Men never commit evil so fully and joyfully as when they do it for religious convictions

[Taverner]

Your thoughts?

I think its spot on, personally.

[LaurenG]

1. We're living it - the religious wars will always be until all people

finally "get" what the great teachers were trying to say. It sucks that we are so violent and manipulative, it really sucks.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

2. Fly a place into a building,

get eternal joy with a slew of virgins.

What's not to rejoice about?

We'd be so much better off without religion. But every sentient human knows that, save for the morons who can't accept responsibility for their own actions ....................

[ZombieHorde]

3. What was Pol Pot's conviction? nt

[Taverner]

5. Marxism had become religion

"Angkha" as they called it, was an omniscient, omnipresent and omnivorous god...

[ZombieHorde]

9. Do you have a link regarding "Angkha", my google search revealed nothing religious. nt

[Taverner]

11. "Angka. Who is Angka? What is Angka? Where is Angka? Definition of Angka. Meaning of Angka"

http://knowledgerush.com/kr/encyclopedia/Angka/

You tell me that isn't a religion

[ZombieHorde]

13. Interesting link, I am going to reserve judgement until ...

(until) I read some of those links found on your link. Thanks for the link.

[Occam Bandage]

35. Angka was the name of the ruling body, meaning nothing more than "The Organization."

Equating that to a religion is nonsense.

[Joe Chi Minh]

4. A nice, banal, catch-all sop to atheists' least discriminating prejudices.

Who would own up to the authorship of such a vapid platitude?

How would he know? Would he have been an expert on the fullest expressions of evil? And the fullest sentiments of joy? How wide and comprehensive was the survey he conducted? Have there been, are there exceptions? Black swans? Religiously-motivated evil-doers who are kind of feckless and, maybe, grim? I think we should be told.

[Taverner]

6. Blaise Pascal would own up to that

It was his quote

But I agree 100%

[CoffeeCat]

8. Is that Pascal...

...of "Pascal's wager"?

I always thought that wager was interesting...

[ZombieHorde]

22. His wager would be interesting if there was only one religion. nt

[ChadwickHenryWard]

24. The really interesting thing to me about Pascal's Wager

is that it is really a reason to pretend to believe in god. The assumption is that you will be saved if you act as though you believe in god. It's not an argument in favor of god's existence. It's really sort of ambivalent on the matter. I've always thought it was a little bit sad if the best argument they can make in favor of their god's existence assumes an equal likelihood of nonexistence.

[Joe Chi Minh]

27. You make an interesting point. It was evidently another exampe of his

more superfical thinking.

In fact, credence, credulity, KNOWLEDGE even, all these things are not the key issue in faith, at all. That is a commitment to a self-giving love, Charity. And there is no substitute, no alternative acceptable to God.

He, evidently, made our deepest assumptions regarding his existence or otherwise non-measurable, at least until the end time, beyond the ken of science, which deals only with the material and hence most superficial aspects of his creation. Although, personally, I shouldn't be surprised if these latest space explorations and the Hadron Collider experiments add further incontrovertible evidence (at least to the sound of mind) of Creation.

In other words, God judges us on the disposition of our heart, the seat of wisdom, not on the level of our worldy intelligence, still less our credulity. One consequence of this, is that he likes to leave "wriggle-room" for people to find specious intellectual justifications of rejecting his teachings if so disposed. It will, of course, pick up those who are esentially ill-disposed, but also, according to Christ's own description of the Last Judgement in Matthew's gospel, some whose hearts are indeed very well-disposed, but that won't matter. All that matters is that commitment to charity, which is itself a spirit inspired by God: in some, as yet, inchoate form. Indeed, his own Spirit.

[Jokerman]

29. "further incontrovertible evidence...of Creation"

There can't be FURTHER incontrovertible evidence of creation when there is currently NO incontrovertible evidence of creation.

However I'm sure you'll find some way to further insult the mental soundness of anyone who disagrees.

[Joe Chi Minh]

30. Why bother? It's you people who start the aggressive anti-religious postings. I just respond.

But why bother with details, eh?

[Jokerman]

38. "you people" - WTF?

I don't recall ever starting an "aggressive anti-religious posting" but as you say, "why bother with details".

[ChadwickHenryWard]

37. I don't really know how to respond to all that.

You make a whole bunch of gnostic claims about god. Since it's all guesswork, I can't really form a response to that. But I can respond to the bits about science. I'm not aware of any evidence of divine creation, from the fields of space exploration and particle physics or any others. And I don't think science is superficial at all. I think it answers the most important questions we can ask.

