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From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Yellow Press in SciFi?
Message-ID: <368@pyuxd.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 9-Jan-85 13:08:51 EST
Article-I.D.: pyuxd.368
Posted: Wed Jan  9 13:08:51 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 11-Jan-85 23:18:06 EST
References: <1253@hou4b.UUCP>, <454@mhuxt.UUCP> <4554@cbscc.UUCP>
Organization: Bell Communications Research, Piscataway N.J.
Lines: 48

>>[from Jeff Sonntag:]
>>I seem to remember reading another story once where the man who discovered the
>>fact that the earth revolves around the sun was put on trial by the catholic
>>church for heresy.  And another where some religious nuts run something called
>>the 'Spanish Inquisition', where they tortured lots of innocent people.  And
>>another story where religious people accused each other of being 'witches'
>>and burned, hung, tortured, crushed beneath stones, etc each other.  Those
>>writers must really have some kind of private grudge against religion!  I
>>guess I'll just have to agree with Mark Terrible on this one.  :-)
>>    Wait a minute!  I just remembered where I read those stories!  My high
>>school history class.

> Forgive me for even bothering with this response, but there is still something
> that bothers me about tounge-in-cheek statements like this.  The lop-sided
> evidence Jeff marshalls against religion only seems to reveal his own private
> grudge against it.  [PAUL DUBUC]

Forgive me, too.  Why is it that when religious believers proclaim "Humanism/
scientism/anti-religionism is permeating our society, and this is bad because
it deteriorates religious belief" or some such variant, they offer no real
evidence that their negative wishful thinking on the subject of a non-religious
future is well founded?  Yet when someone offers historical perspective on the
dangers of religion, it is labelled as slanderous.  Quite a double standard
there.

> A more balanced approach to history might reveal far
> greater atrocities in countries where religious belief is routed and atheism
> is the rule.  In those cases it is often claimed that such perfideous actions
> had nothing to do with the religious belief (or lack thereof) of their
> perpetrators.  It's just a little strange that that it is often inferred that
> the religious beliefs (especially if they are Christian beliefs) have a
> direct causual link with things like the Inquisition and Salem Witch Trials.

Look at what the people were tried for:  not adhering to religious rules,
being different from the standards for the community set by religious
oligarchies.  It's not strange at all; it *is* quite strange for you to try to
foist the opposite viewpoint upon us as fact.  I'd venture that the "atheist"
countries you describe are far from humanist (whatever that means) in
their goals for society.  Such countries have the same structure as those with
religious despotry or tyranny, the only difference being that the people who
reap the power and/or exercise the control are NOT the religious oligarchy.
It appears that the only real complaint that the religious leadership would
have with such atheistic tyranny is that THEY have been left out of the power
loop.  (I know, they're *really* not power-hungry, just looking out for
people's real interests.  Right...)
-- 
"Does the body rule the mind or does the mind rule the body?  I dunno."
				Rich Rosen 	{ihnp4 | harpo}!pyuxd!rlr