levious said:
I think Gek54's poorly worded post that you quoted is causing confusion. I originally interpreted it as saying, "religion, more than any other entity, is used for wickedness," as opposed to "religion is mostly used for wickedness."
I was about to disagree with your "no it isn't post" until I re read the quote.
It's wrong either way, though. Under the first interpretation, it's wrong because other memes (atheistic communism, ethnic biases) have been used to cause
far more damage than religion has (100M+ deaths in the 20th century alone,
excluding deaths from the World Wars); under the latter interpretation, it's wrong because religion does far more good in the world than harm, some of which can be measured (religious groups comprise the majority of the world's charitable organizations), and some of which cannot (people who restrain their baser impulses due to their religious beliefs, which happens every day, yet cannot be empirically measured; the converse, however-- people who COMMIT evil acts in the name of their misguided religion--
can be measured so long as one's motives were made explicit, and this creates a gap in public perception on these matters imo).
As a result, I don't think one can reasonably take issue with Karasu's post. There was a good post on the first page that dealt with the fact that any idea can be used for good or ill, and I generally believe that to be the case. Though one may say that religion has a greater likelihood of being misused due to the nature of the belief, I'd argue otherwise. Fervency of belief is not limited to the religious sphere (just ask Kierkegaard
); beliefs held about non-religious matters by non-religious people can be just as ardently held and violently defended. It's more the ubiquity of religion-- even (and perhaps especially) in places of fewer economic and educational opportunities-- that accounts for its greater misuse, as more of the misuse of religious ideology (at least presently) occurs in regions of the world which are destitute in one way or another. The remaining contributory factors include culture (i.e., cultural effects on religious interpretation) and oppression (real or perceived; the latter is often more important than the former): where religion is prevalent and people are being oppressed, you will see more instances of misuse of religious ideology than in places where no such oppression exists; this is because religion (some more than others, but all to one degree or another) is an empowering ideology that teaches self-worth and self-determinism. Even though these values are usually tied up in an elaborate framework of "thou shalt not kill", the stark reality of the situation one finds oneself in is often enough to cause one to focus on certain aspects of the religion to the exclusion of others (as evidenced by the incidence of "religious" violence).
Selective interpretation of facts and selective reasoning, however, are not uniquely religious phenomena, and that's my point here.
