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WORLD CITIZEN LETTER: 559
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WCL 559 June 2007
Religious maniacs
Reading a lively and incisive book by Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion brings home the occasional arrogance of atheists, rejecting all talk of God. But it delivers an even more pungent criticism of those who imagine a god who has created a world which is described in great accuracy within the tenets of various religions - all different, of course. Inevitably, the schemes and plans made by the godly come to nought, because they neglect the lessons of history and see the present through the refracting lens of their own prejudices.
As a Second World War English federalist always asserted in his regular radio broadcasts "It all depends on what you mean by God". Indeed it does! If "God" chose to create a world that would soon be crowded with competing religions then perhaps there was reason in it. We are all members of one or more minorities. Nor is there any sign that "God" wants things differently. Human beings lurch to and fro in their efforts to change or perpetuate the way things are. God does not show signs of objecting to that. If there was a determination to allow or aid one religion to become universal, we should expected clear evidence to be shown during the ten thousand or so years of recorded history.
But nothing of the sort. Only religious maniacs imagine that their brand is on the way to triumph. The intellectual pigmy now in control at the White House appears to have a direct line to his personal god, one who beams proudly upon right-wing obscurantists. Those happy folk in turn have the vision of a world that corresponds neither to present-day reality nor to any scene of peace and harmony amongst people. Instead it envisages a threatening deity who will bring recalcitrant non-believers to heel, or to ruin. The Old Testament, that most un-Christian collection of documents, is full of the most partisan and inhuman fulmination against such infidels. Much of it might have been written by teachers preparing terrorists for today's excesses.
But it may be that the intellectual critics of Christianity are more vocal, more eloquent and more persistent than those of other major religions. Perhaps it is that they have most serious scientists rooting for them. The American "religious" opposition to the theory of evolution appears based on the flimsiest connection with the science that since 1500 has transformed the world. It is ironic that the U.S., which relies upon scientists for its current sweep to maintain financial, political and military world domination, should have at its heart a culture that denies one of the fundamental scientific approaches to human biology.
Madness comes from an inability to recognize reality and it is difficult to swallow the American administration's refusal to accept a near-universal scientific determination that human action is responsible for climatic change. But that is in line with the attitude to evolution. Something is not acceptable, for financial or religious reasons and therefore it is rejected as not true; and policy is made accordingly. The effects on humanity at large (something for profound religious consideration) can be and are ignored if the conflict with the interests of the U.S. government and their neo-con backers. That is the way of the religious maniacs.
Religion, "true religion" and every brand of religion are touted in the global market-place. We are all the objects of the religious salesmen: every snake-oil peddler and hucksters of all kinds of newfangled and so-called traditional beliefs is on the job. For every newcomer, like Scientology, created and modified over a decade to achieve a fully saleable product, there is still a hundred of the old faithful, who had attracted a handful of followers in every generation for hundreds or thousands of years. One can hardly prefer one, unless they can reconcile each to other.
No matter what we believe, and how fervently we press the claims of our particular nostrum for achieving heaven on earth or in the afterlife we shall not be judged for that either by God or by history. How we behave, not how we think, will determine that judgement. And if hell is still reached by good intentions, one of the obvious routes is via that of religious intentions.
We all find it easier to proclaim the good than to achieve it, but world citizens have, above all, to accept that other world citizens have the right and duty to believe differently to the others. If we fail in that, we shall end in ruin.
John Roberts
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