I found this article on huffington post about atheism and foreign policy.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-wright/why-the-new-atheists-are_b_230448.html
He talks about how new atheists are very hawkish in their ideas of foreign policy. He brings up an interesting point, that i would like to talk about. because new atheism believes religion is one of (if not the most) problems the world faces, they have essentially declared war on religion. So their world view is seen through the glasses that if one just eliminates religion the problems of the world would go away, or dramatically decline. Is this view constructive in dealing with foreign policy? Is this idea of eliminating religion a good and constructive goal to uphold?
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my first thoughts (w/o reading the article): i think it is fairly ridiculous to think that world's problems would go away by eliminating religion. What i i don't think is ridiculous is thinking that the source of a significant portion of the world's problems would go away. Maybe another way to say it is that an excuse/justification for some of the problems would go away causing us to either examine the real problem or provide actual reasons for actions.
ReplyDeleteExamining the real problem? what's that?
ReplyDeleteI would agree with you that if you take out the religion part we might get a better understanding of what is going on. but the removal of religion is out of the question, mainly because it could never happen. I believe that is why this author says it is not a good thing that the new atheists are so anti-religion, that it might cloud their own judgement just like how the blame religion clouds others'.
what i mean is that i think that there any innumerable times in history where religion was the excuse for conquest, disaster, etc. I think there are also many times where it seem like modern leaders have done the same. So if there were no religion they would not have that shield to hide behind and in my every present optimism, i say they would be forced to address the "real problem" which is not a singular problem but whatever the specific problem is. That could include greed, lust for power, or racism.
ReplyDeletei agree that religion will never disappear and never should. I also agree that religion causes many problems and that for religion to globally beneficial it needs to make some changes.