Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Random thoughts on religion and evil.

(Private's note: I'm aware that after the picture, the font randomly changes. Blogger is currently being a shithead).

It's pretty well-established that religion is a common justification for evil. It's the classic "my God says it's true, therefore I must do it and I am absolved of all blame for my beliefs and actions." From the Crusades, the Salem witch trials, to the KKK, the IRA and Real IRA, to the Army of God, from the Taliban to al Qaeda...for some true comedy gold, check out the site 'Fundies Say the Darndest Things!,' where you get the feel for how religion can justify acts of horror. One of the most horrific recent examples is this:

A WOMAN suspected of recruiting more than 80 female suicide bombers has confessed to organising their rapes so she could later convince them that martyrdom was the only way to escape the shame.

Samira Jassam, 51, was arrested by Iraqi police and confessed to recruiting the women and orchestrating dozens of attacks.


In a video confession, she explained how she had mentally prepared the women for martyrdom operations, passed them on to terrorists who provided explosives, and then took the bombers to their targets.


“We arrested Samira Jassim, known as ‘Um al-Mumenin’, the mother of the believers, who was responsible for recruiting 80 women’‘, Major General Qassim Atta said.
“She confessed her responsibility for these actions, and she confirmed that 28 attempts had been made in one of the terrorists’ strongholds,’’ he said
Stupid Evil Bastard states:
Got that? This Muslim woman is so convinced that Allah is real instead of just a figment of her imagination that she ordered 80 of her fellow women to be raped specifically so they would be vulnerable to being pressured into becoming suicide bombers. She not only was convinced that suicide bombing was justified by her religion, but she felt justified in having her fellow Muslim women raped to further the cause she believed in. She is so convinced of the rightness of what she’s done in the name of Allah that she’s confessed to the crimes on video. She sees nothing wrong with it. It was a necessary thing to do because women are less likely to be searched at checkpoints making them more likely to get through with explosives under their robes.

It’s hard to imagine how anyone could consider this even remotely conscionable, yet here’s someone who’s convinced it was perfectly reasonable because she believes in an invisible sky fairy who will reward the women in the afterlife even if their sacrifice was coerced through rape and manipulation. What’s a little rape and exploitation when Allah will reward them for eternity once they blow themselves up? Only a True Believer™ could think like that.
This is one of the problems of atheism: that the line between atheism and antitheism is quite blurred, and easily cross into each other. Atheists tend to get caught up in their dislike of religion that they forget that if it weren't for religion, humanity would find other excuses such acts. Take, for example, the Rwandan Genocide. The genocide was the finality of the war, which itself was the fruit of European colonization (Germany and later Belgium 'racialised' the ethnic groups (with the Tutsis considered 'superior' to the Hutus), fostering a hatred between the ethnicities that accumunated in the genocide).

From TIME:

We step inside Nyamata church and my guide, Josh Ruxin, points out the wall where babies were smashed up against the brick.

...

A holocaust colors everything that follows, alters the essence of a nation. And it fosters a lasting mystery — an incomprehension over how man could behave so inhumanly to man. At his offices in Kigali, President Paul Kagame says: "Hutu fathers killed their own children because some of them resembled their wives, who were Tutsi. How do you explain that?"
This was an act of evil that stemmed from a raw, racist-nationalist hatred of another ethnic group. Religion played no part in its justification. If religion had been the justification for the Hutu genocide atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens would cite it as further proof of the raw evil that is religion.

Lt. Ville makes his point clear in this post:

And this my main gripe with dogma and religion: if people follow it so devoutly and if it is so contradictory, conflated and confused then, then there can be untold consequences. The Taliban, for example (an extreme one too), distort the message of the Koran to brainwash their militia. The question, then, is would they be able to do it as successfully or as passionately without the Koran? Could they be an irreligious militia and be just as effective? If so, then what’s the point in following (and subsequently misreading) the Koran anyway? And how might one vote differently if they were religious? They would have a different slant on things perhaps.

