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Friends,
I apologize for stepping out of bounds of protocol, and won't do it again. Though this board is important to me, sort of like my evening prayers, I had not before posted a photo. In doing so my intent was to introduce myself as a multi-faceted guy.
I take the critical feedback seriously, except for those who misrepresented what I said, and very much appreciate the kind understanding words which I would expect from other long haired men.
I will post a photograph before my mistaken sheering.
James
Important like your evening prayers? So for me that means, totally not important?
I can't understand, especially the americans, believe so much in an upperbeing, a god, to which they have to pray. If god existed wouldn't he have created a world of peace, where every single humanbeing would have it good, with no problems at all.
Religion has always, and still f***s up the world(and for the americans, or at least your leaders, don't forget oil). No religion (and no oil) = no war. It's as simple as that.
Patrick,
please don't let James' little remark "important like evening prayers" cue you into a debate about whether religion is good or bad for the world. That would definitely off-topic. This board is NOT the place for that. On this board, devout believers of several religions, agnostics, and atheists coexist peacefully with each other - in order to debate issues related to long hair on men.
The statement that we'd have world peace if disagreement with your atheism didn't exist ("No religion ... = no war.") strikes me as blatant intolerance. Conversely, certain religious people could claim that we'd have world peace, if "infidelity" in the sense of "godlessness" didn't exist - and that would be blatant intolerance, too.
The issue whether religion is good or bad for world peace simply doesn't belong on this board.
Respectfully yours
Hans-Uwe
Sadly, most wars are about religion. The remark is infammatory, and I wouldn't have said it, but if I am even the slightest bit honest I have to admit that I largely agree. Probably 90% of wars would dissappear if there were no religion.
It isn't going to happen, though. I think it was a psychiatrist that said the need for religion is such a deep seated need that if god didn't exist we'd have to invent him. I always thought that was funny, because I always thought people did invent god! Nonetheless, this means that religion, and the wars it causes, aren't going away anytime soon.
I guess as an atheist I have something missing psychologically, and thank god for that! (That was a joke)
Hi elektros,
you may be right about these 90% of wars dealing with religion in some way or another, and, you are also right about the deep-seated need. If religion disappears, something else will fill in the void, and that might result in wars that are even worse. In the 1930's, the NS tyranny in Germany tried to supplant Christianity with a more "teutonic" fuehrer-type "religion", which mandated cruelty, destruction, and total war. And, the Soviet Union may not have started a total war like the Nazis did, but their particular brand of atheism lead to a huge blood toll, especially during Stalin's time.
Don't get me wrong, I do see a wide variety of brands of atheism in this world. My Christian faith and your atheism are probably a lot closer to each other, than either of them would be to the Spanish or the Stalinist inquisition.
My personal consequence of all that is that I'll remain Christian, and that I adhere to an interpretation of the bible that mandates mutual respect and love, and I find that easy enough in spite of many gruesome stories that are also in the bible. I'd like to call upon all Christian leaders to do the same.
Best wishes,
Hans-Uwe
That's the great tragedy of religion, that more people (especially politicians) don't concentrate on the teachings of peace and love that invariably are found in all the holy books instead of persecuting those that don't follow their particular sect.
Dear elektros,
as far as I know, the man who wrote "If God did not exist, we'd have to invent him" is the french philosopher Voltaire in 1833 (François-Marie Arouet, in Épitre CXI, À l'auteur du livre des trois imposteurs).
Denis Diderot, another philosopher answered "This is what we did".
Regards
I stand corrected.
As for religion being behind most wars, take the middle east. The 'promised land' is a purely religeous cocept, and as such is entirely resistant to logic, that being the nature of religion.
Moslems, OTOH, have no reason to beleive in this particular concept, AFAIK, and that brings us to where we are today. Of course, as an atheist I don't accept it either, which places me unavoidably on the same ideological side as the moslems, even though I have little in common with them.
Christians beleive in the 'promised land' in theory, but don't place much importance in it unless they are fundamentalists, ar at least that's how it appears to me(?), which helps explain some of their political positions. I wonder what christian arabs think of the 'promised land', expecially those that are palestinians? It must be rough to beleive in a 'promised land' when you are one of the people that live there and aren't one of the 'chosen people'?
But it's not about religion ... much!
Here's another quote that I won't even try to attribute (although I hope someone here might try). The saying that 'you can never go back'. For many years I never understood this myself, but it means that 'going back' is impossible because you must go back in time as well as in space. Unless you have access to a TARDIS, that's a problem. I think it's apposite to the middle east.
So if there was no religion, there'd be no war? Ignoramus. You're unbelievably naive if you think that all the world's wars are about religion. And did it ever occur to you that the idea of a final judgement is rendered null and void in an infinitely peaceful (and perhaps communist) society?
This board is not the place to get into this, but I insist that you learn what respect towards others is. You don't need a deity to do that.
Also, just because you can't understand something doesn't mean everyone else is wrong. Think before you type, and then maybe think some more.
