The Christain Science Monitor in an attempted attack on the recent high profile books by Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins challenging claims made that religion is the most potent source of human conflict. The article argues that a) conflict involving religious groups is not the same as ‘religious conflict’ and b) Stalin, Hitler and Mao killed more people anyway.This kind of thinking – who has the highest body count, what were the real motives? – characterises many religious and atheists self-justification. But this argument gets us nowhere: Switching religion on or off universally ain’t gonna happen and wouldn’t make us all friends in itself.
The real question is whether those members of religious and atheist communities who are not intolerant or vengeful (and I’m guesing that’s the vast majority) can work together for social justice in opposition to extremists of all persuasions. Read the article
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