[lbo-talk] Christopher Hitchens

Wojtek S wsoko52 at gmail.com
Sun Dec 18 09:46:30 PST 2011


Shane "That's why he wrote a book skewering Mother Teresa?"

[WS:] This illustrates the problem of radical atheists, methinks. They replace one deity with an anti-deity and worship the latter by arduously denouncing any manifestation of the former.

As I see it, religion is just a genre of literary fiction. By itself, it does not do anything. It all depends how people use it, just as it is the case of any other literary text. If they use it to get out of depression or to find motivation to help those who need help - it is a good thing. If they use it to brainwash people and pave the way for an authoritarian right wing power to take over - it a bad thing. But in the latter case, attacking religion is like dog biting the stick that hits him instead of going for the throat of the man who wields the stick. Put bullets through the heads of reactionary political leaders who use religion as a tool for their causes and leave Mother Theresas alone. As far as theological debates are concerned, they are just another form of literary criticism - sometimes entertaining, mostly boring.

Wojtek



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