[extropy-chat] Islamic morons win yet again.

John K Clark jonkc at att.net
Sun Oct 1 20:25:42 UTC 2006


"Lee Corbin" <lcorbin at rawbw.com>

> How do you know what history would have
been like in the absense of religion?

It rained an hour ago and now the street is wet. I deduce that if it hadn't
rained the street wouldn't be wet. True I can't go back in time one hour,
stop it from raining, and then observe the results; but I still think my
deduction is entirely reasonable. In a similar way I think it is entirely
reasonable to deduce that without religion History would be less bloody.
Much less bloody.

> So far as *I* know, we don't have a lot of data.

Unfortunately we have an avalanche of data, as terrifying as it is
depressing.

> The 20th century did seem to indicate that the fervently anti-religious
> socialist regimes of the Soviet Union and Red Chinese killed people
> at at least the same rate if not much greater.

A good point I readily concede. But I never said religion was the root of
ALL evil. I would estimate that in general about 2/3 of all mortal combat is
religious based. Less than that in the 20th century in Europe because Europe
is the one place on Earth where nobody takes religion very seriously
anymore. I think people just got tired of killing each other over  about
whether you should open an egg at the big end or the small. Let us hope
that happy state of affairs is contagious.

  John K Clark








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