And one last thing: the heart is not the "seat of wisdom." The brain is the seat of intelligence and emotion. I find it unusual that that ancient Egyptian belief has filtered down through the ages to this day.

[Joe Chi Minh]

26. Well, of course, Pascal was a mystic; what many here would call a religious nut,

fanatic, fundie, etc. He was otherwise a very wise man, and evidently, a brilliantly innovative thinker. He eventually gave up science, doubtless, like Newton, in disgust at the absurd importance it was accorded! Plus ca change.... Here are a couple of quotes from Wikipedia, for the benefit of those not familiar with his life at all, or who, like me, knew a little and forgot most of it:

" Pascal was a mathematician of the first order. He helped create two major new areas of research. He wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of sixteen, and later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science*. Following Galileo and Torricelli, in 1646 he refuted Aristotle's followers who insisted that nature abhors a vacuum. His results caused many disputes before being accepted.

In 1646, he and his sister Jacqueline converted to Jansenism.<1> His father died in 1651. Following a mystical experience in late 1654, he had his "second conversion", abandoned his scientific work, and devoted himself to philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provinciales and the Pensées, the former set in the conflict between Jansenists and Jesuits. In this year, he also wrote an important treatise on the arithmetic of triangles. Between 1658 and 1659 he wrote on the cycloid and its use in calculating the volume of solids."

...and here's another beaut that figured earlier in the article:

"At the age of eleven, he composed a short treatise on the sounds of vibrating bodies, and Étienne responded by forbidding his son to further pursue mathematics until the age of fifteen so as not to harm his study of Latin and Greek. One day, however, Étienne found Blaise (now twelve) writing an independent proof that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles with a piece of coal on a wall. From then on, the boy was allowed to study Euclid; perhaps more importantly, he was allowed to sit in as a silent on-looker at the gatherings of some of the greatest mathematicians and scientists in Europe—such as Roberval, Desargues, Mydorge, Gassendi, and Descartes—in the monastic cell of Père Mersenne."

I believe that, as a child, he worked out for himself the first "so many?" laws of Euclidian geometry. (I wondered what non-Euclidian geometry might be. Turns out it is: "..... characterized by a non-vanishing Riemann curvature tensor." Oh, well. That clears that up)

However, it is very interesting to reflect on your quote and its unlikely-seeming source, Tavener, and just goes to show that anger can prompt the wisest people to indulge in outbursts of the emptiest bloviations. The reality probably is that his eminent fame and status did little to rein back such impulses. No doubt, he was prompted by one or more particular instances of the "less savoury" attitudes and actions of leaders of the institutional church or churches of his own day; and/or indeed an earlier time.

*He's also got a lot to answer for on that score, though it seems highly unlikely that he would have viewed either field as propitious for "elevation" to a scientific or quasi scientific status. (The term, "elevation" was used ironically).

[ChadwickHenryWard]

23. A nice, narrow, pedantic reading of what was clearly not intended as a scientific statement.

I think it's a little silly to apply scientific rigors to an opinion.

[Joe Chi Minh]

25. Well, it did strike me as unworthy of old Tavener, like the sententious piffle

of an angry schoolboy.

By "scientific", I take it you mean, "reasoned". Tav asked our opinions, and I prefer a reasoned response rather than juvenile bloviations. It seems that what you read as "pedantic", I consider "maturely reasoned". All part of life's rich pageant.

[Fresh_Start]

7. I think that people doing things for country

have been equally evil and joyful about being evil.

[timtom]

10. Self delete.

Forget it. I'm pissed off at everything today.

[wryter2000]

12. You know...we just lost Mother Wright in Oakland

She fed thousands of people because she believed the Lord told her to do it. So, you could say the same thing about people doing good.

I'd rather not throw that baby out with the bathwater.

[Taverner]

15. Judge people by their actions

In the end, its whether you're part of the problem or the solution

The one exception that comes up is always John Brown

Damned if I know the answer on that one...but chances are he would have just freed the slaves if he didn't believe in an afterlife...

[wryter2000]

17. Then, judge evil doers by their actions

And leave their religion out of it. If you want to make the assertion that people justify evil with religion you'd better also assert that people do good because of their religion.

[Taverner]

19. But you have to be blind to see that religion is a progenator of evil

[Occam Bandage]

36. It sounds like you're taking that as an article of faith.

"You have to be blind not to see it" is usually a statement made by people who are willfully blinding themselves. It's certainly true that religion is often used as a justification for evil, but to claim that an excuse is the same as a cause is unsupported.

[pscot]

14. The thugs at Buchenwald didn't do it for religion

They did it because it was their job. People need no excuse. They just have to get used to it.

