Snow enters the War on Christmas on the side of Christmas: Brings God into the fray
Just when I thought we had the upper hand in the war on Christmas, Tony Snow has attacked our southern flank and brought with him some big time reinforcements. -Via Think Progress
Tony Snow: ‘The Second War In This Country’ Is ‘The War On God’
Former White House press secretary Tony Snow is apparently attempting to remake himself into the image of Bill O’Reilly. In a series of recent public events, Snow has adopted the mantle of the right-wing’s perceived “secular-progressive” war on conservatives.
Last Friday in an address to the Academy of Leadership & Liberty at Oklahoma Christian University, former White House Press Secretary Tony Snow launched a rhetorical broadside against college faculties in America and mourned this nation’s “war on God.” Oklahoma City Friday reports:
The winsome and articulate Snow charmed his audience with wit:
“The average Iranian is more Pro-American than virtually any college faculty in this country.” And with serious talk about the war on terror and “the second war in this country, the war on God.” […]
Snow also said he loved being on a stage where he could say the word “God.”
So calamitous is this “war on God” that Tony Snow never once mentioned it from the White House podium when he served as Bush’s press secretary. The “war on God” is no more real than the right-wing’s perceived “war on Easter” and the “war on Christmas.”
Appearing on the O’Reilly Factor last Thursday, Tony Snow endorsed Bill O’Reilly’s purported war on Christmas:
I don’t think they’re going to beat Jesus. … You’ve mentioned the fact that you’re not allowed to have Christ at Christmas. I mean, I went to a Christmas store this week. It didn’t have anything about Jesus. It had all sorts of funny little ornaments in it, but nothing about the holiday. People are tired of that.
Being a phony champion for purported social conservative causes appears to be Tony Snow’s remedy for resuscitating his image following the Bush years.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Sheeeesh.
Just when I thought the GOP was at its wits end sucking up to the idiots and ceeding power to the nut jobs.
If there is a ‘war on god’, then let SkyDad fight it himself.
If the followers cannot see the tactics used on them by their keepers, then they deserve the mocking and constant disappointment that’s coming to them….
Hey Crack,
How does it feels to be someone who is less “pro-American” than the average Iranian?
As for me, finding out (yest again) that I don’t love America and that I’m on God’s shit list is disconcerting.
Since everything coming out the Snow’s mealy mouth is spin-cycled within his bizarro-world brain, I’d take it as a compliment.
Kinda like if Hitler said he was disappointed in me….can’t get any better backhanded praise than that!
Oh yeah, what’s the complete opposite of a Secular-Progressive?
I’d guess that would be a Retarded-Theocrat…..
I mean, I went to a Christmas store this week. It didn’t have anything about Jesus.
Well knock me over with a feather!!!
Hey Tony, if you are looking for Jesus how about you try a CHURCH next time.
WTF was Tony doing looking for Jesus in a store, was He marked down or something?
In the words of an ascerbic atriot:
I don’t think they’re going to beat Jesus. … You’ve mentioned the fact that you’re not allowed to have Christ at Christmas. I mean, I went to a Christmas store this week. It didn’t have anything about Jesus. It had all sorts of funny little ornaments in it, but nothing about the holiday. People are tired of that.
No, Tony, in most parts of the country they’re tired of assholes like you.
Speaking of which, you look like shit. I wonder what you did to piss off your notoriously petulant deity.
Stunt Woman
I don’t know that I’d find credible the opinion of anybody who can’t tell the difference between church and their legislatures.
But, looking at the overall pushback by one segment of the wingnut brigade, Mike Huckabee seems to provide a reason for the more “secular” repubs to try to dump their Christianists. John Cole is having a blast inventorying the sudden rejection of the religious right. Even the ridiculous David Frum is is telling repubs to ramp up the elitism abit so that the religionists will know their place.
Fun!
I love this argument so much you all really have no idea. If I point out all the ridiculous beliefs, contradictory statements, and utter buffoonery of this made-up bullshit, then I’m at war with god. OK, I’ll agree that I’m at war with god if Snow agrees that he’s at war with reason and clear thought.
By the way, I am also at war with tarot cards, crystal ball, voodoo, astrology and alchemy.
I don’t think many Republicans would have a problem with the statement that their party is at war with reason, clear thinking or logic.
I think they (for the most part) are proud if it.
Voncracker #4….you are a genius!!! How do you use your quick mind in the real world?
I’m concerned about the Huckster. I don’t think I could stand another 4 years of a prez who thinks his actions are being guided by God and that all the most important questions about the fate of the world have already been answered in some ancient holy book and all he needs to do is follow the eschatalogical blueprint.
I’m OD’d on cocksure theological dogmatist presidents who don’t have an instinct for getting the facts right before they act and have little capacity for caution and self-reflection because they believe they have an unproblematic connection w/ the Almighty.
Classy as usual, Nancy. The man has cancer and not much chance of beating it over the five-year survival frame. You’re just covered in class. Oh, wait, that’s horseshit. Never mind.
Al, stop stalking me!
Your pathetic take on life deals only in being polite to the guy with the knife at your throat.
Snow deserves no pity nor any of the crew in the WH.
Hey, classy, you started it. I pointed out that the evidence against Protack is so overwhelming that defending him defied common sense, and you turned it into a long string of attacks against me. You wanna play the dozens, fine. I’ll play the dozens. You want me to leave you alone, go smear someone else.
No pity for a guy with cancer because you disagree with him politically. Gorgeous. As I said, you’re just covered in class.
No pity for a guy with cancer because you disagree with him politically. Gorgeous. As I said, you’re just covered in class.
Al, I have enough class not to follow you around the blogosphere sliming on your shit!
I don’t give a fuck what you do. You are only digging your own hole.
And I don’t wish anyone dead, never have never will, but neither do I reserve any feelings for the scum who would act to destroy America as we know her.
How do you feel about the attack on our constitution by this administration, Al? Good with it? I really want to know. For someone who harps all morning about the beltway you don’t seem to be able to actually put it all together. We are in trouble. We need to get this shit right.
“Speaking of which, you look like shit. I wonder what you did to piss off your notoriously petulant deity.”
Are you saying you didn’t know he had cancer?
“Al, I have enough class not to follow you around the blogosphere sliming on your shit!”
What’s the matter, can’t take the heat? If you’re going to wander around the blogosphere posting ignorant bullshit, why shouldn’t I go behind you pointing it out to everyone else?
“I don’t give a fuck what you do. You are only digging your own hole.”
Oooh, now I’m scared. Digging what hole? You’ve already played the race card. What’s next? I don’t care about poor people because I don’t wring my hands as much as you do?
“For someone who harps all morning about the beltway you don’t seem to be able to actually put it all together.”
Why? Because I don’t rant and rave about it to your satisfaction?
“We are in trouble. We need to get this shit right.”
Or what? The sky will fall?
“How do you feel about the attack on our constitution by this administration, Al? Good with it? I really want to know.”
No you don’t. Don’t add lying to the list of transgressions you’ve already piled up. I’ve spoken many times about how I feel about this, but of course if I don’t say if every day it doesn’t count with you.
As I said, get back to me when you accomplish something. Meanwhile, get used to having your bullshit viewpoints slammed whenever I have the chance.
“I’m concerned about the Huckster. I don’t think I could stand another 4 years of a prez who thinks his actions are being guided by God and that all the most important questions about the fate of the world have already been answered in some ancient holy book and all he needs to do is follow the eschatalogical blueprint.”
I think, Dana, you just raised a subtle point that no one seems to be getting these days. Bush is a “biblically inerrant” Christian, who believes that Revelation is nothing less than the shooting script for the way the world ends (a trait he has in eschatological common with a certain Iranian president). No allegory, no metaphor, just literal future history.
The intellectual problem for biblical literalists is that since they already “know” how history is going to end, they view their choices and strategies in terms of playing out a prophecy. They live in a pre-deterministic (theological not biological determinism) universe in which whatever they do is already written in the great book because the end has already been laid out.
They CANNOT fail to advance the eschaton, because that’s just the way the world works.
Most non-theists AND MOST CHRISTIANS do not inhabit that universe. We’re stuck with an unknown future of multiple possibilites laying before us, and always inadequate information about what to do next.
Unfortunately, I blame mainstream–non fundamentalist-Christians for this as much as anybody, because they’ve been so suckered into the “any attack on evangelicals is an attack on Christianity and religion” mode that they have failed to grasp the fact that evangelical literalists are further away from, say, Catholics, than the Catholics are from Mormons, Jews, or Rastafarians. (Who would make up a religion that hard to spell, anyway?)
