From: stoesser@i31s21.ira.uka.de (Achim Stoesser)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: Equality of human beings (was Re: Poll)
Date: 21 Jul 92 12:21:47 GMT
Article-I.D.: iraul1.14gvgrINN4at
Organization: University of Karlsruhe, FRG
NNTP-Posting-Host: i31s21.ira.uka.de

In article <13ueg0INN18h@iraul1.ira.uka.de>, stoesser@i31s22.ira.uka.de (Achim Stoesser) writes:
|> In article <dabrowsk.710859921@liveboard10>, dabrowsk@parc.xerox.com (Jarek Dabrowski) writes:
|> |> Please answer to Brian O'Sullivan's comment from 7 July in this thread. 
|> 
|> Seems as if I missed Brian O'Sullivan's comment. What did he say?

Meanwhile Jarek mailed Bryans article to me (sorry for answering that late,
but we have some problems with our News server). This is what Bryan said:

% In <139fg6INNp39@iraul1.ira.uka.de> stoesser@i31s22.ira.uka.de (Achim Stoesser)
% writes:
% > The ^^^^'s show that these and other problems are _caused_ by religion.
%
% For once I find myself agreeing with Jarek.  It seems highly unlikely to
% me that religion causes any of the things you mention; as Jarek says,
% people just hide behind religion.  I'm sure most psychologists would
% agree.  Seems to me that blaming all the ills of mankind on religion is
% a somewhat circular search for a scapegoat; religion is a product of
% man, and as such has no quality in and of itself.  It is how it is used
% that matters -- PEOPLE are to blame, not things.
[del]
% To get back to my point: to paraphrase Yeats, you can't separate the
% religion from its adherents.  Religion did not mysteriously spring into
% existence and start making people guilty.  It's my belief that, if you
% really want a reason for all of this, you should look inside yourself
% and everyone else.  I figure you'll see a lot of things you won't like;
% could it not be possible that human nature is the problem, not
% ridiculous two-bit religions?

What can I say?  I'm sure most psychologists would agree that telling children
nasty punishment-stories (flood, paradise, hell, etc.) _will_ influence them.

But I must admit that, maybe, all the witch-burners were atheist, camouflaging
as theists. Most Popes were atheists, of course (why else should Innocence III
have ordered death penalty for laymen reading the Bible?). 

The conflict in India on the building of a temple, where on Sunday 35 persons
were hurt in Trivandrum, 40 in Maharashtra, one person was killed -- well,
atheists of course, pretending to be Moslems and Hindus.

Same holds for Shiites and Sunnites in Afghanistan, two brands of Christians 
(pardon, atheist who say that they are Christians) in former Yugoslavia and
Northern Ireland. 

Yes, of course, if I murdered someone and the police caught me, it would be easy
to say, "God told me so."  But if I had a temporal lobe syndrome and I really
believed that a god told me so, it would be easy for theist to say, "he's just
pretending."

Let's try it this way:  My five-year-old cousin acts like a Ninja[sp?]. Of
course this has nothing to do with the animations he's seen in TV. 


 							        Achim
_____________________________________________________________________

I'm an anarchist, atheist, pacifist, and vegetarian.  This does _not_
mean that I'd bomb kings, worship Satan, let soldiers bleed to death,
or eat fish.
Xref: sparky alt.atheism:14256 soc.culture.pakistan:12697 soc.culture.arabic:2842