The Blood On God's Hands

If we consider all the death and destruction done throughout history in the name of God or gods, a number of things are possible if a deity really does exist. One, they are a bloodthirsty SOB. Two, they are unable to stop violence done in their name. Three, they don’t care what we do to each other. Four, the world is exactly the way they want it. Five, and this is important, having free will is far more important than any harm we can do to each other. Yeah, I’m sure that’s very comforting to the victims of the 9/11 attacks. “Hey, don’t get upset that terrorists killed your family. They’re just collateral damage in the name of free will.”

The fifth point, as everyone who knows anything about philosophy or theology knows, is referred to as the Free Will Defense and is most often turned to by the theist to allow for so much evil in the world. Yet, if any god did create the universe and everything in it, they are ultimately responsible for the existence of evil, not humans. Sorry, there’s just no way around that. With this being true, the remaining possibilities may be just as likely. If a god can’t or doesn’t want to stop violence, then evil must have a practical use. Say, anyone up for a crucifixion?

Let’s take a very, very brief look back upon the history of religiously inspired violence. Do we have to? No, but gee whiz, it sure is interesting.

·       The ancient Mayans were known to practice human sacrifice to please their gods. These sick bastards would rip your beating heart out and show it to you before you died, thousands of years before Mortal Kombat was only a game.

·       Ptolemy Philedelphus had the Catholic Church attack and burn down the Great Library at Alexandria in 391 CE to suppress learning and knowledge. Millions of scrolls and scriptures are lost over a friendly and divine marsh mellow roast.

·       Between 500-1000 CE, Christianity gleefully ignites the Dark Ages. Science, medicine, education, art, and history are demonized while the Church amasses land and wealth through force.

·       891-903 CE, murder and corruption leads to 10 popes over 12 years and eventually 40 popes over 100 years. This leads to speculation that it is not so good to be the Pope.

·       Through 1000-1500 CE the Church resists the Enlightenment, launching the Crusades to teach those pesky Jews and Muslims one final lesson.

·       The Reformations through 1500-1700 CE attempt to purge Europe of pagan elements, but instead sparks a schism when Martin Luther opposes the Church with a (Protestant) Reformation of his own. The animosity between warring denominations stains Europe with blood. On St. Bartholomew’s Day (1572) 10,000 Protestants are slaughtered in France. Animosity continues to this day in Ireland. (It is also during this time period when the idea of the devil and demons are clearly defined by the Church. The elaborate concept spawns a 300 year long period of witch-hunts. Women are scapegoated as the Church fails to maintain control of the masses. Millions are speculated to die thanks to the hunts. Religious leaders even demand that animals associated with paganism be put to death, such as cats and owls, animals that control rodent populations. Plagues soon explode across the continent.)

·       Since the creation of Israel by the UN in 1948, Muslims and Jews have been blowing each other to bits over disputed Holy Lands. (Sure, it’s all more complicated than that, but the two sides being uber-religious doesn’t exactly help negotiate peace.)

·       In the 1980’s and 1990’s, abortion clinic bombers and shooters claim moral authority to justify murdering abortion clinic doctors and workers. They are soon discovered to believe that one plus one equals whatever their version of God says it is.

·       In 1995, Master Asahara (a Christian Buddhist, whatever that is) attacks a Tokyo subway with nerve gas in an attempt to set off Armageddon. He fails. 

These are just a few examples among hundreds…of thousands.

         

The reasons for religious violence are not just anybody’s guess. For most anyone, being violent creates the illusion of power. With a god in tow any horror can then easily be justified or excused. Remember, the gods are generally supposed to be all-powerful and humans, being of lower stock so-to-speak, are the messengers of those gods. Too bad in their urge to make anything but peace, these messengers instead identify themselves as soldiers. In due time, when a movement to spread a message inevitably begins to collapse or fail, there becomes an inclination to commit greater and greater evil. Religious insanity escalates most painfully in the final, hopeless moments of the struggle to enforce belief, when the power of a god becomes the primary resource at hand. The current race for the 2015 Republican party candidacy for U.S. president is evidence of this.

Are there ever times when these instances of violence are justified? Self-preservation can fuel such emotion, but that’s a human response, not a divine one. Yet, why people should use God to justify self-preservation makes little sense if they believe they’ll go to heaven anyway. In that case, wouldn’t you want to die? If you want to blow yourself up with 20 sticks of dynamite, fine, but now you’ve got two dead people, me and you. Wouldn’t it be more tolerable for the believer to try and persuade me into accepting their religion? Of course it would, except that religions are by nature exclusionary, just another means by which groups of people divorce themselves from others.

