tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9908604.post7882599802506415585..comments2024-03-01T00:27:42.852-08:00Comments on Hammer Of The Blogs: Religion Of PiecesHeywood J.http://www.blogger.com/profile/05627748699423939682noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9908604.post-54893062061892133252007-06-19T05:32:00.000-07:002007-06-19T05:32:00.000-07:00Christians may get upset over Piss Christ or what ...<I>Christians may get upset over Piss Christ or what have you, but they're not rioting over cartoons, or advocating violence over heretical novels.</I><BR/><BR/>This has been one of my Cassandra-ish hobbyhorses for some time now.<BR/><BR/>I remember having an argument with a local punk rocker right after 9/11, where I argued that our theocrats were just as bad in essence as theirs, and it was only our long tradition of secularism that had ingrained in us the idea that it's crazy to kill over metaphysical differences. (He disagreed, which may be the only recorded instance of a punk rocker defending Falwell and Robertson, I'm not sure.)<BR/><BR/>This is why people like O'Reilly with his crusade against "secular-progressives" send me into a homicidal fury - why would even the most cynical of these motherfuckers want to play games with all the defenses we've built against the collective religious id? It hasn't <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calas_affair" REL="nofollow">been</A> that long since we <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Fran%C3%A7ois_de_la_Barre" REL="nofollow">saw</A> what life was like in Christian societies where church and state were the same thing.<BR/><BR/>I look at it like: Christianity had 1500 years, roughly, where it ran the Western world, and yet it never got around to instituting all that peace and brotherly love stuff. The links above are from shortly before the American Revolution, for fucksakes. But speaking of that revolution, and the 230ish years since, it's amazing how quickly people adapted to the idea I mentioned above - that being free to believe what you want without having to worry about being burned at the stake or tortured to death, either by a bunch of torch and pitchfork-wielding villagers or by government officials, is one of the greatest ideas we've ever stumbled across. We've made greater strides towards that kind of peace - or at least live-and-let-live tolerance - in that short span of time than religion did in a millenium and a half. Who would be insane enough to want to discard that?<BR/><BR/>Rhetorical question, of course. The same people who thought the main lesson of the famous faith-based initiative known as 9/11 was that we need <I>more</I> religion in daily life. I feel despairing and helpless to do anything about all the structural problems in Islam, so all I can do is try and fight all the lunatics here who are hellbent on bringing us to the same state of affairs.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com