RE: virus: "... faith is one of the world's great evils"

Wade T.Smith (wade_smith@harvard.edu)
Tue, 11 Mar 97 07:30:42 -0500


While there were several fallacies in your apologia for faith, I will
address only one-

>4. Robespierre, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot all killed in the name of
>secularism.

Interesting viewpoint.

They were, of course, religious as well as political leaders, who
intentionally combined the two fervors- faith and patriotism- to control
their respective mobs. Hitler's Mein Kampf addresses this strategy
repeatedly.

The fact that 'faith' can be used (and controlled) in this manner, for
these ends, is the lesson history gives us, and there is little or no
apologia for it, that has any weapon against this brutal history.

A better case may well be made that 'faith' and religious motivation are
the only requisites to organized murder, other than the handy weapon. It
is 'faith' that actually swings the ax.

*********************************************************
Wade T. Smith |'There ain't nothin' you
morbius@us1.channel1.com | shouldn't do to a god.'
wade_smith@harvard.edu |'Theism is mental inbreeding.'
********* http://www.channel1.com/users/morbius/ ********