Compounding the problem is that there IS a new hard-line anti-religious atheist movement (Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens, Harris, etc.) that IS making war on all religion, and has no more interest in seeing these nuances than the Christian fundamentalists who are pleased (despite their minority status) to be seen as the leading martyrs for Jesus.
I know this was way too long, but I hope it made enough sense for someone to argue with it.
Beats the hell out of watching Al and Nancy trade scatological insults all over everybody’s blogs.
Steve, all good points. I wonder if the war on Christianity is a self-fulfilling prophesy. The Christian lunatic fringe sees anti-Christianity everywhere and attacks everything. This gives the Atheistic lunatic fringe “just cause” to go after them and be just as evangelical as Christians are.
“Unfortunately, I blame mainstream–non fundamentalist-Christians for this as much as anybody”
Amen. But I blame them for a different reason than you stated. I blame them for failing to step forward w/ a different fervor & conceptual scheme for the faith . One that finds in Christ an image of the passionate activism of humility and tolerance. That way, at least, there would be a fairly visible alternative to the claim of who is speaking for God.
“Compounding the problem is that there IS a new hard-line anti-religious atheist movement (Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens, Harris, etc.) that IS making war on all religion, and has no more interest in seeing these nuances than the Christian fundamentalists who are pleased (despite their minority status) to be seen as the leading martyrs for Jesus.”
Personally to the extent that this movement is putting heavy emphasis on reason, facts, experiment, testing, etc., I welcome them. We need to a good dose of that in the US.
But I agree w/ you that these writers make a fundamental error. They assume the value of religious experience lies in the truth value of its claims. Personally, I think that is close to being irrelevant in the analysis of religious experience.
It’s the sense of the world that one’s religious experience confers on his experiences and relationships w/ others and on his responsibilities and dignity that is interesting and worthwhile in the lives of some individuals.
The writers you cite don’t seem to operate w/ that distinction.
Al,
I wouldn’t have posted the Atriot post had I not known what I was posting….but I guess I shouldn’t go to fast, you don’t seem to be very slick.
“Speaking of which, you look like shit. I wonder what you did to piss off your notoriously petulant deity.”
Are you saying you didn’t know he had cancer?
*
shite. for someone who harps on my ability to comprehend…it should have been obvious to anyone that I was pasting what I said I was pasting onto this blog…and…that would be … a witty and appropriate comment that someone who calls themselves STUNT WOMAN made earlier today as I was commenting on the Eschaton blog. Sorry you are so damn slow. Albert, your problem, not mine.
Come sit beside me.
Shit Al
you are pathetic
advance the eschaton,
*
don’t confuse the noun with the blog…..Duncan Black’s Eschaton is an a-list progressive blog of which I am a regular…so called Atriot… dig it.
Actually, we call ourselves Dirty Fucking Hippies! YEAH.
Going back to the original thread, if Tony Snow is referring to Mr. Cheney as such, he could be right……………..
eeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
you mean Cheney = God in the eyes of Snow?
I don’t follow.
What in the hell happened here?
Firstly, Ms. Garrett, Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens, etc. are not “making war” on religion. Having rational discourse is not warring. Pointing out contradiction, blatant untruths and explicit ludicrousness is not warring. That’s really the salient point. Why, when one has a reasonable disagreement with religious faith is it characterized as a WAR. For goodness sake, are they permitted to publicly voice disagreement? Writing polemics against a particular way of thinking isn’t war. I am really feed up with relgion playiong the victim card. It’s all bullshit and I don’t feel bad at all pointing it out.
Also, can someone let me in on how this digressed into such personal attacks? I’ll admit I sometimes cross the line when I’m trying to be funny. But some of the stuff above is just rude and uncivil. What would Jesus do for heaven’s sake !
Okay. I just delted a bunch of comments. Please move along.
Thanks Jason. Strident is one thing, but I’m not sure exactly what that was.
I will say that I don’t think the cancer thing should matter either. What does that have to do with anything.
DG,
My concern with Dawkins, et al, is that they are not just espousing Atheism, but that they are actively seeking converts and deriding those that believe. It is rather explicit in Dawkins’ latest book. I am very much an anti-evangelist, and while I like what Dawkins is selling, I don’t like the sales tactic.
It is akin to a car salesman that follows you around the lot talking incessantly about how the guys at another dealership will give you “the hard sell.” All the while engaging in equally annoying behavior.
