source: www.adherents.com
There is a certain kind of blogger who prides themselves in their rationality and on pointing out the irrationality of the world’s religions, and of course that religion is responsible for a significant portion of the mistrust and fear that we see in our global multi-cultural community. This, I think, is a deeply irrational position for the following reasons:
- A tiny minority of the world’s population is non-religious, despite over two hundred years of intellectual challenge by ‘humanists’ and ‘naturalists’.
- Any prospect that the great bulk of humanity is going to cave in to aggressive arguments about the irrationality of religion and surrender their religious faith is entirely irrational and based on wishful thinking without a single particle of evidence to support such a belief.
- It follows from this that peace and harmony are best served by supporting rational arguments that:
- the true goal of religion is to promote understanding and harmonious relations;
- no two religions need represent any kind of threat to each other, through incompatible doctrines or otherwise.
It is to be expected that anyone inclined to leave abusive comments on articles touching on religion in the Guardian Unlimited Comment is Free blog, say, is likely to blow a gasket on reading the above and reach for the comment button but let us consider such a hostile reaction. Where is it leading to and where has it come from? The logic of the above argument is straightforward—there is no practical prospect of demolishing religious practice so we all have a choice of either rationally establishing their peaceful intent or else making the case that they are violent in intent. What are the consequences of this latter course? To the extent that it is successful in arguing for the violent intent of a given religion, people belonging to other religions will have their fears heightened, possibly leading them to adhere to their own religious positions more dogmatically. People that adhere to the religion in question will most likely see their religion being attacked as evidence of the aggressive intentions of the attacker in misrepresenting it (as understand by them), or they could even see it as reinforcing a violent understanding of their religion. Such behaviour is contributing in a very tangible sense to fear and misunderstanding, violence and, ultimately, war.
Is this an exaggeration? No! War is scarcely possible in the modern world without this kind of fear and misunderstanding, and such attempts to represent religions as violent and unjust are directly contributing to an essential cause of modern warfare. Take for example, a recent article by Peter Preston in The Guardian, An illogical Armageddon, discussing the operation of the Mutually Assured Destruction doctrine of the cold war in the Middle East today, which drew the following comment, which is by no means unusual.
Er, I think the reason the MAD doctrine cannot be relied upon in the Middle East has nothing to do with the relative size of Israel and Iran; rather it is that the morons who would press the buttons *don’t care* whether their country, or any country, is fried or not. Theirs is a higher purpose; – a spiritual duty – one that trumps mere earthly concerns.
Worse still, this kind of thinking isn’t quite as preposterous as it seems: if you really do believe that your sacred duty is to kill as many infidels as possible, regardless of the cost, *and* that the paradise awaiting you really is awaiting you, then MAD must seem somewhat quaint to say the least.
This is a singular interpretation of Islam. The current situation requires that this point be made clearly. Any objective investigation of the various schools Islamic ethics will conclude, that even if a population of delusionary and deranged fanatics is selected—the equivalent of the tiny, far-right neo-fascists in modern Europe, and just as representative—one would not find this understanding (the duty to kill infidels) which is here being projected onto present or future leaders of Iran. Yet it is just the kind of prejudice that is propelling the world into another catastrophic war in the Middle East. The supreme irony of this situation is that Ayatollah Khomeini has ruled that nuclear weapons are un-Islamic and this remains the policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Loose talk can cost lives, millions of them.
(To be Continued.)
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