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In Reply to: Re: Good article about religion posted by Mr. Don on February 04, 2008 at 17:48:58:
The author of that article has such a poor grasp of history that it hardly bears commenting on. For example take this quotation: "The best example of religious persecution in America is the Salem witch trials. How many people were killed in those trials? Thousands? Hundreds? Actually, fewer than 25."
That is pure b.s. if I ever heard it. The best example of religious persecution in America, as well as the Americas, is the genocide of indigenous peoples. They were slaughtered by the millions because they were considered pagans, even less than human, by their Christian conquerors. No honest person can claim that religion had nothing to do with that, as the author of that article claims, i.e., that it was only about power and territory.
So if the author gets it so wrong, why should anyone care what else he has to say? Because that argument is the most common and frequent one used by religionists to claim that secularism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history.
With regard to Fascism, those who invoke "secular" tyranny in contrast to religion are hoping that we will forget two things: the connection between the Christian churches and Fascism, and the capitulation of the churches to National Socialism.
As for Communism, communist absolutists did not so much negate religion (except in rare cases like Albania), in societies that they well understood were saturated with faith and superstition, as seek to replace it. For example: the solemn elevation of infallible leaders who were a source of endless bounty and blessing; the permanent search for heretics and schismatics; the mumification of dead leaders as icons and relics; the lurid show trials that elicited incredible confessions by means of torture - none of this is very difficult to interpret in traditional, religious terms.
All that the totalitarians have demonstrated is that the religious impulse - the need to worship - can take even more monstrous forms if it is repressed. This might not necessarily be a compliment to your worshipping tendency. Think about it.
Furthermore, there is nothing in modern secular argument that even hints at any ban on religious observance (see my post on Journeys re: Humanism). Freud was correct to describe the religious impulse, in The Future of an Illusion, as essentially ineradicable until or unless humans can conquer their fear of death and a tendency to wish-thinking.