[Taverner]

16. Institutionalized religion

The Nazi party was very popular with the Catholics and Lutherans (ML was the anti-semite's anti-semite)

Just a matter of convincing those volks that the National Socialist goals were the same as their's

[struggle4progress]

33. Empty sloganeering is really no substitute for careful historical study. There is by now

an extensive literature on the structure and politics of Germany in the period between the wars, and an equally extensive literature on the Nazis' path to power and their consolidation of power, once they had obtained it. The Nazi path to power involved both dishonesty and violence, and the consolidation of power involved a combination of terror and misdirection: had the Nazis been "very popular" (as you claim) it would have been unnecessary for them to outlaw all opposition parties and to use violence against those who disagreed with them

[ChadwickHenryWard]

21. That's where fully and joyfully comes in.

The quote doesn't say no one else has ever committed evil. If they're just doing their job, it's not "fully and joyfully."

[pscot]

28. Religious ecstasy isn't the only source of

joyful commitment. I'm sure sadism carries its own special charge. Then there are the quotidian pleasures of a job well done. Not to mention the joy that comes from sucking up to the boss: "The Fuhrer is proud of you, Eichmann. No other camp has ever managed to dispose of 4 trainloads in a single week. There will be a medal in this for you."

[Boojatta]

18. I take equal joy in making evil polls that are anti-religious and evil polls that are pro-religious

[ChadwickHenryWard]

20. If you're liberal with the definition of "religion."

A dogmatic or quasi-religious conviction, can be dangerous, with or without the supernatural trappings.

[humblebum]

31. No religious convictions here:The Guinness Book of World Records

The Guinness Book of World Records . Look up the category "Judicial" and under the subject of "Crimes: Mass Killings," the greatest massacre ever imputed by the government of one sovereign against the government of another is 26.3 million Chinese during the regime of Mao Tse Tung between the years of 1949 and May 1965. The Walker Report published by the U.S. Senate Committee of the Judiciary in July 1971 placed the parameters of the total death toll in China since 1949 between 32 and 61.7 million people. An estimate of 63.7 million was published by Figaro magazine on November 5, 1978.
In the U.S.S.R. the Nobel Prize winner, Alexander Solzhenitsyn estimates the loss of life from state repression and terrorism from October 1917 to December 1959 under Lenin and Stalin and Khrushchev at 66.7 million.
Finally, in Cambodia "as a percentage of a nation's total population, the worst genocide appears to be that in Cambodia, formerly Kampuchea. According to the Khmer Rouge foreign minister, more than one third of the eight million Khmer were killed between April 17, 1975 and January 1979. One third of the entire country was put to death under the rule of Pol Pot, the founder of the Communist Party of Kampuchea. During that time towns, money and property were abolished. Economic execution by bayonet and club was introduced for such offenses as falling asleep during the day, asking too many questions, playing non-communist music, being old and feeble, being the offspring of an undesirable, or being too well educated. In fact, deaths in the Tuol Sleng interrogation center in Phnom Penh, which is the capitol of Kampuchea, reached 582 in a day."

[Odin2005]

"For good people to do evil things, THAT takes religion" --Steve Weinberg, physicist

[DU GrovelBot]

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[Occam Bandage]

34. Except for the Holocaust, the Great Cultural Revolution in China, the Khmer Rouge,

the entirety of Soviet history, the ongoing and recent genocides in sub-Saharan Africa, the entirety of the history of the nation of South Africa, the entirety of the Colonial period in both Indian and African history, the ethnic cleansing in former Yugoslavia, both World Wars, every war that occurred as a result of the Cold War, and most crimes that are committed on a daily basis, yes, that is a very true statement.

Which is to say it is not remotely true.

[humblebum]

39. Your argument just doesn't stand up to the evidence

indicating otherwise.

[anonymous171]

40. Veneration of the state is more powerful, imo.

Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia come to mind.

[Occam Bandage]

41. I agree strongly, and would expand that to

"veneration of a state, an ideology, a religion, or an ethnic group."

I think religion can be equally as powerful as nationalism. I think ideology can be equally as powerful, as seen in China's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. I think ethnic identity can be equally as powerful, as seen in the troubled history of post-Colonial Africa.

[anonymous171]

42. I would agree with that.

Anything that absolves the individual of their moral obligation as a human being is both incredibly powerful and dangerous.

[Jeffersonian Dem]

43. Not joyfully. Hatefully.

Power-hungry, self-important, self-righteous "religious" bigots and hypocrites commit evil hatefully, not joyfully. That's what I think, and see.