07 EDT
Article-I.D.: pyuxd.1906
Posted: Fri Oct 18 13:46:07 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 19-Oct-85 08:18:14 EDT
References: <1852@pyuxd.UUCP> <1817@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Organization: Whatever we're calling ourselves this week
Lines: 53

>>> I don't think Hitler had
>>>very much use for reliance on a higher power in the sense meant here,
>>>yet I can't think of a better example of a man who promulgated notions
>>>of innate racial/ethnic superiority, and for whom blind faith and
>>>acceptance--of his followers in him--was an essential "virtue."

>>No, my friend, it is your article that offers shoddy thinking.  I never
>>claimed that religionists represent the SOLE perpetuators of these notions.
>>Nonetheless, those notions are perpetuated by religion, among other things.
>>All the modern perpetuators of those notions (Falwell, IC's, Khomeini,
>>Farrakhan, etc.) are either tied directly to religion (as these examples
>>show) or take their cues from religion, having learned the manipulative
>>skills they use (in such movements as Nazism and other violent nationalistic
>>movements) from religion. [ROSEN]

> It is much more accurate to say that these things are being done IN THE NAME
> OF RELIGION.  There simply is no justification for the statement that 
> religion invariably gives rise to such things is simply rediculous. [WINGATE]

Gee, I guess it's OK when religionists judge people in general as all horribly
evil (often based solely on their own low self-opinion) and justify it based
on history, yet doing the same sort of historical justification to show
the horrors of religion is somehow "wrong".  Perhaps it is religion that is
"fallen" rather than "man", as they would have us believe.

> Jerry Falwell doesn't exemplarize Christianity anymore than Khomeini
> exemplarizes Islam.  The fact that one commonly finds these people associated
> with religions is simply indicative of the tremendous intellectual power of
> the thing.  These days, one sees bad science being misused to delude the
> gullible and support the disreputable as often as one sees bad religion
> being employed for the same purposes.  And, having seen Mr. Falwell's show,
> there's little doubt in my mind that he does indeed represent bad religion.

While the sort of religion you have represented here, with its acceptance
of psychological abuse of children for the purpose of converting them, with
its rigid intolerance of groups it simply doesn't like, represents "good"
religion?

> Rich has conveniently ignored the Marxists and a host of other morally and
> intellectually dubious movements to arrive at his conclusions.  He seems
> conveniently to have forgotten the wanton destruction wrought by Pol Pot and
> his kind in Cambodia and Laos.  The terror that is (depressingly) quite
> common in Africa has little to do with religion.

Except in that they fit into the very category I already described, that of
those who have seen how religion has indoctrinated and controlled, and who
follow the lead of religion in trying to do the same thing.  Why would you
call that "ignoring" them?
-- 
"to be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day
 to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human
 being can fight and never stop fighting."  - e. e. cummings
	Rich Rosen	ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr