From: "Pro-Humanist FREELOVER" 


- - -

Some interesting historical tidbits, little known or discussed in America, are
presented in the following British article, with a stern warning regarding
both the downsides of religious faith, and what can happen when a religious
faith gains dominant control of a country, as has occurred many times
throughout history:

- - -
March 26, 2006

Believers are away with the fairies

by AC Grayling
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/portal/main.jhtml;jsessionid=N4MKRXEKEWVULQFIQMGSFFO
AVCBQWIV0?xml=/portal/2007/03/26/nosplit/ftreligion12
6.xml&posted=true&_requestid=123126
- - -

Excerpts [with one insert, not part of originating article, included in brackets]:

...

In the US, the religious Right numbers about 35 million. Recent polls show
that about 30 million Americans define themselves as hav- ing no religious
commitment.

But whereas the religious Right is a formidable body whose constituent
churches and move- ments have salaried administrators, vast funds,
television and radio outlets, and paid Washing- ton lobbyists, America's
non-religious folk are simply unconnected individuals.

It is no surprise that the religious Right has political clout and can make
a loud noise in the American public square, whereas the non-reli- gious
voice is muted.

There are two main reasons for the hardening of responses by non-religious folk.

One is that any increase in the influence of reli- gious bodies in society
threatens the de facto secular arrangement that allows all views and none
to coexist. History has shown that in soci- eties where one religious
outlook becomes dominant, an uneasy situation ensues for other outlooks; at
the extreme, religious control of society can degenerate into Taliban-like
rule.

Look at the period in which liberty of conscience was at last secured in
Christian Europe - the 16th and 17th centuries. It was an exceptionally
bloody epoch: millions died as a result of a single church's reluctance to
give up its control over what people can be allowed to think and believe.

The famous Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 accepted religious differences as
the only way of preventing religion from being an endless source of war.
Reli- gious peace did not come straight away, but even- tually it arrived,
and most of Europe for most of the years since 1700 has been free of
religiously moti- vated strife.

- - -
[insert -- one might be tempted to argue, strongly, that the mass murder of
the Jews and homosexuals and gypsies (and others) had at its core centuries
of anti-Judaism instigated/supported by Catholic theology, with all due
respect to those who did use their religion (and their humanity, or their
humanity with minimal influence from religion) to try to help the Jews (and
others) who suffered at the hands of the Nazis -- end insert]
- - -

But this is under threat in the new climate of reli- gious assertiveness.

Faith organisations are currently making common cause to achieve their
mutual ends, but, once they have achieved them, what is to stop them remem-
bering that their faiths are mutually exclusive and indeed mutually
blaspheming, and that the history of their relationship is one of
bloodshed?

The second reason why secular attitudes are hard- ening relates to the
reflective non-religious person's attitude to religion itself.

Religious belief of all kinds shares the same intel- lectual
respectability, evidential base, and rationality as belief in the existence
of fairies.

This remark outrages the sensibilities of those who have deep deep
religious convictions and attach- ments, and they regard it as insulting.
But the truth is that everyone takes this attitude about all but one (or a
very few) of the gods that have ever been claimed to exist.

No reasonably orthodox Christian believes in Aphro- dite or the rest of the
Olympian deities, or in Ganesh the Elephant God or the rest of the Hindu
pantheon, or in the Japanese emperor, and so endlessly on
- and officially (as a matter of Christian orthodoxy)
he or she must say that anyone who sincerely be- lieves in such deities is
deluded and blasphemously in pursuit of "false gods".

The atheist adds just one more deity to the list of those not believed in;
namely, the one remaining on the Christian's or Jew's or Muslim's list.

...

Judaism, Christianity and Islam are young religions in historical terms,
and came into existence after kings and emperors had more magnificently
taken the place of tribal chiefs. The new religions there- fore modelled
their respective deities on kings with absolute powers.

But for tens of thousands of years beforehand people were fundamentally
animistic, explaining the natural world by imputing agency to things
- spirits or gods in the wind, in the thunder, in the
rivers and sea.

As knowledge replaced these naiveties, so deities became more invisible,
receding to mountain tops and then to the sky or the earth's depths. One
can easily see how it was in the interests of priest- hoods, most of which
were hereditary, to keep these myths alive.

With such a view of religion - as ancient supersti- tion, as a primitive
form of explanation of the world sophisticated into mythology - it is hard
for non- religious folk to take it seriously, and equally hard for them to
accept the claim of religious folk to a disproportionate say in running
society.

This is the more so given that the active constitu- ency of all believers
in Britain is about eight per cent of the population. A majority might have
vague beliefs and occasionally go to church, but even they do not want
their lives dictated to by so small and narrow a self-selected minority.

The disproportion is a staring one. Regular Church of England churchgoers
make up three per cent of the population, yet have 26 bishops in the House
of Lords. Now that religion is bustling on to centre- stage and asking for
everyone's taxes to pay for faith schools and exemptions, this anachronism
is no longer tolerable.

And all this is happening against the background of atrocities committed by
religious fanatics in America, Europe and the Middle East, whose beliefs
are not very different from the majority of others in their faith.

The absolute certainty, the unreflective credence given to ancient texts
that relate to historically remote conditions, the zealotry and bigotry
that flow from their certainty, are profoundly danger- ous: at their
extreme they result in mass murder, but long before then they issue in
censorship, coercion to conform, the control of women, the closing of
hearts and minds.

Thus there is a continuum from the suicide bom- ber driven by religious
zeal to the moral crusader who wishes to stop everyone else from seeing or
reading what he himself finds offensive. This fact makes people of a
secular disposition no longer prepared to be silent and concessive.

Religion has lost respectability as a result of the atrocities committed in
its name, because of its clamouring for an undue slice of the pie, and for
its efforts to impose its views on others.

Where politeness once restrained non-religious folk from expressing their
true feelings about religion, both politeness and restraint have been
banished by the confrontational face that faith now turns to the modern
world.

This, then, is why there is an acerbic quarrel go- ing on between religion
and non-religion today, and it does not look as if it will end soon.

- - - end excerpts - - -

¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤ - ¤

~~~
Pro-Humanist FREELOVER
 http://fire.prohosting.com/prohuman
Freethinking Realist Exploring
Expressive Liberty, Openness,
Verity, Enlightenment, & Rationality ~~~

--- BBBS/LiI v4.01 Flag