To conclude, I think it’s ridiculous to follow dogma as a way to guide one’s life. But I think you all know that already
.
(my emphasis)

My answer is "Yes, you can be a sociopathic terrorist organisaton lacking in religion.” The Nazis and current neo-Nazis are mostly irreligious. Some neo-Nazis even believe that Christianity is a tool of Jews, because the New Testament continues from the Old. Neo-Nazis justify their evil by the belief that they are in a 'race war' and if they don't kill all the non-whites, then the non-whites (the footsoldiers of the Jews) will kill them.

Now, how different is that from the Taliban? The Taliban believe almost the same thing, only replacing 'whites' with 'ultraconservative hardline Muslims' and 'non-whites' with 'West.' What we have is almost identical beliefs, merely with differing justifications.

And if you don’t have nationalism, good ol’ vengeance works pretty well.


Atheists should also keep in mind that science has been used to justify evil. After the enlightenment, ‘God’ was no longer an acceptable answer for unanswered questions. People began examining and studying the world for answers, thus helping fuel the growth of the scientific method. However, during this time, slavery was still in existence, and “the good book says so” was no longer an appropriate answer (not on its own, anyway). So people turned to science to justify this evil-and scientific racism was born. Take, for example, this photo from Gliddon and Nott’s Indiginous Races of the Earth (1857).


This is a perfect example how science overtook religion as a justification for evil. Today, we can see a similar parallel with gay rights. Before, religion was the sole justification for the oppression of gays. Although religion still plays a part, homophobes are aware of the influence and power of science. This is where pseudo-scientists such as Paul Cameron come in. Cameron is a ‘scientist’ whose theories and methods have been debunked by various psychological organisations, such as the ASA and CPA. However, despite being discredited, Cameron still peddles his hatred disguised as science-that gays molest children, they're a public health hazard, they're diseased (I feel like I'm describing The Eternal Jew here)...you get the idea.

If Cameron is proof of anything, it is that science is as easily twisted and abused for evil as religion is.


Perhaps atheists should loosen their hang-ups on religion-if history has taught us anything (asides from the fact that we never learn from it), it's that people will use any excuse to justify evil. Religion is simply the most common.


Fun stuff can be read here, here and here.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

As Steven Weinberg said "With or without religion you'll have good people doing good things and bad people doing bad things...but for good people to do bad things, that takes religion".

Dawkins does get carried away with pointing the blame at religion; I agree. But I still maintain that it takes a certain kind of absolutist, irrational mind to become a fascist/murder etc. Religion might not be the sole cause, but it certainly makes it easier.

Private 'Baldrick' Tom said...

I still maintain that religion is the most common and easist rationalisation for acts of evil. Still some of the worst crimes against humanity have had nothing to do with religion (holocaust and rwandan genocide). someone should tell dawkins that.

RVBM said...

Tom, have you read any Dawkins?

Private 'Baldrick' Tom said...

No. Should I? Any particularly good ones?

RVBM said...

Well obviously you should consider hearing his arguments before making sweeping accusations. Just listening to his random TV outputs doesn't cut it.

Private 'Baldrick' Tom said...

I'm not making sweeping generalisations. I'm just noting that religion isn't the sole justification of evil, despite what other, more prominent, atheists think.

RVBM said...

But you don't really know what Dawkins thinks until you've read his literature; same goes for other atheists/celebrities et al.

Do you not think that a certain kind of religious way of thinking harbors extremism/fundamentalism?

Private 'Baldrick' Tom said...

I think that a certain kind of thinking harbours violence and extremism. This kind of thinking uses anything to justify itself; religion is the easiest way. If I didn't think so, I wouldn't have provided a link to FSTDT.

Bron said...

There's always Wordpress...

Heard of Cesare Lombroso? He was an early criminologist who believed that you can tell who is a "criminal" using physiognomy and eugenics etc., i.e. criminal "genes" are inherited.

See more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cesare_Lombroso

Your use of "scientific racism" just made me think of him and his bullshit.