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Which kills more: ideology or religion?
The Spectator ^ | 28 May 05 | Andrew Kenney

Posted on 05/26/2005 10:30:32 AM PDT by xzins

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To: FreedomPoster

ginormous....:>)


61 posted on 05/26/2005 12:01:06 PM PDT by xzins (Retired Army Chaplain and Proud of It!)
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To: xzins
However, I think you understand the distinction that's being made. The author's point uses something like the following distinction:

Yes, I understand that he's trying to make those distinctions -- however, I maintain that they are false distinctions. They exist in his mind, not in reality.

1. Religion is an attempt to explain ultimate meaning and destiny.

So are many, if not most, non-theistic ideologies.

2. Ideology is a social/political philosophy enforced by governments.

The same can be said for many religions, or at least how they have been used in application. Islam, for example, but one doesn't have to go far to find Freepers who would be more than happy to use Christianity itself as the foundation of "a social/political philsophy enforced by government". Many would argue that this is indeed the founding principle of the United States itself.

In short, the author imagines a clean distinction where there is none -- in the real world, his two categories blur into each other.

If he wanted to ask his question about theistic versus non-theistic ideologies he'd have drawn a clearer line. But it's naive to try to do an analysis based on the false presumption that religious ideologies are somehow a wholly different animal from "social/political" ideologies.

There are good religious ideologies and bad religious ideologies. There are good non-theistic ideologies and bad non-theistic ideologies. If the author wants to argue that Christianity as a *particular* religion has done more for Africa than the three *particular* non-theistic ideologies he examines (Marxism, fascism, and extreme environmentalism), I'll certainly agree with that.

But what I do disagree with is his notion that he has therefore demonstrated that "religion" (as a category) is better than "ideology" (as a category), or even that "religion" is a distinct category from "ideology" (as I've already pointed out, religion is a *subset* of ideology -- i.e. theistic ideologies -- it's not a category apart from ideology).

62 posted on 05/26/2005 12:02:25 PM PDT by Ichneumon
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To: Strategerist
Great points. Even the Crusades, the archetype for religious wars, became mainly political in nature over time. It went from a fight reclaim and defend Christendom to a great way to get gold and titles.
63 posted on 05/26/2005 12:02:26 PM PDT by redgolum ("God is dead" -- Nietzsche. "Nietzsche is dead" -- God.)
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To: xzins
You are correct. The 30 years war was really over the authority of the Hapsburgs and their leadership of the so-called Holy Roman Empire.

For that matter, so was much of the Reformation. Luther didn't want a split, but when he took shelter with the Electors, Pope Leo X didn't care about much else and wanted him out.

64 posted on 05/26/2005 12:03:55 PM PDT by redgolum ("God is dead" -- Nietzsche. "Nietzsche is dead" -- God.)
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To: Ichneumon

Hard to answer a philosopher.


65 posted on 05/26/2005 12:04:38 PM PDT by xzins (Retired Army Chaplain and Proud of It!)
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To: hflynn
This raises another question. Is Islam both a religion and a political ideology?

Yes. It's both a "religion" and a political ideology. It has to be since all law for Muslims stem from the Koran. There is no difference between the state and the mosque, in Islam's most pure form.


66 posted on 05/26/2005 12:05:39 PM PDT by rdb3 (One may smile and smile and still be a villain.)
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To: xzins

Religion only kills when it becomes an ideology - As Islam is - As Christianity was from Milvian Bridge (317) to the dissolution of the Papal States (1870).


67 posted on 05/26/2005 12:06:12 PM PDT by UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide (Give Them Liberty Or Give Them Death! - Islam Delenda Est! - Rumble thee forth...)
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To: redgolum

I've often thought a good share of the electors were far more interested in severing ties with Rome for political reasons than they ever were interested in Luther's theology.


68 posted on 05/26/2005 12:06:35 PM PDT by xzins (Retired Army Chaplain and Proud of It!)
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To: xzins
Hitler’s holocaust 6 million

How does he figure. Hitler's death toll was six million Jews, 13 million overall. Don't the rest count?

69 posted on 05/26/2005 12:07:35 PM PDT by nickcarraway (I'm Only Alive, Because a Judge Hasn't Ruled I Should Die...)
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To: The Shootist
More people have been killed in the name of God-duh than for any other reason.

That is, of course, totally untrue.

More people have been killed in the name of communism in the 20th century, than all of the religious wars in the history of the world combined.

70 posted on 05/26/2005 12:07:48 PM PDT by Skooz (Admit Nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter Accusations.)
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To: xzins

Considering that most of them stayed Catholic through the whole deal? You bet.

I often wonder what would have happened if Luther.
1. Hadn't been used by the Electors
2. Had gotten his desired hearing.

The whole point behind the 95 thesis was a protest over some abuses going on in the area. Most Catholics now agree, that there were abuses. However, the Electors saw it as a chance to finally get the Pope out of the Empire.


71 posted on 05/26/2005 12:10:56 PM PDT by redgolum ("God is dead" -- Nietzsche. "Nietzsche is dead" -- God.)
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To: rdb3

You are 1000.1% correct!

Islam is both.


72 posted on 05/26/2005 12:11:03 PM PDT by xzins (Retired Army Chaplain and Proud of It!)
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To: xzins
Hitler’s holocaust 6 million, Stalin’s famine and terror 8 million, and Mao’s famine 30 million.

Nonsense.

