[lbo-talk] The God Delusion

Jeffrey Fisher jeff.jfisher at gmail.com
Mon Oct 23 06:20:03 PDT 2006


On 10/22/06, Carl Remick <carlremick at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >The leading threat to world peace right now is not religious. The people
> >who surround Bush are not religious, and this regime is the leading threat
> >to world peace.
> >
> >Joanna
>
> But there you are: Bush and his crew of Mayberry Machiavellis wouldn't be
> in power now if not for the tractable legions of the nation's faithful,
> history's most numinous useful idiots, who were perfectly willing to believe
> GWB & Co.'s claim to be doing God's work.
>
> Carl
>

yeah, they're a big part of the strategy, but let's get real, here. bush was chosen by the old guard of the GOP, the duponts and those guys, for whom religion is really not the main point: money is. if they didn't want him, he wouldn't have won. none of that legion would matter.


> >Carl Remick wrote:
> >

<snip>


> >>I don't see any equivalence there at all. The leading threat to world
> >>peace right now is militant religion not militant atheism. I used to
> >>think of religion as harmless idiocy and now view it as malignant idiocy.
> >>Religion encourages the kind of stupefying credulousness that underlies
> >>contemporary America's worst failings -- e.g., a willingness to believe
> >>that there were WMDs in Iraq when there was no evidence for that claim, or
> >>a willingness to believe that "God will provide" instead of adopting
> >>effective social benefit programs. Religion is glorified dementia.
> >>
> >>Carl

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, indeed. same old reductionism, new opportunity to trot it out.

the leading threat to world peace is the propensity of human beings to find reasons to fear and hate each other. personally, i'm looking at nationalism as the bigger problem than religion. religion is in this sense a technology of nationalism, not the other way around. (the original composition of the mujahideen is a great example of nationalism calling on religion, indeed, *generating* religious fervor as part of its own memetics).

imo.

beyond that, i really just don't understand the insistence on calling people stupid. oh, well, i guess it does make us feel better about our inability to organize them toward the revolution (which is not to be confused with an eschatology, since it's, you know, scientific). it's not us. it's them. and their stupidity. not us. and our condescending paternalism.

but whatever. i've been around and around on this with you all . . . how many times now? that's a real zzzzzzz. and we can prob ALL agree on that . . .

j

-- http://brainmortgage.blogspot.com/



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