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You're certainly free to suspect what you like -- it's impossible to rigorously test every opinion. I would hope, though, that if you were considering making i
by brlewis 15y ago
You're certainly free to suspect what you like -- it's impossible to rigorously test every opinion. I would hope, though, that if you were considering making it your life's work to campaign for eradicating religion, you would do so based on more than a suspicion.
My suspicion is that if religion were eradicated, people who want to compel others to do war or terrorism would quickly find other pretenses and other empty promises. This suspicion is consistent with Robert Pape's finding controlling variables for increasing/decreasing terrorism that are not connected to religiosity.
- Tichy 15y agoReligion encourages people not to question things (including reasons for wars), which is reason enough for me to oppose it. That is just my personal preference, though, I'd like people to question things and generally be rational. Of course it is possible to not question things and not be religious, which might explain the terrorism study. Also, of course there are sometimes valid reasons for wars, and clearly not all wars have anything to do with religion at all. So maybe I am not campaigning against religion so much as for logic and rational thought. Religion just happens to be in the way.
- brlewis 15y agoI'm all for campaining for logic and rational thought. If Dawkins confined himself to the instances where religion (or at least religion-flavored politics) interferes with science and education, I would have no problem with it.
- Tichy 15y agoCan't comment because I haven't followed his campaign against religion. I enjoyed some of his earlier books on evolution theory.