Hitler's holocaust killed 11 million.
Stalin's famine and terror 40 million.
Mao killed at least 30 million and possibly as many as 60 million--no one really knows the exact number.

73 posted on 05/26/2005 12:11:35 PM PDT by Skooz (Admit Nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter Accusations.)
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To: xzins
However, I think you understand the distinction that's being made.

Sir! <-order-arms> You don't want to go there with that one. Trust me.


74 posted on 05/26/2005 12:11:52 PM PDT by rdb3 (One may smile and smile and still be a villain.)
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To: xzins
In 1971 DDT was poised to rid the world of malaria. In 1972 it was banned.

The ban, decided in the USA by William Ruckelshaus, an administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, was a travesty. Ruckelshaus ignored the massive evidence that DDT was not harmful to man or wildlife and refused to give reasons for the ban. It was purely ideological. This was the time of Rachel Carson’s mendacious book Silent Spring, about the horrors of pesticides, when the newly emerging green ideology was looking for a cause célèbre. Study after study has shown that DDT, even when abused, as it certainly was, did not cause cancer or serious disease in humans, did not harm bald eagles or peregrine falcons, and did not cause eggshell thinning. None of this mattered. The greens, leaning heavily on Ruckelshaus, were determined to ban it and did so, with catastrophic consequences for poor people with dark skins. Tens of millions of humans were sacrificed on the green altar.

The US extended the ban overseas by various measures, including refusing aid to countries that used DDT. Other rich countries, urged on by their greens, followed suit. Malaria, which had been in retreat, came surging back, killing multitudes. It is estimated that more than 2 million people now die every year of malaria, most of them in Africa. In 1996, under green pressure, South Africa stopped using DDT. Malaria deaths immediately shot up. South Africa went back to DDT, and deaths fell away. The South African government, which talks nonsense about Aids, is sensible on malaria, allowing DDT to be sprayed on the inside of dwellings, its best use. To some extent the rich countries have relaxed their ban on DDT but prohibitions remain, including from the EU, and nothing is done by them to encourage this cheap, safe, highly effective method of eradicating malaria.

I have heard not one word of pity or regret from any green organisation about the vast loss of human life caused by the ban on DDT. On the contrary, they seem to regard it as a glorious triumph. The likely reason was spelled out with chilling clarity by Charles Wurster of the Environmental Defence Fund in the USA in 1971 when it was pointed out to him that DDT saved the lives of poor people in poor countries. He said: "So what? People are the main cause of our problems. We have too many of them. We need to get rid of some of them and this is as good a way as anything."

Brought to you courtesy of the Culture-of-Death/Enviro-wacko/Liberal left. Sickening.

75 posted on 05/26/2005 12:13:29 PM PDT by TChris (Liberals: All death, all the time.)
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To: colorado tanker
My understanding is that almost everything in Silent Spring was junk science. That the volume of DDT in use at the time had almost zero impact on the environment. Now that I said that, I'm not sure where I read it. Perhaps in the Skeptical Environmentalist.

In addition to Carson's unfounded cancer claims, Silent Spring is also chock full of other "untruthful and misleading" statements that have absolutely no grounding in scientific reality whatsoever, said San Jose State University entomologist Dr. J. Gordon Edwards. Edwards is an environmentalist "with a desire to keep truth in science and environmentalism." He has even has a book published by the Sierra Club.

Edwards at first supported Carson but quickly changed his mind once he began checking her sources. What he discovered was not only did Carson rely upon "very unscientific sources," but she cited many of the same sources over and over again in order to make her book appear incontrovertible. Even more startling is that Edwards "found" many of Carson's statements based upon sound, scientific sources were actually -- his word -- "false."

"They did not support her contentions about the harm caused by pesticides," Edwards said. "She was really playing loose with the facts, deliberately wording many sentences in such a way as to make them imply certain things without actually saying them, carefully omitting everything that failed to support her thesis that pesticides were bad, that industry was bad, and that any scientists who did not support her views were bad. It slowly dawned on me that Rachel Carson was not interested in the truth about those topics, and that I really was being duped, along with millions of other Americans."

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=9169


76 posted on 05/26/2005 12:14:48 PM PDT by Ditto ( No trees were killed in sending this message, but billions of electrons were inconvenienced.)
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To: xzins

Despite all the facts cited in this article, there are still people who think only of the Inquisition in particular or religion in general when someone asks them about the great horrors of history.


77 posted on 05/26/2005 12:18:12 PM PDT by Steve_Seattle
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To: Ditto

Thanks. I was pretty sure Silent Spring had been debunked. Of course, the DDT ban endures nevertheless.


78 posted on 05/26/2005 12:19:52 PM PDT by colorado tanker (The People Have Spoken)
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To: xzins

Sort of like asking whether guns kill people.


79 posted on 05/26/2005 12:23:55 PM PDT by js1138 (e unum pluribus)
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To: redgolum

I was raised Catholic, but I have to look at the Protestant Reformation as inevitable, sooner or later, even if there had been no serious abuses in the Catholic Church. I don't think it's reasonable to expect to fit the whole world into the same philosophy, the same theology, the same artistic sensibilities, the same music, the same liturgy, the same authority structure, etc. I believe that some variations in religious expression are inevitable, but that those in power will generally resist allowing those variations; hence there are schisms, heresies, cults, and so forth, throughout the history of religion.


80 posted on 05/26/2005 12:24:11 PM PDT by Steve_Seattle
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