[lbo-talk] Evil Bible!

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Mon Mar 22 14:18:50 PST 2004


DRM:
> My break with the church, and later, Christianity
> altogether began just this way -- by questioning the
> relentless aggression, stamped with the divine seal of
> approval, depicted in the Old Testament.

I think you give too much credit to this badly written work of fiction. It is just a book, an eclectic collection of weird folk tales that does not cause anything - good or bad - just like the stories of Cindirella, Baba Yaga, or Little Red Hood.

The fact that some blood- and power-thirsty people and their apologists use these stories to justify or rationalize their evil deeds does not mean that religion was the "cause" of these deeds. Consequently, it makes little sense to debate theology of any sort - it is like criticizing the work of fiction on the grounds other than the quality of the writing style, structure of the narrative etc.

Interestingly, Marx did not see criticizing religion as a particularly urgent task - to him religion, like any other folk myth, was an expression and consolation of suffering caused by economic exploitation. He focused on the latter hoping that when the suffering ends, religion will simply wither away.

Instead debating theology or religious literary products - a more productive approach is to attack people and their evil deeds and ditch their intangibles (ideology, morality, etc.).

Wojtek



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list