"[The Abrahamic religions] use faith, revelation, and authority rather than evidence in order to conclude what is true about the world. This is a recipe for disaster because when you rely upon faith, revelation, and authority, it is almost inevitable that your brand of faith, revelation, and authority will turn out to be different from that of other people and if you believe with sufficient passion as people in all three religions do, then that is a recipe for fighting."
-
Richard Dawkins "Islam, Religion and Democracy" - KCRW radio, October 2, 2001
"To fill a world with religion or religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns."
-
Richard Dawkins - September 15, 2001 issue of
The Guardian
5 comments:
phreadom, you put these quotes but not your opinion... what do you think of this?
my opinion was the subject of the post. but I could probably elaborate on that.
I'm heading out the door right now though, I'll flesh this out later. :)
frankie: I think that generally Dawkins is correct. although I could probably crunch my brain and really pick it apart more, which I intended on doing when I first saw your comment... but which is a little difficult with my still foggy head right now... I think that generally I think the first quote is pretty dead on. while the second one I think is a little less accurate. I don't believe that littering the streets with guns would necessarily lead to any kind of violence approaching that done by religion. people would need a reason (for the most part) to shoot each other. the religions in question seem to provide that reason... but just littering the streets with loaded guns, in and of themselves, would probably not be that big of an issue. I think that most people would have the common sense to pick up the weapons and keep them for their value, or unload and store them... or what have you. it's a cute analogy I guess, but I'm a bit wary of wandering too far from reality with things like that.
you can always break stuff down. or if it's too broken down, over-complicate it. ;D
anyway... it just reminds me of one of the best bumper stickers I've seen:
"guns don't kill people, religions do."
I think that about sums it up for now. feel free to question further. :)
I really appreciate hearing your point of view, and agree with your post. Sometimes it's just hard to figure out how come there are so many clueless people out there... ( I just saw a guy with a t-shirt on that said " I support Iraqi abuse"...) sometimes i don't get it.
one word: ignorance.
but even that isn't really entirely accurate. I think it's basically along the lines of only caring about what is directly beneficial to you. now, for the most part, our main concern is taking care of ourselves and our children or what have you. maintaining our way of life. things like the war in iraq seem far away... someone elses problem. most people don't care enough to try to understand the larger and more complex issues of the world at large and are perfectly content to focus only on their immediate surroundings. it's a matter of convenience. they take what little news they do get, from friends and the mainstream media. thus generally ignorance abounds because very few people put the effort into understanding the much larger and more complex issues, and when they do, they are often met with hostility because their views don't match up with the particular worldview of the masses. going against the grain isn't welcome.
see? even the answer to this issue is much more complex than the single word response I'd like to give. my single word response might have been witty and cute, but it wouldn't have accomplished anything and would not have conveyed any real information. hopefully the rest of this makes a little more sense...
I have a book I was reading on media disinformation etc that I found VERY interesting. but the copy I have is an illegal .pdf file, so I can't really post it on here without getting in trouble. ;) but I'll probably post a review of it when I'm done and a link to where to buy it in case anyone wants to buy a copy or look for it at the local library etc. very eye-opening.
Post a Comment