So, hold on...Israel wants the Beatles to come and play there...but banned them back in their heyday?

How do you even justify banning the Beatles in the first place? Seriously, they were for peace, against communism, loving, cute, and pretty wholesome...Imagine if someone threw Exodus or Twisted Sister on the radio there...

Maybe it was Lennon's whole: imagine the world without religion bit that got to them. It's good to know the Israelis have thick skins...oh wait...

- Zennalathas
Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.

Blogged with Flock

Dale recently made a very well written argument against Harris's recent spat with the Atheist title, and the "secular humanist" club I belong to recently posted a small snippet about why Harris is so great for doing so. So, I thought I'd carry on defending the title like Dale did, and here's what I had to say about this incredibly boring matter:

Sam Harris might be head and shoulders higher up on the intellectual stimulating level than a lot of the other "New Atheists", but that doesn't mean he's very lonely up there, or really bringing much new to the conversation.

He's big into conversational intolerance. It's not a new idea; he simply articulates himself very well and opens up the idea to a wider audience than those who came before him. He's big into the exploration of meditative studies and brain sciences. Again, that's not exactly new territory. He's bringing a slightly unique spin to meditation, but in medicinal brain studies, he's far from a forerunner in any way shape or form. He's also big into the let's-not-use-atheist-as-a-title bit. That's a tired, tired subject, and I'm so disappointed he's found nothing worth-while to talk about.

Blogged with Flock

So, I've heard a bit about there actually being a gene that gives a person a disposition to faith based thinking. Atheists, therefore, are simply persons without that gene, or with a different one.

Does that mean that if we made big enough of a fuss, atheists could be a separate species?! We're like the X-Men of reason! I dibs being Wolverine: I recover from all bad ideas, and then slice their heads off!

In all seriousness, it would be kick-ass if atheists were their own species.

- Zennalathas
Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.

In my last post I spent a short amount of time laying out the basis for the claim that extreme ideology - or ideology taken to the extreme - can safely be blanketed under the term "religion". Now, taking comparitive studies into the account, how well does Nazism, or any religion for that matter, actually parallel other religions, and can conclusions be drawn from such a comparison? I'd quickly say yes to both questions, but will also readily admit there are limitations to such an experiment. ‘Limitations’ is not to say that such examination is inaccurate, but simply that conclusive, empirical data cannot be gathered. An exploration of the nature of belief is all that can really be gathered without delving too far into conjecture.

Here I'll address some of the problematic questions raised in the prior post:

If Nazism can speak to the nature of belief and the causation of religious acts, and yet we can accept Hitler as a power hungry lunatic, what does that say of other similarly structured groups - Catholicism springs to mind?

History shows us how the German political system evolved out of the extreme ideology found in Hitler and his works. Now, I think it's perfectly acceptable to assert that this indeed was an act of religious faith, in that the persons carrying out this restructuring, and then taking part in the new structure (These persons are obviously varying in their degree of faithfulness. Shindler was certainly not faithful.) were fairly versed in Nazism's doctrine, and applied the doctrine to every facet of German life they could. Here we have an example of what it is like to set up the religious institution required by Bruce Lincoln's definition, and it provides some disturbing insight into the inspiration of such an institution.

Were those involved in creating the fascist, hierarchal model really concerned with the betterment of all and putting the state above the individual? It seem far less likely than if they were simply putting themselves ahead of other individuals - in some case FAR ahead. I don't doubt there were those involved in the Nazi regime who did believe whole-heartedly in the doctrine, and DID act with a religious fervour. That's essentially the problem! The ones we can readily accept did not believe wholly in the doctrine are those at the top, actually laying out the doctrine.

Immediately that raises a striking question. If the top Nazis built their system with their own motives in mind, did the early Christians do so also? How about the Jews? The Islamic peoples? It's not terribly hard to concieve such an evil. We have a moden example of such a phenomenon, so what makes these earlier instances any different? That question actually then raises the next important point: you can't claim to know that the early churches were not began in such a way that they resembled entirely the Nazi regime's structuring, nor can you claim realistically that the Nazi regime would not moderate itself into a structure similar to that of monotheistic churches. So, without any such ability to discern ambition from sincerity, what right do you have to claim faith in such regimes moral?

You have no such right.

Back to the original tangent: we can accept rather easily that the top Nazis were ambition driven, but what about those at the bottom? The grunts who would seemingly be acting more out of fear of retribution than ideological faith, can we condemn them too to such ambition? Hardly. But the fear we so often attribute to their grotesque actions is not all that far from the fear we attach to religious actions. When we see a man grow a beard for religious reasons, do we truly believe he is doing so because he believes entirely that this will secure his immortal soul, or do we believe he is doing so because a religious superior asserted such a task onto him? More importantly, which does he believe: that a beard will really make a difference in the case of his soul? While it may be easy to say the case of a man shovelling Jews into a mass grave and the case of a man growing a religious beard are entirely different in motivation, how can we truly say which motivation is correct in either case? Could the grunts working in concentration camps not have been working out of religiosity? Could the man growing a beard not being doing so simply because he fears godly retribution? Which is it? It's impossible to truly say, but I'd put my money on fear before fervour any day of the week.

If fear is where religiosity stems from, is it moral at all to commit any of these religious actions regardless of their outcome? Nope. Altruism requires, in fact stipulates, that acts committed without regard to reward or punishment are the ideal moral case. So, any distance between an altruistic case and a religious one is another degree of separation from perfect morality and sin. But, isn't religion supposed to lay out the ideal morality? I guess not.

I've lost where I was going with this, so I'll have to finish this at a later date...and perhaps clean it up a tad.

- Zennalathas
Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.