Peace
Hey Fallen_angels,
You must have just sharpened that forked tongue of yours, because, MAN, did you ever make your point!!!! Reminds me of my grandmother: she didn't put up with nuthin'! I love love LOVE it!!!!! (Meow! Purr, kitty, purr!!!)
- Ken
Lol! Ha, yes, religon is quite the verbal blacksmith, if you ask me. Thanks, lol.
...so before I visit your gran, I've gotta break out my bulletproof vest and med insurance, huh?
Pretty much, war happens when ideas become more important than people--ideas most often attached to egoes.
And, religion is a systematic set of ideas.
Can you name a war where ideas didn't become more important than people? If we got to a place where poeple valued people more than ideas, war would simple cease.
And this from a teacher who deals in ideas all day--with people.
BTW, while I'm on a teacher-teaching-school jag (school starts MOnday for me), mark it down. Any teacher you ever had that was mean, cruel and unfair was one who valued ideas more than people (last I checked, students were people).
And, that teacher that you may have had whom you loved? That was a teacher who valued people more than the still very important ideas he/she had to teach.
Robert
Nice logic, but it assumes that religion is the source of all ideas mankind can possibly have, which just doesn't seem like the right answer to me. Sure, religion is the cause of some wars, perhaps many - but all? I'll admit that I don't know much about history, but I'm sure that many great conflicts were fought over differences in opinion that weren't necessarily linked to religion. For example, if one tribe encroaches on another tribe's territory, this could cause a major conflict, and yet religion is not necessarily the cause of it. In other words, I don't believe you can rationally say religion is the cause of all war.
I'm sure I could if I studied history more. And ideas do not equal religion. Think of it like a Ven diagram - ideas is the box, the universal set, and religion is in it, not the other way around.
You might be right that in such a society, war would cease. I never said it wouldn't; I said that the reason we don't exist in such a society might be related to ideas of judgment after death.
Yes, but once again, not necessarily related to religion.
Robert Responds: Actually, if you studied history, you would be hard-pressed to find a single example of war that was not fueled by religion. Even so-called "communist" wars are driven by a communism that is "anti-religion", and hence is being driven by a set of ideas that is about stamping out religion, and usually the communist side is opposed by a religious side. In the Viet-Nam war, for instance, the communist "north" was fighting the "Catholic" south (in a country that had for centuries been Buddhist. The Buddhists were largely working for peace while the communists and Catholics aided by the US destroyed the country.
Robert Responds: I think we agree here. I was just saying that religion is a systematic set of ideas that has been made more important than the people it often is used to control. The real test in any religion is to ask what happens when it becomes clear that an idea held as sacred in the religion actually is harmful to its people. If the adherents are willing to change the idea so that it serves people, then in my opinion you have a compassionate religion. If the response is to defend the idea even more and ignore those who suffer because of it, you have a prime example of a religion that holds its ideas as more important than people. And then, it will generate a whole host of additional ideas to "defend" the offensive one.
Take a test to your history book: choose a war, any war. See what the ideas were that were being fought over. Is there, anywhere in the background, a religion in control of those ideas?
You mentioned tribal wars over land. In most ancient relgions, the land itself is deified, in most cases, as the Divine Mother. Who wouldn't go to war to defend "mother's honor"?
Robert Responds: Actually it is deeply related to religion in that they are the same dynamic. Schools and religious organizations are run in almost the same way, even public, secular schools. American schooling models developed after WWII and were modelled on Prussian army programs (it's a long story). In short, you get hierarchical systems that work from the top down, where ideas take precedence over people. The ideas in a religion and a school may be different in content, but the way that the organization ACTS with regard to which is more important is almost always the same. People take second place to ideas, and people, eventually, suffer for it.
I know these are disturbing ideas,and largely in this culture we like to ignore them. I am glad we had a chance to discuss them here. And this is related to men and long hair. Any man on this board ever felt that you as a person were treated as less important than someone else's IDEA of what a man ought to look like? :)
Robert
The point I was trying to make is that it's not an absolute. As Hans-Uwe pointed out, if religion did not exist, something else would probably replace it, and this replacement might be the source of wars far worse or far more benign than religious ones. You use words like "most" and "hard-pressed" and phrases like "pretty much" - but these are not absolutes. Call me picky, but I can't understand how something can be passed off as "most" but still be viewed as categorical. That's a generalization.
And yes, I know about the sanctity of the land in many religions. Again, though it's possible, I find it unlikely that every single "war" the tribes fought over was related to defending their goddess's honor. It might be, but we can't know for sure.
I think one of the problems here is that I began arguing with a loose definition of "war" in my mind - I was thinking of anything from larger-than-normal fights to full-blown national wars.
Also, I do understand what you're saying, and I'm glad as well that we had a chance to discuss it. It's just that I often view things as absolutes or finites, and I see only the supreme being as an absolute. That said, if we look at things in a slightly more general manner, I'd have to agree with you on many of your points. But since my mind is open to the possibility of anything happening, I can't really be content with the idea that no war that ever happens will ever not be about religion. Difference in ideas, very likely - but not necessarily religious ones. You said that at some point in the past these ideas might have been linked to religion - well, again, not necessarily. If you take an idea like this far enough, you can assume that religion is the fountainhead of all notions, and that's where it gets tricky.
