08-25-2019, 09:24 PM
(08-25-2019, 03:20 PM)David Horn Wrote:(08-25-2019, 08:55 AM)sbarrera Wrote:(08-23-2019, 11:26 AM)tg63 Wrote: Some really good stuff in here.
To your third point, religion and tyranny - I submit that they align not because of any shared values, but rather the shared need for authoritarianism by nn% of the people (I'll submit that nn = approx 30, but in the end it really doesn't matter what the number is).
I agree. Religion isn't about helping people; it's about sticking to a strict code of behavior, following traditional rules. It's aligned with law and order, and suppression of women and LBGTQ people, so it fits with the right-wing politics.
Should it though? Religion can be revolutionary. Is this an emerging time of change, where the social gospel gets dusted off, and the clergy become social justice leaders? It can play that way again, but it's a long shot.
On the other hand, religion can become a cover for ethical causes. Abolitionism was clearly suited to Judeo-Christian teachings. Consider Uncle Tom's Cabin, the novel that exposed the offense that slavery was to Christianity: the slaves were better Christians, and far more heroic (her Uncle Tom was a genuine hero) than their masters. If it offended Americans that non-Christians holding Christians as slaves, then maybe it was wrong for Christians to hold Christians as slaves.
Even if a disproportionate number of the non-blacks in the struggle for civil rights for Southern blacks were Jews (I cannot discern a difference between Jewish ethics and Christian ethics -- can you?), the most effective leader of the Civil Rights movement was Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. -- and he made sure to demonstrate at every turn that recognition of the rights of Southern blacks was a mandate that one could derive from Biblical teachings as well as the lofty rhetoric of both the American Revolution and the Civil War.
OK, people can be very moral without expressing religious sentiments. People have used religion for evil causes -- I think of the Ku Klux Klan, a fascistic movement that would have committed large-scale genocide had it achieved power. Hitler and Stalin both exploited the elementary language of the Christian catechisms of the churches of their family heritage... OK. I strongly encourage any Christian to read Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not a Christian upon doing so one might lose some superstition and sentimentality and incorporate some philosophy into one's faith.
I can see good reasons for religion. One is that it may help one deal more effectively with the inevitable tragedies of life. Another is that it might answer some questions that need an answer other than the insipid language of pure reason. The big one? It might improve one.
As nasty as many events have been, it would be satisfying to believe that there is some eternal reward for human justice even if economic and political realities mock any concept of justice. I doubt that there is any special reward in Heaven in looking into some telescope or video screen that allows one to look into Hell and watch eternal torments of Nazis, Stalinists, Ba'athists, ISIS, or the usual gangsters, serial killers, and the like. That would get very old very fast. The real torment of Hell for Adolf Hitler having to watch the screen or peer through the telescope only to take a long look at delights denied him that his victims enjoy -- like Yiddish theater.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.