religion and charity
Jul. 8th, 2007 09:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miriam_eWhy is it that even religious moderates are so often convinced that you need religion or faith to be a good person or to find purpose in life? It is incredibly arrogant. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised. It is really no more arrogant than believing that out of thousands of irrational beliefs, theirs is the only one that is right.
I listened to The Spirit of Things tonight. Big mistake. The guy being interviewed was amazing, but tripped and fell headfirst into the metaphoric mud when he said that faith is necessary for purpose. And Rachael Kohn clearly showed her limitations when she implied that religion gives us charity. Of course she ignored all the charitable atheists and agnostics (oh, but they don't count -- how could atheists possibly be charitable?). Ignore the fact that the least religious countries regularly live up to their international aid promises, whereas the most religious countries have never done so. The least religious countries have the most peaceful and healthy populations, whereas the most religious countries are split by fear and hatred and obscene wealth contrasted with appalling poverty.
Are people so willingly blind?
Sure, some religious people can be good and charitable, but on balance religion's harm far, far outweighs any good it has ever done. While atheists and agnostics quietly get on with the job of doing good without constantly trumpeting how great they are.
I listened to The Spirit of Things tonight. Big mistake. The guy being interviewed was amazing, but tripped and fell headfirst into the metaphoric mud when he said that faith is necessary for purpose. And Rachael Kohn clearly showed her limitations when she implied that religion gives us charity. Of course she ignored all the charitable atheists and agnostics (oh, but they don't count -- how could atheists possibly be charitable?). Ignore the fact that the least religious countries regularly live up to their international aid promises, whereas the most religious countries have never done so. The least religious countries have the most peaceful and healthy populations, whereas the most religious countries are split by fear and hatred and obscene wealth contrasted with appalling poverty.
Are people so willingly blind?
Sure, some religious people can be good and charitable, but on balance religion's harm far, far outweighs any good it has ever done. While atheists and agnostics quietly get on with the job of doing good without constantly trumpeting how great they are.
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Date: 2007-07-09 07:41 am (UTC)that a magic Jew nailed himself to a cross in order to die for sins that I didn't know I had committed
This is something that always had me puzzled. Sins are not clearly not transferrable. I'd never been able to understand how anybody could accept such gibberish. It is like elevating to a transcendant spiritual level the nonsense old surrealist joke "Q: What is the difference between a duck? A: Because one leg is both the same as the other." It seemed to me that people find it easier to believe in something that is startlingly inane than something that is obvious, but ordinary. (Like the nutty people who believe that crop circles are evidence of a superior culture are trying to communicate with us, instead of accepting the two guys who owned up to doing it as a practical joke.)
However I was reading the brilliant Why won't God heal amputees? (http://whydoesgodhateamputees.com) website a while back and he explained it neatly. It is all about blood sacrifice. Back in old times when a person transgressed they had to sacrifice a goat, or for a big sin they had to sacrifice a bull. The ultimate sacrifice is a human sacrifice. Seen in this way, from the perspective of savages 2,000 years ago it seems almost logical. Of course it still doesn't work from our perspective as modern people. Today we have no reason to believe such silliness. But if people are willing to suspend disbelief sufficiently to accept that a god tortured and killed his son to forgive us sins not yet committed (so long as we believe it -- if not we are tortured forever in obsessive revenge)... if they are able to make that leap, then as you say, adding the sweetener that it somehow makes you a better person makes it much easier to swallow.