I can think up a number of "silly" reasons a war could be started, such as an escalating argument over the true color of the sky, or whether a falling branch makes a sound if you don't hear it, etc, but again, these are just possibilities. In the real world, what you've said is often the case, while my ideas of "simpler" wars are stuffed into a little box of possibilities.
I understand where you are coming from. I use qualifiers like "most" and "often" not to be vague, but because I don't deal in absolutes. I used to. If there are absolutes, I am fairly sure that we are not in touch with them as humanity. I am sure that we do much better when we respect each other as human beings. I am sure that when I honor a person over an idea (ANY idea) things get better, and when I hold to an idea over a person, someone gets hurt.
I am not in favor or hurt.
I know you find the idea of "religion behind every war" disturbing. Let yourself be disturbed, and go look at wars, and the subject of war and religion. It's not an unresearched theme. I am not anti-religion. I think most religions (I don't pretend to know them all) embody a human wisdom that is useful to us. I would not toss out religion, but I temper it with the humbling reality that it is, finally, a human convention that often goes wrong (often goes right, too), and in the name of what is supposed to be loftiest, the most desicable things happen.
As far as I am concerned, interchange with you is an interchange withh the divine. I don't need you to be perfect or absolute to experience that. I just need the interchange. If I blast you with my ideas, I've done damage to you. If I respect you and honor you, something passes between us that changes me and changes you. How much more powerful could it get? It's a really cool (divinely cool) interchange. And Christian, Hindu, Native, Pagan, Buddhist, Jewish stories are full of examples like this.
I wax on too much.
Robert
Are you serious? The Prussian army was the model for our schools!?! The principals are like the Junkers going about giving orders I suppose, only lacking their large Baltic seaside estates to be true to form! That actually makes a lot of sense.
I am very serious. I would recommend a little (but powerful) book called The Book of Learning and Forgetting, by Frank Smith. He details the history of North American education models in painful detail. He's a good writer, and the reading is interesting.
If you get into any school system and look around you will find examples in the not too distant past of principals and superintendents who, indeed, had their "estates" built on education funds. Graft and corruption is less prevalent these days, but men who rose to the top did it largely in the past for a few reasons. The good of the children was not "it" for too many.
Robert
Hate to inteject here but as a lover of history and as someone who has done a lot of history at University (ancient and modern but majoring in modern), I just had to clarify what you are saying here.
(By the way: I say this not to be pretentious, but to help justify my point a little)
If you are saying that many wars are fought over land/economics/political control etc. but are 'fueled' (i.e justified by God/s, God/s used as inspiration) by 'religion' then I agree with you.
* But to say that all or even most wars are ABOUT religion is way off base in my opinion.
(although some of course definitely are)
That said I'm sure there must be some wars in which religion wasn't even used as 'fuel', but I'll have to approach the conflicts I've done before and the ones i'll do in the future with this in mind as it is a point that I find really interesting and never fully considered before.
A great and mature discussion here, and you're right the teachers I loved in school cared about people too. Your students are lucky to have you.
Good point to clarify, Dean. I am NOT saying that all wars are about religion, but I am saying that I have not found one yet that is not fueled by ideas over people,and those ideas seem to always be fueled by religion (or anti-religion which ends up being the same thing).
For instance, there are plenty of ideas that our current US administration used to propel us into this war with Iraq. In the background, at the very least, was the president's own evangelical style Christianity, which he invokes often. MOre in the foreground has been the religion of Islam on the opposite side, and in the past few weeks our president has begun to use the term "fascist Islam" to describe "the enemy".
This is not a war, per se, ABOUT religion, but who could deny that religions and ideas about religions fuel it? When people can appeal to an "absolute truth/deity" out there in the sky somehwere, or to an "absolute truth" in a "revealed book", it seems to make their ideas intractable, non-negotiable. It also makes violence inevitable.
THis whole thread, which is now sliding down the board and into oblivion, has really be helpful to me. It has allowed me to reflect on what war really means to me. I think I have come to see that all violence is a result of holding ideas (regardless of what they are) as more valuable than human beings, or creation in general.
News articles this week from the coast of Oregon and the coast of Georgia both identify "dead zones" in the coastal waters (Georgia's is not dead yet but will be in 10 years if we simply do nothing). Our idea of a right to own and build and live however we want as more important than the nature that we must destroy to do so is literally killing the planet that we depend on for survival. It's another form of violence. What pains me on this level is that we don't even get it when it comes to violence against each other, much less when it comes to violence against the planet or the forest or the ocean.
Robert
Some of us religious Americans might feel the same way about simple minded people.
Big George
If Bush were your president, prayer would be important to you, too. [wink]
Bill
Yeah, I don't beleive in god, but I'm praying we get rid of him somehow!
James:
You are welcome here. This is a place where we who share this common vested interest can gather to discuss, question, and share our long hair journey. This world is made up of billions of people; each having a different and unique slant. Just because yours and mine are residing on opposite ends of the spectrum doesn't mean we can't coexist here.
Once again, I welcome your input.
Big George