Do any of us want to die for the beliefs of others? I don’t want to die for what other people believe in. I’m not a puppet in any god’s sick puppet show to be controlled or maimed through the use of force. I wasn’t designed to be a contender in an unholy, cosmic game of Battle Bots. Some theists however thoroughly disagree and those people need to be eliminated with extreme prejudice. My holy scriptures would surely tell me so.

So what do you say; have we all had enough of having been given life by some supposed Creator who ironically calls for us to kill each other? Surely any god who endows a universe with evil is not reconcilable with a peaceful world. For all of you taking a moment out of your busy schedules to pray for world peace, stop. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.

I mean it when I say I am tired of the excuses and I’m sure not going to let any god off the hook for the existence of evil. Lots of people say they want world peace but I don’t see them doing anything about it. I want world peace too; or at least one where only socially acceptable outlets for our primitive, violent tendencies are allowed. So I’m going to do something about it.

I’m calling God out; any god, you name ‘em. Anytime they want to duke it out with me in the ring for the fate of the world, I’ll be happy to punch their stupid face in, bite their ear off, and eat their babies. Now if only Don King wouldn’t screw me out of my hard-won purse, the world would be a better place.

Does Religion Cause Violence?

“Does religion cause violence? Yes!” This is the starting point of the atheist narrative that seeks to indict religion on the ground of its (allegedly) great potential to harm. It has been repeated by atheists so many times that the so-called New Atheists who claim to put reason, logic and evidence before all else have abandoned reason, logic and evidence in order to make their accusation about religion. But as I have said in the past and have to say again because I actually care about reason, logic and evidence, it is not religion that causes violence.

In order to determine if religion actually causes violence, it is worth asking if there are ever instances in which religion has nothing to do with violence. Well, yes, such examples would be too numerous to mention. But, let’s mention some anyway: Does a man ever attack another man over an insult? Yes. Does a man ever hit a woman in order to have power over her? Yes. Do people ever trample each other on Black Friday in order to be the first to get a deal? Yes. Do sports fans ever riot after their team wins a championship? Yes. Do neighboring territories or countries ever go to war over land or some other resource? Yes. And most importantly, has any atheist ever harmed another atheist? I’m betting on ‘yes.’

Even if New Atheists want to assert that religion is the cause of most harm in the world, they are still wrong. Many of the armed conflicts in the world today have nothing to do with religion; while Boko Haram and the Islamic State (ISIS) may be making headline news, any number of ethnic and civil wars are actually piling up more bodies than the Islamic extremists. Even historically, 87 of the world’s greatest atrocities had little to nothing to do with religion (according to scholar Matthew White). In the 20^th Century, WWI and WWII racked up a higher body count than any religious war and both wars had nothing to do with religion. So why aren’t New Atheists acknowledging the evidence contrary to their claims? Is it because they have an agenda? Probably. How can we tell?

For one thing, you’ll never hear a New Atheist assert that religion makes people commit decent acts, like feed the homeless. If you then ask a New Atheist why a religious person would feed the homeless, you’ll be given an answer that has anything to do with it BUT religion, most likely that the given person is a decent person to begin with. Hmm, okay, but if that’s the case isn’t it possible that a religious person could act indecently or even violently for reasons that actually have nothing to do with their religious beliefs? And, even in cases where people claim God told them to kill other people, isn’t it at all possible that such people are indecent or have violent tendencies to begin with? Because if not, what New Atheists are asserting is that religion can compel someone who is otherwise a pacifist to commit terrible deeds. Problem is, there is no evidence whatsoever to back up this claim. Even the famous Stanford prison experiment, if pointed to by New Atheists as evidence – which would be ridiculous – merely implies that when people are given the chance to have power over others, they take it. Why? Because this desire is ingrained in our biology (at least, this appears to be the case, generally speaking). Human beings are still ‘wired’ for violence as well, as the billions worldwide viewing the Super Bowl and Hollywood shoot-em-ups every year can attest to.

When religious people become violent, it seems to me (and this is admittedly armchair psychology) that what is actually taking place is this: They are trying to control or suppress another person or group for the sake of their own survival, even if such a threat is incorrectly perceived, this is not a behavior unique to the religiously inclined. Religion then simply becomes a social acceptable excuse to commit violence (socially acceptable to members of the perpetrator’s group). If religion were abolished, then some other excuse for violence would take its place.

