February 11, 2009 8:02pm by Steve | 
“Religion hardens hearts and enslaves minds.” I was asked if I truly believe this. “Absolutely”, I replied. Here are some news items from this past week that illustrate why religion is a terrible thing.
Iran launched a satellite into orbit that prompted worries at the Pentagon. Iran responded with, "We have a divine view of technology, unlike the dominating powers of the world, who have satanic views." Scary.
A synagogue in Caracas, Venezuela was broken into and ransacked this week, with the words "Death to all" spray painted on the walls. Some media outlets are calling for citizens to accost Jews on the street and demand that they renounce Israel.
Palestinians fired rockets into the Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon and Israel responded with air strikes.
American U.N. official John Solecki was kidnapped and his driver was killed by Pakistani gunmen. Mr. Solecki started a program in 2007 to promote women's rights and girls' education.
It was a light week.
Category: 
Steve – my challenge for you is to find some good news about religion and/or religious people in the world. Find instances where people, spurred by their religious faith, make an effort to help others in the world. I know about such instances, I know they are out there, and I know they are the type of boring story that won’t make the front page of the NY Times. Those stories are out there – will you look? Will you open your mind to this? I’m not asking you to convince anyone, I’m not asking you to change your (non)religious point of view. I’m issuing you a challenge – will you accept?
Cheers,
David
David,
Such incidents don’t get nearly as much "press noise" as the bad stuff so they are harder to find.
Steve,
Color me an ignorant American, but I’m unclear from your blurb how item 4 are related to religion.
Jeff: The Taliban believe for religious reasons that women should not be educated.
David: The difference here is that religious belief was a direct cause of these horrible events (and the comment about the rocket which doesn’t really fit with the other things). Bad things can happen without religion, but religion was REQUIRED for these particular things to happen.
Good things can happen by way of religion in that the religion offers a convenient mechanism for community organization. But religion is not REQUIRED for communities to organize to enable good deeds.
Steve, Religion is not REQUIRED for people to do bad things either. Joseph Stalin was an atheist, so was Pol Pot and Mao Zedong. But we don’t infer from that minority within the Atheist community that all Atheists are stark raving loonies who like to murder people in their millions.
But that wasn’t my point – you are on record as having linked evil with religion and/or religious people. Your blog regularly displays that. It is a one sided argument. My challenge to you was to find news, or personal stories of religious people who, driven by their faith, make an effort to change the world for the better. I asked if you would accept the challenge and your initial non-answer has been noted. So, I’ll ask a second time, will you accept the challenge?
I never said that religion was required for people to do bad things. I said that it was required for people to do these particular things I have highlighted. They wouldn’t have occurred outside of religious belief.
And no, I won’t take up any challenge because I’m not interested in it. I absolutely abhor religious and political debate. That’s not why I post these things. I don’t wish to debate. I post out of emotion, not in any desire to carefully explore both sides of an issue.
Your obvious next step is to label me as "close minded" which is exactly the opposite of how the world actually is. The religious subscribe to dogma, which is belief in the face of contradicting evidence. Non-theists are always open to new evidence and always willing to change their worldview. That is the very definition of scientific thought.
You shouldn’t listen to me anyway. My posts are meant to generate an emotional response that should prompt you to do your own research. If you would like to feature positive religious stories on your own blog, then feel free.
OK, well first of all, when you ONLY post instances of religious people doing bad things, you DO give the impression "that religion was required for people to do bad things." At the very least, you don’t show even handedness and highlight bad things that bad people do, regardless of their religious view.
Again, you say "They wouldn’t have occurred outside of religious belief." and that’s speaking in very broad strokes. How do you know? Let’s look at the examples:
1) Would Iran not have launched a satellite into space if they were not religious?
2) Would people stop hating Jews if they were not Christians and Muslims?
3) Were the Palestinians firing rockets into Israel because "God told them to" or because they were dispossessed of their lands in 1948? Maybe it’s because they are routinely held at Israeli checkpoints for hours on end. Maybe they saw their children die of preventable disease because of the blockading of medicine. Maybe they are sick and tired of 40% unemployment; they see no future, have given up on building and have turned to destruction.
4) It would appear obvious that religious zealots are at the heart of this kidnapping, but don’t think that only religious zealots want to limit Women’s advancement and education in the world.
Just because you are Iranian, South American, Palestinian or Pakistani doesn’t make you a devout follower of a religion. Again you state that it was an absolute NECESSITY for these people to be religious in order to have committed these particular crimes. I would suggest you use your power of “scientific thought” to explore the conditions surrounding the events of evil acts before jumping to the conclusion that it was religion that caused the problem.
I’m not going to label you “small minded” – I’m going to label you “wrong”. You are wrong if you think devotion to a religious faith was the necessary ingredient, or the primary provocation for these crimes to have been committed. The VERY liberal, VERY secular Ottoman empire murdered over a million Armenians in the early part of this century not for religious reasons, but because they wanted to exert domination over a people and take their land.
“Non-theists are always open to new evidence and always willing to change their worldview.” – not according to THIS post. You steadfastly refused to discuss the idea of religion being a cause for good in the world. Hey, that’s fine, as you pointed out, this is your blog. My problem is that you state you don’t want to have a debate about religion, and yet you constantly post about religion. 6 posts related to God/religion (and none of them promoting the subject!) since January 14th. That’s one every 4.5 days. For someone who states you “absolutely abhor religious and political debate”, you’re doing a REALLY bad job of not discussing the subject! If you don’t want to engage in the debate, don’t START the debate.
For some reason my comments are being posted properly….
My overarching problem with posts like this is not that you attack religion, but you have the same attitude as the very extreme pro-religious debaters. The ones that say those that do not believe are going straight to hell, or there is no God outside of my God. The absolutists. Sure, you have different words, different syntax and different semantics.
yep, was good there for a second, but not working now
But it’s essentially the same argument – If only you thought the same way as me, we wouldn’t HAVE these problems.
OK, well I had an ending to this reply, but I guess the DB is running out of space for this thread, or something…
David Said:
"you have the same attitude as the very extreme pro-religious debaters."
I say:
I agree w/ David on this one. Lately your blog has presented you as a rabid religion hater who no longer have a balanced view of the world.
This posts seems attribute some things to religion w/o actually explaining why religion is the cause. I can infer that religion is actor because of the areas in question.
Take the last entry, which originally confused me:
"American U.N. official John Solecki was kidnapped and his driver was killed by Pakistani gunmen."
Fair enough, that sounds horrible.
" Mr. Solecki started a program in 2007 to promote women’s rights and girls’ education."
Does this relate to his killing? Was it part of the motivation? Or just something in his obituary?
You’re response was:
"The Taliban believe for religious reasons that women should not be educated.
Was the Pakistani gunner also a Taliban? Are all Pakistani Taliban?
You seem to make connections that are not obvious / detailed in this post.
Steve,
I have just seen your post, and maybe I am a little late in adding my thoughts. But I must say that your illustration of how religion "hardens hearts", to me, is completely unconvincing and actually irrelevant. The behavior you are referring to is determined by politics, thirst for power, to be number one, by greed and hate. These are all animalistic traits of humankind that religion strives to subdue, but atheism can only promote. If there is no God to whom you are responsible, your behavioral guidelines are defined by the survival of the fittest. You can see how it works in the animal world.
John