““Compounding the problem is that there IS a new hard-line anti-religious atheist movement (Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens, Harris, etc.) that IS making war on all religion, and has no more interest in seeing these nuances than the Christian fundamentalists who are pleased (despite their minority status) to be seen as the leading martyrs for Jesus.””
I would not go so far as to call them a real movement, but some of their work is a real corrective to the doctrinaire, dogmatic, fearful and greedy religionists (from all 3 strains of the People of the Book). While I find much of value in the Book and in the writing of Dawkins and Hitchens in particular, I do find myself reminded that fundamentalists of any stripe tend towards a rigidity and intolerance that is tedious at best and undermining of civic community at worst.
I (heart) cassandra.
In an epistolary way, that is.
It’s nothing like that. You’re missing it. Think of it like this; one of the purposes of this blog is to give liberal opinions and perhaps persuade someone based on evidence. Take the wind farm issue. Information is presented and hopefully support is gained. Occasionally you all can be quite relentless, so what? Frequently you’re annoying, again, so what? Would you “deride” a neo-con for her or his beliefs. I think you would, and you have. What’s the difference?
Why when someone employs similar tactics to religious faith its taboo. Sure you don’t like it, tough cookies. Yes they certainly try to persuade, deride, etc. That’s considered reasonable discourse on any other issue. But argue about god, oh no, we’re at WAR. It amazes me that someone who blogs on political issues doesn’t understand this.
When exactly did the Big 3 (christianity, judaism, and islam) take sole ownership of humanity?
The societal norms we follow are no more or less religious than Aesop’s fables or the Golden Rule.
What is concerning is that the Big 3 try to fool everyone by alluding that it was their particular religion which came up with the norms, and these norms are unable to exist without the Big 3.
It’s not hard to see that society and community is a product of humans coming together because of common traits, wants, and needs – i.e. – protection, food, etc. And if one of those common traits is believing in some sort of all-powerful being for whatever reason, I have no problem with that, but to say that humanity, community and peace is only achievable when you submit to an unverifiable entity is downright ludicrous.
My point is that I like their brand, but not the sales tactic. Call me a utopian, but I want the ideas out there and am happy to debate it. But the point of my debate w.r.t. religion is not to take away someone’s faith. That seems to be the point of some.
Honestly, if I had a debate about the nature of the universe and I walked away with them casting off their religion, I would feel like I told a little kid that there was no Santa Claus. (Note to the young Democrats that read the blog; Yes, there is really a Santa Claus). 🙂
Isn’t the point of an argument to win. Is the point of political discourse friendly conversation. I mean, at the end of the day we had a nice chat over a pint but my mate is still going to vote for Mitt Romney, and that’s OK. Really?
Here’s an update; there is no Santa Claus. If someone wants to wander through life believing in some fallacious bronze age myth – like the 5 year old who believes in Santa – that’s their business. But it’s also quite preposterous.
I’m guesing you probably wish you’d selected a different analogy. Because you’re not the person telling the ignorant kid the truth, you are the kid.
I think Sam Harris put it best. Think of it this way.
“We don’t respect beliefs, we evaluate reasons.”
Having “disrespect” for someone’s beliefs, when these beliefs are unsubstantiated by evidence, isn’t crude, or mean, or dogmatic. It’s perfectly reasonable.
I am NOT the kid. I am on your side of the argument and we are debating tactics. Atheism and agnosticism have done quite well in the past hundred years with or without Dawkins.
I agree with his assertions and disagree with his goal and selected tactics.
My point about a “movement” relating to Dawkins, et al, is that’s how they described themselves, although they have backed off a bit since the whole “bright” fiasco.
My problem with them is both tactical and intellectual. Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens (I don’t include Dennett in this particular list) are really saying three things, once you get down to it:
1) This is a purely naturalistic cosmos based on all the evidence we’ve yet seen, and that should be our working assumption
2) Religion is therefore not only wrong, it is delusional, and it is the source of much if not most if not all of societal injustice violence yada yada yada
3) Neither religious beliefs nor religious practices deserve any respect from anyone in society, because not only is religion pathological it is not really the source of morality
The problem with (1) is that it all depends upon your definitions, your evidence, and our models. If some of the more extravagant theories of Hawking, Vilenkin, Susskind, Deutsch, Gell-Mann and others prove out, there is plenty of room remaining for a lot of things “supernatural” in the Arthur Clarke sense of the word (“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”)
With regard to (2) there is a case to be made, but these critics make it BADLY. I will try to look up a review of Dawkins’ “God Delusion” in which a fellow Brit evolutionary biologist (also an active atheist) takes him to task for not only screwing up the details of religious history, but also of what appears to be intentionally misleading his readers about several points of evolutionary theory (I think, regarding group versus individual survival) to make his point. Listen to many biologists and cosmologists talk quietly around the edges and you will find that they are embarassed about these guys.
