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Historically, religion doesn't have a great track record with its use of moral authority.

jimmygrapes 3y ago
Historically, no entity does
Guthur 3y ago
I'd beg to disagree. The track record of secularism from the French revolution, to empire and idealogy had quite a lot of blood on it's hands. The body count is most certainly not skewed to religion by any stretch.
- areoform 3y ago
  We now live in the most peaceful time in human history. And just to be clear, we're contrasting this time of unprecedented peace with entities that have killed in spasms of violence with no apparent public casus belli than "my book is better than your book and it told me to do so?" Spasms that, in one set of instances, led to the deaths of a significant fraction of the global population? “Estimates of the number of people killed in the Crusades begin at 1 million (Wertham…) and go as high as 9 million (Robertson…) passing through 3 million (Garrison…) and 5 million (Elson…) along the way. I took the low middle (Garrison’s estimate) as my estimate. The geometric means of the extremes is 3 million.” Matthew White, The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History’s 100 Worst Atrocities (2012), p. 576 (see f.n. 1 under The Crusades). Or, the religiously affirmed divine right fascists felt during WW2 to rule others as decreed by their holy men? NAZI 'DIVINE RIGHT' TO RULE ASSERTED; Dr. Ley Says Reich's 'Mission' to Dominate Other Nations Is Among War Aims WOULD WIPE OUT BRITAIN 'Annihilation' of Obstacle to German Destiny Demanded by Labor Front Head https://www.nytimes.com/1939/12/19/archives/nazi-divine-right-to-rule-asserted-dr-ley-says-reichs-mission-to.html https://www.nytimes.com/1939/12/19/archives/nazi-divine-righ... Or, doctrines like "Manifest Destiny" that were religious in origin and preached in church? http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/nineteen/nkeyinfo/mandestiny.htm http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/nineteen/nkeyinfo... The only way to end the cycle of violence is by embracing the scientific method, rationality, and empathy. Anything else is a step to madness. Voltaire said it best, There have been people who once said, you believe incomprehensible, contradictory, impossible things, because we have ordered you to do so; therefore do unjust things because we order you to do so. These people reasoned wonderfully. Certainly, whoever has the right to make you absurd has the right to make you unjust. Or, more succinctly, as Desmond MacCarthy put it via a fictional Voltaire, Ah, my child, as long as people continue to believe absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities! We must fight irrational lunacy and ensure that the light of enlightenment doesn't die out.
  - gjsman-1000 3y ago
    > We now live in the most peaceful time in human history. I would say we live in the most widespread Uneasy Peace in human history. And unlike religious peace which had occasional conflicts, a break in the peace now would mean annihilation. Is general peace, risk of annihilation better than occasional petty wars without annihilation? > And just to be clear, we're contrasting this time of unprecedented peace with entities that have killed in spasms of violence with no apparent public casus belli than "my book is better than your book and it told me to do so?" I quoted The Washington Post's opinion, which is hardly the number most favorable to religious causes. Plus, older books had higher numbers than newer scholarship. https://apholt.com/2019/02/19/modern-scholars-on-the-casualty-rates-for-participants-of-the-first-crusade/ https://apholt.com/2019/02/19/modern-scholars-on-the-casualt... https://apholt.com/2019/01/30/death-estimates-for-the-crusades/ https://apholt.com/2019/01/30/death-estimates-for-the-crusad... > NAZI 'DIVINE RIGHT' TO RULE ASSERTED; Dr. Ley Says Reich's 'Mission' to Dominate Other Nations Is Among War Aims WOULD WIPE OUT BRITAIN 'Annihilation' of Obstacle to German Destiny Demanded by Labor Front Head Well, considering that they murdered priests and pastors in their camps, were they really friendly to religion? Particularly Catholic Priests, who represented 94% of the clergy they executed. > Or, doctrines like "Manifest Destiny" that were religious in origin and preached in church? Let's not confuse Protestant fundamentalism motivated by political ends with religion in general. > The only way to end the cycle of violence is by embracing the scientific method, rationality, and empathy. Anything else is a step to madness. So said the French Revolution. They did everything they could to break away from religion - they even invented a new calendar starting at year 0 because... anyway. Didn't go so well, there were a few smaller revolutions afterward to get to modern France.
    - LexiMax 3y ago
      > Let's not confuse Protestant fundamentalism motivated by political ends with religion in general. This is the rule, not the exception. Throughout history, instances where religious war was waged or religious atrocities occurred, there was often an underlying political logic to them. Religion has less to do with the underlying morality of the scripture and more to do with what religious leaders of the time say it is, and their interpretation can be...flexible. > So said the French Revolution. What followed the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars was one of the most peaceful 99 years on the European continent since Pax Romana.
- freedomben 3y ago
  You seem to be inferring an argument in GP that they didn't make - that secularism is has no blood on it's hands. Of course it does. This does not mean that religion is innocent. That is a fallacy. They are not mutually exclusive. People can do terrible things when guided by religious faith, or when guided by a secular "faith." Both are bad and should be called out.
edgyquant 3y ago
The other poster is correct that this an incorrect secular talking point. “Secular” regimes have murdered tens of millions of people in this past century alone
- LexiMax 3y ago
  Nevertheless, the assertion that religious regimes are somehow advantaged is off base. Religious morality is not some constant force, it's a malleable, flexible construct that has less to do with actual scripture and more to do with what religious leaders of the time say it is.
gjsman-1000 3y ago
Mandatory reminder that many of the "but the Crusades" arguments are also misleading. Sure, ~1.0-1.7 million people died in the Crusades according to modern scholarship. However, the Crusades were an extremely diverse set of conflicts that spanned a 196-year period, with both sides having their own atrocities. The last 196-years of secular government has killed, let's just say, way more than ~1.0-1.7 million people. Even the nice ones like France, which killed ~1.5 million Algerians from 1954 to 1962, so small by comparison to other atrocities you probably didn't even hear about it. That's before even considering the Reign of Terror, Communist Governments of all kinds, US Forced Sterilization in the name of science for decades, and on and on. And as for the Spanish Inquisition, despite the horrible memory, modern estimates now show the total death count was about 3,000-5,000 people over a 350 year time span. At worst, 14 executions per year. Secular courts were far less forgiving. Even Wikipedia has updated their numbers accordingly.
- LexiMax 3y ago
  The last 196 years of secular government took place in wake of the industrial revolution and the unprecedented population growth which those advances enabled.

