EA Worldview reports: The Islamic Front, Syria’s largest insurgent bloc, and other factions have issued a Revolutionary Covenant setting out political and military principles.
The Covenant declares a commitment to a fight not only against the Assad regime but also the Islamic State of Iraq and as-Sham. It promises respect for human rights and the pursuit of “a state of law, freedom, and justice, without any sort of pressure or dictatorship” for all Syrians, including ethnicities and minorities. [Continue reading…]
Those lofty undertakings sound great, until you bring in religion. Christopher Hitchens was right,- “Religion poisons everything.” Followers of the so called Western Values System, aka. – Judaeo/Christian Values, know this and cynically exploit the situation. To their own advantage of course. The situation in Libya, Iraq, and Syria demonstrates again that revolution, with hardly an exception, leads to more of the same. Take Libya, the most advanced country in North Africa, reduced to a basket case by US, UK and French forces in the lead. Now the West pretends to be hoping that the next general will sort out the mess.
Being anti-religion is no more realistic than believing in a god. The ability to see how religion complicates human affairs won’t make it go away.
If the Enlightenment, as a cultural force, was not sufficient to drive religion to extinction, then today’s enlightened pipsqueaks like Dawkins and Hitchens can preach all they want about the virtues of rationality while fighting a losing battle against the evangelicals and the fundamentalists.
We live in a pluralistic world where the religious and non-religious have no choice but to figure out how to live side by side.
I am suspicious of the term – anti -, been used too often to silence the malcontents.
‘Some of my best friends go to church every Sunday,” does apply. Non-religious would
be a better choice. We prefer to know and not to believe in dogmas that remain unprovable.
We accept that religious faith has its roots in ancient superstition and ignorance, we know
that the process of substantially weakening the multitude of flavours that exist, will take a few more centuries. The “pipsqueaks” Hitchens and Dawkins came 3 centuries after Newton, Voltaire and Kant, who came 3 centuries after Luther, who came 1 century after Johannes Hus, who was burned on the stake. As time passes, penalties for having a different opinion are less severe and acceptance is slowly going mainstream.
Agreed, we have “to figure out how to live side by side.” With the world population approaching 9,5 billion, we would be well advised to figure that out fast.
To call religion “poison” sounds to me anti-religion — but maybe that’s just because I have a negative view of poison.
If you want to construct a group of people and label them as non-religious, I’d belong to that group, but as this exchange makes evidence, not belonging to a religious group doesn’t reveal much about what people might hold in common. I’m non-religous but I’m not among those who “accept that religious faith has its roots in ancient superstition and ignorance.”
Clearly, that view of religion neither articulates what religion means to those who practice it, neither does it provide a coherent theory of religion. It involves a very commonplace and skewed perspective on religion which is to focus on doctrines and belief systems. In most of the world however, religion describes social networks and practices as much if not more than beliefs.
Religion is a form of human behavior and was in evidence long before the dawn of civilization. Indeed, it most likely evolved in tandem with the other pillars of human culture such as language, music, and dance.
Rational thought could be described as a form of cognitive technology. We use it because we find it useful. But that alone does not fully account for who we are. We also do lots of other things that are irrational, like watching spectator sports.
A strong argument could be made that the world would be better off without spectator sports. They epitomize irrational behavior and facilitate all sorts of unhealthy activities like binging on junk food, drinking too much beer, gambling, street fighting, etc.
Once the world has been liberated from the shackles of religion, maybe the next target should be sport. After that, maybe we should get rid of music. If music makes people feel good by stimulating the release of dopamine, maybe we should just take the dopamine and forget about the music.
Personally, I find evangelism in any form objectionable and it doesn’t make any difference whether those promoting their views are religious or secular.
Hitchens used the word poison in the sense that the things we love may poison our minds.
Like some of our favorite foods and drinks may slowly but surely kill us.
Thanks for confirming that religion evolved long before the dawn of civilization, together with other pillars of human culture.
I know that spectator sport is used to distract and entertain, thus performs similar functions to religion. The big difference is that much less blood is spilled in the name of sport.
I could not make the connection between evangelism and secular.
Of all the conflicts supposedly fought in the name of religion, the one most often viewed in that way is between Israelis and Palestinians — the battle over the Holy Land. But this is fight over land and dispossession — religion is just a distraction. If both sides renounced religion the conflict wouldn’t go away. Likewise, most other places where religion supposedly defines a conflict these turn out not to be disputes about theology — religious differences lie at the surface while underneath there are more significant forms of social injustice.
Get rid of religion and the injustices in the world would still fuel conflict. Get rid of the injustices and I dare say there would be far less religious conflict.