(3) is an “attack dog” stance that you generally go into when your ideas are not gaining any traction of their own. They are alienating the people in the middle by giving them the same phony choice that they get from conservative Christians, to wit: “my way or the highway [to hell, sorry AC/DC]….”
liberalgeek says, “Atheism and agnosticism have done quite well in the past hundred years with or without Dawkins.” He’s absolutely right. Dawkins’ major contribution to science will be his “selfish gene” thesis; ironically, he has not done much significant original research since then (for all the popular books he’s written). Other than that, he’s going to be remembered alongside other narrow-visioned scientists who were cranks when they got outside their field of expertise.
Harris creates straw man arguments rather than dealing with serious historical or theological arguments.
I have yet to see anyone make the case successfully that Hitchens is in it for anything other than the money.
Dennett strikes me as the only honest scholar in the bunch, but you have to read 300-500 pages to get his point. (PS he looks like Santa and when kids stop him in the airport he doesn’t say, “It’s all a lie, kid.” He just puts a finger to his lips and says, “Don’t tell anybody.” THAT unlike Dawkins is a man with class.)
“Having “disrespect” for someone’s beliefs, when these beliefs are unsubstantiated by evidence, isn’t crude, or mean, or dogmatic. It’s perfectly reasonable.”
This is perfectly fundamentalist. Beliefs do not have to be substantiated by science quality evidence — that is why they are beliefs, not facts. In the same vein of your argument, atheists and agnostics have a belief narrative that would not pass the scientific evidence test, either.
It is the absolutist approach that envisions everyone that does not share the beliefs as some dark conspiracy. That absolutism does not really give rise to civil discussion, but crazy, paranoid rhetoric that sees those who do not derive their “truth” from the same source as an enemy (hence, the War on Whatever rhetoric).
What anyone’s spiritual beliefs are are of no consequence to any of the rest us of – until you insist that your beliefs are The Answer and that the community we all live in must be organized around that Answer. That should get a lot of righteous pushback, because that does deny that the rest of us a basic bit of humanity.
“2) Religion is therefore not only wrong, it is delusional, and it is the source of much if not most if not all of societal injustice violence yada yada yada”
Re: the second part of this claim (made not only by Dawkins) — pretty much the entirety of the signature violence of the 20th Century serves as a sharp rebuke to this assertion.
That is in absolutely no way a fundementalist position. You may believe whatever you wish, but I need not respect it. In fact I may call it bullshit if it cannot be supported by evidence. This position in neither fundementalist nor unfriendly.
I frankly don’t give a rat’s ass what you believe at home, but if you want to teach intelligent design as science, pass a “marriage” amendment, and/or blow up building for Allah, I have a BIG FUCKING PROBLEM!
Did I fucking take crazy pills? What belief do I have that wouldn’t past a sceintific evidence test? Name one. There very well may be good evidence on either side, but I’ll tell you one thing for sure, nothing I believe is entirely based on myths, 2,000 year old literature, blind faith and good intentions! People make bald assertions that don’t make any sense.
I admit there are many many many things I don’t know, and probably will never know. But there are some things I do know. And pointing those things out is not a fundementalist position.
“I frankly don’t give a rat’s ass what you believe at home, but if you want to teach intelligent design as science, pass a “marriage” amendment, and/or blow up building for Allah, I have a BIG FUCKING PROBLEM!”
Clearly not reading (or hearing) what your interlocutor has to say (to rush right to your all encompassing truth) is the sign of a fundamentalist, I’m afraid.
You said my comment was “perfectly fundementalist”, I disagreed. I have no “all encompassing truth” and I said as much.
Your comments personify the typical wishy-washy position.
“Firstly, Ms. Garrett, Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens, etc. are not “making war” on religion. Having rational discourse is not warring. Pointing out contradiction, blatant untruths and explicit ludicrousness is not warring. That’s really the salient point. Why, when one has a reasonable disagreement with religious faith is it characterized as a WAR.”