Historically, no entity does

I'd beg to disagree. The track record of secularism from the French revolution, to empire and idealogy had quite a lot of blood on it's hands. The body count is most certainly not skewed to religion by any stretch.

areoform 3y ago
We now live in the most peaceful time in human history. And just to be clear, we're contrasting this time of unprecedented peace with entities that have killed in spasms of violence with no apparent public casus belli than "my book is better than your book and it told me to do so?" Spasms that, in one set of instances, led to the deaths of a significant fraction of the global population? “Estimates of the number of people killed in the Crusades begin at 1 million (Wertham…) and go as high as 9 million (Robertson…) passing through 3 million (Garrison…) and 5 million (Elson…) along the way. I took the low middle (Garrison’s estimate) as my estimate. The geometric means of the extremes is 3 million.” Matthew White, The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History’s 100 Worst Atrocities (2012), p. 576 (see f.n. 1 under The Crusades). Or, the religiously affirmed divine right fascists felt during WW2 to rule others as decreed by their holy men? NAZI 'DIVINE RIGHT' TO RULE ASSERTED; Dr. Ley Says Reich's 'Mission' to Dominate Other Nations Is Among War Aims WOULD WIPE OUT BRITAIN 'Annihilation' of Obstacle to German Destiny Demanded by Labor Front Head https://www.nytimes.com/1939/12/19/archives/nazi-divine-right-to-rule-asserted-dr-ley-says-reichs-mission-to.html https://www.nytimes.com/1939/12/19/archives/nazi-divine-righ... Or, doctrines like "Manifest Destiny" that were religious in origin and preached in church? http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/nineteen/nkeyinfo/mandestiny.htm http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/nineteen/nkeyinfo... The only way to end the cycle of violence is by embracing the scientific method, rationality, and empathy. Anything else is a step to madness. Voltaire said it best, There have been people who once said, you believe incomprehensible, contradictory, impossible things, because we have ordered you to do so; therefore do unjust things because we order you to do so. These people reasoned wonderfully. Certainly, whoever has the right to make you absurd has the right to make you unjust. Or, more succinctly, as Desmond MacCarthy put it via a fictional Voltaire, Ah, my child, as long as people continue to believe absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities! We must fight irrational lunacy and ensure that the light of enlightenment doesn't die out.
- gjsman-1000 3y ago
  > We now live in the most peaceful time in human history. I would say we live in the most widespread Uneasy Peace in human history. And unlike religious peace which had occasional conflicts, a break in the peace now would mean annihilation. Is general peace, risk of annihilation better than occasional petty wars without annihilation? > And just to be clear, we're contrasting this time of unprecedented peace with entities that have killed in spasms of violence with no apparent public casus belli than "my book is better than your book and it told me to do so?" I quoted The Washington Post's opinion, which is hardly the number most favorable to religious causes. Plus, older books had higher numbers than newer scholarship. https://apholt.com/2019/02/19/modern-scholars-on-the-casualty-rates-for-participants-of-the-first-crusade/ https://apholt.com/2019/02/19/modern-scholars-on-the-casualt... https://apholt.com/2019/01/30/death-estimates-for-the-crusades/ https://apholt.com/2019/01/30/death-estimates-for-the-crusad... > NAZI 'DIVINE RIGHT' TO RULE ASSERTED; Dr. Ley Says Reich's 'Mission' to Dominate Other Nations Is Among War Aims WOULD WIPE OUT BRITAIN 'Annihilation' of Obstacle to German Destiny Demanded by Labor Front Head Well, considering that they murdered priests and pastors in their camps, were they really friendly to religion? Particularly Catholic Priests, who represented 94% of the clergy they executed. > Or, doctrines like "Manifest Destiny" that were religious in origin and preached in church? Let's not confuse Protestant fundamentalism motivated by political ends with religion in general. > The only way to end the cycle of violence is by embracing the scientific method, rationality, and empathy. Anything else is a step to madness. So said the French Revolution. They did everything they could to break away from religion - they even invented a new calendar starting at year 0 because... anyway. Didn't go so well, there were a few smaller revolutions afterward to get to modern France.
  - LexiMax 3y ago
    > Let's not confuse Protestant fundamentalism motivated by political ends with religion in general. This is the rule, not the exception. Throughout history, instances where religious war was waged or religious atrocities occurred, there was often an underlying political logic to them. Religion has less to do with the underlying morality of the scripture and more to do with what religious leaders of the time say it is, and their interpretation can be...flexible. > So said the French Revolution. What followed the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars was one of the most peaceful 99 years on the European continent since Pax Romana.
freedomben 3y ago
You seem to be inferring an argument in GP that they didn't make - that secularism is has no blood on it's hands. Of course it does. This does not mean that religion is innocent. That is a fallacy. They are not mutually exclusive. People can do terrible things when guided by religious faith, or when guided by a secular "faith." Both are bad and should be called out.

edgyquant 3y ago

The other poster is correct that this an incorrect secular talking point. “Secular” regimes have murdered tens of millions of people in this past century alone

LexiMax 3y ago
Nevertheless, the assertion that religious regimes are somehow advantaged is off base. Religious morality is not some constant force, it's a malleable, flexible construct that has less to do with actual scripture and more to do with what religious leaders of the time say it is.

gjsman-1000 3y ago

Mandatory reminder that many of the "but the Crusades" arguments are also misleading. Sure, ~1.0-1.7 million people died in the Crusades according to modern scholarship. However, the Crusades were an extremely diverse set of conflicts that spanned a 196-year period, with both sides having their own atrocities. The last 196-years of secular government has killed, let's just say, way more than ~1.0-1.7 million people. Even the nice ones like France, which killed ~1.5 million Algerians from 1954 to 1962, so small by comparison to other atrocities you probably didn't even hear about it. That's before even considering the Reign of Terror, Communist Governments of all kinds, US Forced Sterilization in the name of science for decades, and on and on. And as for the Spanish Inquisition, despite the horrible memory, modern estimates now show the total death count was about 3,000-5,000 people over a 350 year time span. At worst, 14 executions per year. Secular courts were far less forgiving. Even Wikipedia has updated their numbers accordingly.

LexiMax 3y ago
The last 196 years of secular government took place in wake of the industrial revolution and the unprecedented population growth which those advances enabled.