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Page: Profile: Wren's Nest News Local
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Article: 14699
[Religious]
Date Posted:
1/6/2006
9:38:26 am EST
Wvox Stats
Views: 7,913
RSS: 22,808
Comments: 25
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Is religion the root of all evil?
Author: Professor Richard Dawkins Source: Belfast Telegraph
Title: Is religion the root of all evil?
Known as ‘ Darwin’s Rottweiler’, Professor Richard Dawkins relishes controversy. In his new TV series he explains how religion is a form of abuse – and why God is man’s most destructive invention ++ Why do you believe in your God? Because he talks to you inside your head? The Yorkshire Ripper claimed his murders were ordered by Jesus
Imagine, sang John Lennon, a world with no religion. Imagine no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7, no Crusades, no witch-hunts, no Gunpowder Plot, no Kashmir dispute, no Indian partition, no Israel/Palestine war, no Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no Northern Ireland “troubles”. Imagine no Taliban to blow up ancient statues, no public beheadings of blasphemers, no flogging of female skin for the crime of showing an inch of it. Imagine no persecutions of the Jews – no Jews to persecute indeed, for, without religious taboos against marrying out, the Diaspora would long ago have merged into Europe.
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Community Thoughts: There are 25 comments posted | Reverse Sort |
| Then Again | Jan 7th. at 3:51:19 am EST
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Talisman (mckinney, Tennessee) - Email Me
Before all of these western religions that were created and evolved from earlier ones,all of the pre-Christian viewed peoples of the world were well about thier business killing and conquering each other just as we are now...
Just ask your Roman,Greek,Chinese,Aztec,native American ancestors about peace and love with thier fellow man just to name a few..
Organized religion only helps as a tool,the rest is all US..Humans as a whole seem to have a very good handle on warfare,which seems to be our best quality if you observe the history of our species...well,maybe warfare and the arts,and self entertainment..
Or is warfare our ultimate self entertaining artform?
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| So What? | Jan 7th. at 1:46:38 am EST
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Melantha Eos (Corvallis, California) - Email Me
All I have to say is with the "religion being evil thing"... so what? If we didn't have religion, people would just find something else to fight over. Its in human nature to be afraid of what we don't understand.
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| Yes And No. | Jan 6th. at 10:12:03 pm EST
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bigcat (peoria, Illinois) - Email Me
There are times when I have felt that religion, especially organized religion, often is the worst thing mankind could have invented for itself. While it originated as a set of rules to guide a community in its day to day affairs, it has also often been used as a way to justify the cruelest most reprehensible behavior humans have been known to dish out to one another- all in the mistaken belief that somehow they will be rewarded in some wonderful afterlife for killing the infidel or enforcing the rules as a way to dominate their own people- or their neighbors and their resources for gain.
Politics adopted many religious trappings over the years even as it was set apart from religion, which explains the fervor of patriotism and an adherence to the community affairs and its leaders and runs a close second in the worse invention category. The only thing that keeps both on this earth, unfortunately, is the sense of community both foster and the only thing that can temper either one into something worthwhile is the hope that tolerance can also be instituted as part of the regimen, because the world is growing smaller than it used to be, and we no longer have the luxury of distance and natural barriers to separate countries and communities that we once did. If there is to be a peaceful future at all, much of the useless baggage of the past such as arrogance and self centered gain, must be discarded in favor of tolerance-- or the peace of the future will only be extnction.
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| Every Root Has Its Beginnings | Jan 6th. at 9:03:05 pm EST
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Jedi Gordy (Edinboro, Pennsylvania) - Email Me
Religion does not create conflict. It merely justifies it. And sometimes, Conflict creates a religion to justify itself. Greed, fear, anger and hate create conflict. Being zealous about your religion and inflexable towards others, creates war. But conflict is part of our darwinian evolutionary path.