Perhaps you missed my comment above when I said, “Personally to the extent that this movement is putting heavy emphasis on reason, facts, experiment, testing, etc., I welcome them. We need to a good dose of that in the US.”
I’m an agnostic about religion and religious claims about matters of fact. But I do think that spirituality is important, which to me means treating ones life, experiences, relations w/ others and responsibilities with ultimate regard. To me that addresses the sense of life and reality and is not a prescription to make particular claims about life and reality.
Now perhaps the use of the term “war” is a bit strong, but it wasn’t my term to begin w/.
But I do think that these writers do go overboard a bit. I recently read Hitchen’s book. In it he rightly praises MLK but argues that it is in virture of MLK’s humanism that we like him, not his Christianity. Apparently, for Hitchens humanism was a separate historical track from Christianity and springs from sources and considerations that bear no relationship to Christianity. Now as a matter of historical fact that is pure bunk. Humanism began w/ writers like Erasmus, a priest, and others in Catholicism that were stretching the envelope of acceptable truth in their day. Writers like Hitchens are seem compelled to pose their difference w/ supernaturalists t as an either/or. Either MLK is admirable for non-Christian/humanistic reasons or he can’t be admirable at all. That’s just silly.
Or take Hitchen’s counter to the argument that Lenin/Stalin were mass murderers and atheists and humanists. A claim often made by those who want to exonerate the crimes of, mostly, Christianity by basically arguing, “You think we are bad. The atheists were worse.” (Another silly argument for anyone w/ a healthy moral sense given that the appropriate response to any mass murder is not to bring out a counter and tally up the dead for an apologetic purpose.)
How does Hitches handle it? He argues that the problem w/ Lenin/Stalin, etc. is that they didn’t act like true humanists but like religious fanatics. In short, they behaved like Christians w/o their theology.
What a joke of an argument. He could have analyzed movements that lead to mass murder on other grounds–ones that would explain both the mass murders of the Bolsheviks and the Inquisitors. But he really can’t do that if his agenda is to put humanism/atheism in a position that it never shares the same side of an either/or way of posing a problem. They must be on opposite sides and we must choose between them.
But we don’t have to choose between them if we don’t want to…not finally or absolutely. So my problem w/ these writers is that they pose the same false dilemma that the supernaturalists do. You are either for us or against us. You either think that truth and social/cultural/personal value lies w/ us or them. But that’s simplistic and just as much so as when it comes out of the mouth of a frothing televangelist.
__________
“Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is.” (Ludwig Wittgenstein)
OK. Fair enough. Sam Harris (my personal favorite of the big four) pushes the spirituality stuff pretty heavy. So I buy that.
As far as Hitch’s argument on the Lenin/Stalin issue, I don’t think your analysis of the argument is correct. The position he takes on Stalin (and Pol Pot and Kim Jong Il) is perfectly sound. (Harris and Dawkins take a similar stance.) Those regimes exuded (or in Kim’s case still exude) mostly “religious” attributes; highly dogmatic leader worship, head of state as god-like leader, etc. Reason and humanitarianism were hardly cornerstones of these organizations. The fact that they rejected Christianity specifically means very little. I actually think the atheist moniker is a misnomer, especially for the North Korean. He clearly thinks he is a god.
The point about MLK shows that one does not have to choose between the two. In this case humanism/atheism does share the side with religion (and Hitch says as much). You can have both. However, he poses a question to prove the point that religion is not necessary to meet humanitarian ends. Name a noble action performed by a religious persons for religious reasons that could not have ever been done by a non-believer for secular reasons. As yet no one can come up with one. But one can think of numerous horrific acts done in god’s name that would have never been performed otherwise.
“Name a noble action performed by a religious persons for religious reasons that could not have ever been done by a non-believer for secular reasons. As yet no one can come up with one. But one can think of numerous horrific acts done in god’s name that would have never been performed otherwise”
False dichotomy here, I think. There are two different ways to approach this:
1) look at the number of altruistic behaviors displayed by theistic and non-theistic to see whether either group tends to perform altruistic acts moreso than the other.
2) as for the horrors perpetrated supposedly by religion, this is a much harder question to answer than most people think. If you really want to get into it, you’ve got to make some subtle distinction between religion being the cause of such actions, and religion as merely one factor in a web of culture, economics, and politics; an example: Alfred Crosby and a few other environmental historians have made the argument that both the Mongol expansion in the 1200s and the European crusades were societal reponses to climate change moreso than being driven by religious ideology.