Monotheistic Faiths Are Violent By Definition<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0 My answer, perhaps surprisingly, is that they are not.<\/p>\nTheir very violent track record notwithstanding, the cause of their violence is not found in the fact that they are monotheistic faiths.\u00a0 As religious apologists are fond of pointing out, atheistic Stalinism and Maoism have also produced extraordinarily murderous societies.<\/p>\n
Exclusivist, doctrinaire authoritarianism is the foundation for intolerance.\u00a0 When a group of people (or even an individual) becomes convinced that it possesses absolute truth \u2013 a truth that is exclusive of any other possibilities \u2013 there is no room for tolerating other ideas.\u00a0 Exclusive incontrovertible dogma usually justifies removing anyone who stands in the way of its universal acceptance.<\/p>\n
The source of ultimate authority need not be supernatural.\u00a0 A secular ideology, backed by a sufficiently powerful leadership, can suffice.\u00a0 Stalinism and Maoism, both forms of authoritarian Communist dogma, each produced horrifically violent results.\u00a0 Secular racist ideologies do the same.<\/p>\n
Religion, however, has demonstrated much more durability in comparison.\u00a0 For while both religious and secular authoritarians recruit followers on the promise of some sort of ultimate utopia, the secular varieties do not stand the test of time.\u00a0 Since their promises are naturalistic and temporal, they struggle to persist.\u00a0 Their inevitable inability to deliver on their promises leads to much faster disillusionment and, sooner or later, to some kind of shake-up of authority.<\/p>\n
Compare this to traditional Christianity or Islam.\u00a0\u00a0Their\u00a0long-term promise is eternal life.\u00a0\u00a0For Jews it was always the promise of being re-established in the land of Israel by a messiah (plus an afterlife). \u00a0These kinds of promises account for the resilience of religious authoritarianism.\u00a0 Since it promises an after-life or a distant utopian future, untested and based upon blind faith, it need never fulfill its promise in order to elicit zealotry. \u00a0I\u2019m convinced that one of the reasons that the majority of Jews are not traditionally religious is that the Jewish historical experience is one long string of broken promises. Ironically, the establishment of a Jewish state, interpreted by some as a step toward the fulfillment of God\u2019s promises, has attracted many newcomers to traditional Judaism.<\/p>\n
The only human organization that has demonstrated any significant resistance to authoritarianism is secular democracy.\u00a0 As imperfect as they are, secular democratic systems generally guard against the creation of powerful, intolerant infrastructures.\u00a0 Individual fanatics may bridle against this.\u00a0 Terrorists may emerge who threaten the system.\u00a0 Still, a stable secular democracy will usually inhibit any single faction from taking over.\u00a0 Of course, if there is a great deal of instability, democracies can and do fall, quite frequently into the hands of religious or other ideological extremists.<\/p>\n
Where does this leave the rest of us?\u00a0 There are plenty of monotheists who are gentle and peaceful people.\u00a0 This includes liberal Christians and Jews, the Baha\u2019i, and many Muslims.\u00a0 They are not driven by exclusivist visions of absolute authority.\u00a0 They have learned that secular democracy allows them to be left alone to do their own thing so they\u2019ve claimed those secular values as their own.<\/p>\n
When I\u2019m critical of liberal religion, it\u2019s usually for philosophical, not practical reasons.\u00a0 To be quite honest, having arrived at my own non-theistic approach to life, I\u2019m sometimes baffled by how otherwise rational friends can hang on to religious fictions. To the extent that I have any practical beef with them, it\u2019s that they provide cover for their more radical theistic peers.\u00a0 (See this post<\/a>, for example.)<\/p>\nMore often than not, however, non-theists and liberal theists are on the same side of the big issues.\u00a0 To that extent I\u2019m always happy to ally myself with them against the greater dangers.\u00a0 And as long as they\u2019re willing to fight the good fight for a secular nation, they can believe in Yahweh, Jesus, Allah, Baal or Thor for all I care.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Undercover Kofer, a blogger whom I greatly admire and would love to meet some day, is back with an excellent post exploring whether \u201cMonotheistic Faiths Are Violent By Definition.\u201d\u00a0 My answer, perhaps surprisingly, is that they are not. Their very violent track record notwithstanding, the cause of their violence is not found in the fact […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[12,19,27,31],"class_list":["post-605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogentries","tag-fundamentalist-christianity","tag-islam","tag-morality","tag-orthodox-judaism"],"yoast_head":"\n
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