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| Root Of All Evolution | Jan 6th. at 8:34:16 pm EST
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arinna (Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina) - Email Me
I can't really say that religion is the root of all evil because there are key differences among religions that make some evil and some good and interpretations even within a single religion that are both good and bad. I will say that dogmatic, organized religion has the power to influence large groups completely enough to make it disastrous when it gets it wrong. Hoardes of people not morally questioning their actions because a handful of 'leaders' claim marching orders directly from an invisible and unverifiable source that only the leaders have access to is definately rife with the potential to be very evil. If God is defined as good and every command from God must therefore also be good and you are not allowed to question it without proving yourself to be evil by rebelling against God, then if God's official spokespeople (i.e. Preachers) have told the flock that God says torture, maim and kill those people who don't believe the same way as us, it is 'good' by definition and yet evil in actual practice. It's usually only long after the deed has been done and the danger to the rebels has passed that anyone and eventually everyone will come to the conclusion that in that instance the preachers got it wrong. Unfortunately this belated realization never seems to stick the next time a group of preachers issues new dubious marching orders from God because the same rule not to disobey God's words (as presented by the preachers of course) still applies only this time there are less people genetically predisposed to rebelliousness since they were likely purged during the last crusade or witch hunt or whatever they call it next time. In this way the religion evolves by a process of supernatural selection and creates more sheep and less free thinkers. Thus proving that evolution doesn't just apply strictly biologically but also spiritually. Too bad they keep going in the wrong direction with it.
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| I HAVE ONE WORD.... | Jan 6th. at 5:36:41 pm EST
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Whitewolf (Schenectady, New York) - Email Me
for that question
YES !!!!
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| I Just Imagine | Jan 6th. at 5:22:03 pm EST
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Crystal Crone (Burnley, England) - Email Me
that John Lennon was a man with a message before his time. Who knows where he would have finished up had he been born 500 years ago ! Probably he would have been hung, drawn and quartered by the kindly and gracious practitioners within the Christian faith ! Presuming that there is no true religion in this world, then we must surely know that man holds presedent over good and evil. Since we all believe in freedom of choice then the human race either choses a path of good or evil or indeed a mixture of both. I had no idea Hitler even believed in God ... but I do believe he was evil and had no good thoughts or respect for anyone else but himself. After all, 6,000,000 victims are testimony enough I feel.
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| Evil Incarnate | Jan 6th. at 1:25:00 pm EST
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R. Cicero (Seattle, Washington) - Email Me
Couldn't agree more. Religion is the ultimate divider, from nation states to personal relationships. Live and learn.
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| Focused Too Much On The Abrahamic Religions. | Jan 6th. at 12:30:15 pm EST
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Lora (Leominster, Massachusetts) - Email Me
As most public arguments about religion are.
He counts culture as a separate issue, which he feels should be a non-issue in the Northern Ireland mess, but that conflict is much older than Christianity. So I think perhaps this is not the best example.
Look at how he ignores historical examples of syncretic religions that have happily absorbed extremely diverse cultures during their imperialism, such as the Roman empire and the diverse versions of Buddhism. They have not created strife, as their central tenets are heavily invested in diversity and change. It's the religions who hate change, insist on conformity and uniformity, who have evangelism and eternal punishments as tenets of their faith that cause these things.
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| *sigh* | Jan 6th. at 12:04:56 pm EST
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Finn (San Antonio, Pennsylvania) - Email Me
I have to agree with another commentator who said that people were both the root of all evil and the root of all good.
Religion, as probably one of the ultimate expressions of man, follows this same "potential;" the capacity to do great good or great evil exists in all forms of religion. What matters is what the practioner decides to do with it.
And by the way, Hitler didn't exterminate over 6 million Jews because Christianity, his Christian conscience, told him to. He did that because he was a psychopath. His religion had nothing to do with it.
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| While I Can Understand His Point... | Jan 6th. at 11:57:34 am EST
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Raven-touched (Aurora, Colorado) - Email Me
Particularly because it's a though that frequently crosses my mind, one has only to look at the former Soviet Union and modern China to realise that religion is, at worst, simply one expression of a deeper, self-destructive impulse which seems to have gripped us firmly.
But that same grim imagination is the one which ofttimes inspires us to wonderful moments, as well. A wholly utilitarian society would be as grey and cheerless as Mars in Ursula Le Guin's 'The Dispossessed.' And, in the end, it was as vicious in its own fashion as the more openly cruel Earth. But Earth had music, art, etc., at the least.
I'm afraid what we have here is yet another simplistic solution to a far more complex, and ill-understood, problem.
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| Simple Answer... | Jan 6th. at 11:44:11 am EST
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William (Pictou Landing, Nova Scotia) - Email Me
religion never hurt anybody..... PEOPLE are the root of all evil.
Fortunately we are also the root of all good. At least based on our own limited views of good and evil.
Religion has often been used as a means of explaining this ongoing struggle between the good and evil that exists because of our nature.
It's when we allow the religion that is supposed to help us understand as a means to dominate others that it fails miserably. It is a human failing, not a religious one. Were there only ONE religion, and everyone followed it, there would still be evil.
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