X-Message-Number: 17731
Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2001 11:04:21 -0400 (EDT)
From: Charles Platt <>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #17723 - #17726

Dani Kollin writes:

'Second of all, if you see "unpleasant parallels" between cyonicists and
"relious" people you might want to look at some of unpleasantness of the
"great" secular movements (Communism comes to mind) as well, not the least
of which resulted in the deaths and suffering of far more human life than
that of their supposedly religious conterparts.'

First this is rather a poor argument since the members of any religion
(with the probable exception of Buddhism) will tend to claim that they are
ethically guided and hence less likely to act unethically than their
atheist counterparts. If this were true, one should expect to find no
religious wars at all, and barbaric conflict should be purely an atheistic
occupation. To say that religious people have had ugly wars, but so have
atheists, is to say that the whole idea of religious guidance is a total
failure.

Second, I think you will find, if you add up the body count, that the
total from wars in which the aggressor invoked "God's blessing" is higher
than from other conflicts; and religious conflicts are notoriously vicious
(e.g. Spanish Inquisition) since any behavior is supposedly excused by the
Creator, and the participants are encouraged to take extreme measures
because they probably believe in an afterlife.

One could argue reasonably that people doing these things were
misinterpreting their holy guide books. However, if a guide book is so
easily misinterpreted, I regard it as badly written and dangerous. The US
Constitution is a model of clarity by comparison.

The only religious group I trust (again, apart from Buddhists) is the
Quakers. Their record is pretty much unimpeachable, because of their
refusal to interfere in other people's business. This almost puts them on
a par with the libertarians. However, the relative unpopularity of
Quakerism suggests to me that religions are more successful when they do
in fact have a record of gross interference with competing faiths.

--CP

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