Caliann the Elf <calianng_graves at yahoo.com> writes: > Hhhmmm, okay, I am about to have a bunch of people come unglued on > me, but that is life. > > When a PERSON does nasty, evil things to another PERSON, the > religion they supposedly follow is not to blame. The PERSON who > does the nasty, evil things is to blame. > > When a group of PEOPLE do nasty, evil things to other PEOPLE, their > religion is not to blame. The PEOPLE who did those things are to > blame. > > I have yet to see the Scriptures of a major religion propose > violence and harm upon others, even those not of their religion. > The Bible does not do so. The Quran does not do so. The Talmud > does not do so. In fact, in all of them, you will find a LOT of > teachings that can be effectively translated as "Will you PLEASE be > NICE to each other? Thanks, this is your God." Then you've never looked at the bible, in particular. I'm an extremely poor biblical scholar, but even I can point out that the early Israelites were punished for being *too lenient* to defeated enemies, and that while the injunction against letting a witch live may be a mistranslation, that argument is about "witch", not about the rest of it, so *somebody* shouldn't be allowed to live. And then of course there's the set Jubal exhibits to Ben in Stranger, that you can look up there. Many examples of the Bible either calling for harm explicitly, or rewarding people for harming people, or punishing people for not harming people. > Religion isn't evil. Religion isn't good. Those poor books do try > to tell people to be good, but people have this uncanny knack of > seeing only what they want to see. It's not the poor book's fault. > > I wouldn't have a problem with Christians if they would just follow > the teachings of Christ. Christ was a pretty nice guy and I'd > probably have fun getting into a theological discussion with him. I > wouldn't have a problem with Muslims if they would only follow the > teachings of Muhammad. I think Muhammad was a pretty neat guy > too....he had a thing for women being warriors. I can get behind > that kind of thinking. > > The existence of a Deity is not provable. The non-existence of a > Deity is not provable. ( Learned that in Philosophy 101...man, was > my prof a sadist) That some choose to believe in a Deity makes them > no better or worse than those who do not. Religion encourages people to make decisions on "faith" rather than evidence. Religion often introduces non-human scale issues into the argument, which completely discombobulates most human thought processes and leads to wrong results for the humans. I consider these two things to be significant evils. > The responsibility for evils committed does not lie with the > religion followed by those who perpetrated those evils. It lies > with the *people* who committed them. That's in some ways true. So long as you acknowledge the same thing about all good done by people. I think it's fair to blame a religion for behavior exhibited by people uner its sway if it's clear how the official or actual teachings of the religion lead to that behavior. > A side note about those poor books that everyone seems to be using > as an excuse to do nasty, evil things: Imagine some nutcase reading > the Taltos series and deciding that he is now a follower of the > Prophet Vlad, who speaks for God, a.k.a. Steve. Now if this looney > goes out and kills some people in the name of the Holy Order of > Assasination, who is to blame? The nutcase? Or perhaps Steve is to > blame for being God? Steve's books are identified as fiction, and identified as taking place on a world different from this one. That makes it pretty clear to me. -- David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b at dd-b.net / http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/ John Dyer-Bennet 1915-2002 Memorial Site http://john.dyer-bennet.net Dragaera mailing lists, see http://dragaera.info