I’ve just enjoyed this Youtube video of Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith, declaring secular jihad on anyone with religious faith -
Harris is introduced on stage with the lines…
In a progressively more secularised world it sometimes seems that the only religious people out there are fanatics and frankly I’m fed up with them. You look into any over the top cruel and wanton atrocity in the world today and the chances are you'll find some scripture-spouting nutbar judging and condemning and punishing and happily killing the innocent while cloaked in the garb of faith
Now the thing is I know that a lot of people, friends even, with whom I share views about lots of other issues buy this line of thinking hook line and sinker
The problem is that it is total crap.
No. Religion is not the major driver for conflict in the world today. But there are lots of vested interests out there who want us all to think like that. And it’s no accident that people like Harris, and their ideas and books linking terrorism to religion (as opposed to linking terrorism to occupation) get as much promotion as they do. They pose and posture as spokesmen for progressive thinking yet, at the same time, they perpetuate the hype and bullshit that are being used to justify fucking people over just because they don’t think like us.
When you look into any over the top cruel and wanton atrocity in the world today the chances are you’ll find somebody stealing something from someone else – oil, land, water, whatever. The underlying motivations rarely have anything to do with religion.
Sure, religion is often thrown up as a smokescreen but, to be honest, racial or political differences have been much more popular excuses for at least the last couple of centuries
There’s some classic doublethink going on here and it’s depressing to see how so many people on the Secular Left can, for example, condemn the invasion and occupation of Iraq as being ‘all about oil’ yet at the same time spout the old ‘religion is the cause of all wars’ canard.
As the Wise Old Sea Otter understands, you could do away with all religion tomorrow and the wars would just keep on coming.
Harris, and Dawkins, are flat wrong.
And they're acting like, and encouraging all those persuaded by their line of thinking to also act like, globalist bitches in the process.
That’s not to say that many religions are not riddled with dangerous gobbledigook that can be exploited by the wicked or the insane but, as Dawkins and his ilk like to conveniently forget, proving that the other bloke is ‘wrong’ is nowhere near the same thing as proving that you are ‘right’.
And without sounding like I’m quoting from some sappy chick flick, so what if religion appears to be irrational? So is appreciation of music, the concept of Good and Bad, platonic love, caring for the weak, or the rules of cricket – in fact, most of the things that separate us from animals, and Vulcans
Mr Spock - Doesn't laugh, only gets laid once every eleven years, unsettled by not understanding the LBW rule...Fuck it, if we’re going to be super rational about things we’re going to have to strip out all sentimentality from human affairs and start favouring the genetically strong and selectively culling or sterilising the weak or the inferior.
Come to think of it, some unfortunate souls have already experienced life under ultra-secular regimes managed in accordance with rational ‘scientific’ principles.
They didn’t seem to enjoy it very much.
Ah, but that's because the Nazi, or the Stalinist, or the Maoist, understanding of what constitutes 'Rational' was flawed and Ours isn't
Yeah, right
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