Tony Blair was many things but as much as i dislike him, he was a great debater. Another man who is of dubious character but can argue with the best of them is Christopher Hitchens which is why when they clash in Toronto at the end of November, it should be titanic.
Blair, god botherer extraordinaire, is going head to head with chief atheist Hitchens in a debate titled 'Religion is a force for good in the world.'
Why the two Englishmen have to go to Canada and can't argue it out in their own country is a mystery unless Blair has had enough of being harangued whenever he sets foot outside of his front door here and hopes the Canadians won't come armed with eggs like the Irish did.
So is Religion a force for good in the World?
The best answer i can come up with is that it should be, but it isn't.
It is hard to fathom how something which is predominantly about caring and loving your fellows could be responsible for so many wars, conflicts and hatred throughout history but we have been killing each other in the name of religion ever since the idea of a creator was first floated.
The test would be how would the world look if religion had never been devised?
You could argue that there would still be just as many deaths, just they would have a different justification and you would have a valid point but this page attributes 890 million deaths to religious conflicts. That's almost a billion people dying in the name of one God or another.
I can't think of conflicts over any other beliefs that can get even close to that figure.
So if religion has been such a driving force for us to kill each other throughout history, is it making things better in our modern world today?
The Vatican recently repeated it's claim that Catholics should not use condoms despite AID's claiming 20 million lives and affecting another 42 million.
The Middle East is a firestorm of Jews versus Muslims and Muslims of one flavour against another.
Northern Ireland is simmering with religious tension and atrocities in the name of religion are going on in Sudan, Sri Lanka, Somalia, Nigeria, Iraq, Cyprus, East Timor and the Ivory Coast.
Al Queada are out to kill as many infidels as possible and the Chechen's have targeted all Christians as enemies.
It is hard to make a case for what the World gains by having religion in it against this damning list but maybe Tony Blair will have better luck.
3 comments:
No disrespect to Hanz who seems perfectly capable of writing a decent blog post but you can see the difference in class when you do pop your head up Lucy. Sorely missed.
Is religion a force for good in the world? At a world leader International level it is a disaster as your stats show. At a people level, it brings comfort to millions so depends what level you are pitching the question at.
I would say a good percentage of the wars that made up your billion deaths were not actually directly religious wars but religion was used as a way to justify it to the soldiers doing the fighting. Most wars are political to grab land or resources and the religion angle is just a smokescreen.
More from you please Lucy
CHris took the words right out of my mouth. I don't think that this is an easy black and white issue. Religion has been the comfort of billions throughout the centuries, and has also been used as a dividing force among humans. I happen to believe that humans don't need religion to divide ourselves, it just happens to be handy at the moment. I have also seen the the truly religous (not the nutjobs) be some of the most happy and contented people in the world. So there you go Lucy, a mixed bag of gray in an otherwise black and white world.
Lucy,
Hanz is doing great, but I must admit I miss your ability to confuse correlation with causality...
Guns don't kill, people kill. Religion doesn't kill, people kill.
There have been many societies without religion and they are violent because they have people in them.
According to the Bible, in the first book (Genesis), at one point there are 4 people in the world (adam, eve, cain, and able). Eve is a manipulator, adam is a wallflower, cain is a murderer, and able is a victim. The Old Testament proceeds to describe human inability to be kind and honest. The Jews, Christians, and Muslims all accept the Old Testament. For Christians, the New Testament is about Jesus and how God sent Jesus to bare our sins because we are incapable of being kind and honest. Of course, Jesus was murdered.
Western religion doesn't promise the end of violence. It promises an afterlife...
In the end, everything including religion is just a tool in the hands of womankind.
Q
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