Claiming religion causes violence is akin to claiming that something like alcohol can turn a happy-go-lucky average Joe into an angry drunk. Only, angry drunks are already angry people to begin with who suppress their anger in order to operate within the confines of the prevailing social contract.

In much the same way that guns don’t kill people, religion doesn’t cause violence. People cause violence. Granted, some tools make it easier to rise to violence, but indecent people will always find a way to act indecently. Religion isn’t the problem; biology is.

God's Plan Sucks

While I’ve recently been pointing out that being religious doesn’t necessarily make people bad, it doesn’t necessarily make them good either. Nor does being religious necessarily make people stupid, though the two often appear to go hand in hand. I submit as evidence the average apologist’s defense for the presence of evil in the world: It’s a part of God’s plan.

The presence of evil in the world while there is an allegedly powerful and benevolent god watching over us all is formally known as the Problem of Evil. Monotheistic apologists, who aren’t much for thinking, often recite any number of defenses as a reflex to the Problem of Evil. [While there are many complicated and convoluted answers to the Problem of Evil by some of the more clever theologians, that’s exactly the irony; faith should be simple and not require mental gymnastics to justify its finer points.] However, all answers are sorely insufficient and ultimately lead to the same place. For example, a theist may defend the presence of evil in the world as a punishment for the transgressions of Adam and Eve, with the rebuttal being, “Remind me again why I am responsible for the actions of others, especially when I wasn’t there to stop Adam and Eve from disobeying God? Oh, and if I am responsible for their transgressions, why? If I simply am responsible, God appears to have an arbitrary reason. It’s not like He said we’re responsible for each other from the get go; that’s nowhere in the Bible. You can’t hold us accountable after the fact. I mean, come on!” It’s right about now that the theist will invoke faith in ‘God’s plan,’ invoking faith since they do not know what God’s plan is. (Assuming God’s plan was in fact known, the next question that arises is why doesn’t an omnipotent god simply make things the way God wants it to be without all the suffering?)

I find that this particular answer to the Problem of Evil – having faith in some unknown plan – incredibly distressing. Imagine a god who – for some strange reason despite being omnipotent and omnibenevolent – thinks it’s okay for human beings to torture each other so that said God’s plan can be achieved. Think, really pause and think, of all the wars and manners of fighting, genocide, murders, rapes, general pain and suffering inflicted by human beings upon one another. [I think it is reasonable to leave out so-called natural evils such as hurricanes and earthquakes from the Problem of Evil since atmospheric and geologic activities have no intent.] For the amount of suffering that takes place to be necessary to some unknown plan of God is kind of like needing at least two overly ripe bananas to make banana bread; the plan can’t be achieved without it, can it? But that’s just it, no one really knows what the plan is or just as importantly, why this plan and not another, say, one that requires less suffering? After all, we don’t need banana bread and if we do, well, I’m sure there is banana bread out there made without bananas. (Granted, it may not be as nutritious.)

Sure, some theists indeed pretend to know the mind of God. They may say that God’s plan is for as many people to go to Heaven as possible or for people to accept God precisely because of all the suffering. As I’ve said, though, an omnipotent God could simply make these things happen; God could start off with everyone in Heaven with no need for an earthly life or provide more evidence for His existence so that suffering (read: coercion) would not be necessary to believe in God. That latter answer, that God includes suffering in our existence as a means of coercing us into needing an afterlife bespeaks of a despicable god. We certainly would frown upon a fellow human being who was so manipulative, yet God gets a free pass because He’s God? If that’s not arbitrary-meets-circular reasoning I don’t know what is.

Unable to answer the Problem of Evil, the theist will speak of how virtuous faith is, of how believing in a plan without evidence is somehow noble. Of course, theists never apply this vision of faith to any beliefs they don’t personally hold; Christians never say that Jews or Muslims are virtuous for having faith in their gods. No one says that the North Koreans are virtuous for believing their leader is a demi-god. Faith is not a virtue. Neither is stupidity. Both take little strength of emotion and no strength of intellect.

I don’t like God’s plan, probably because God’s plan looks a lot like things people simply want to believe without thinking too much. Even if we were to suppose God does exist, God’s plan looks terribly sadistic, which again, is a human trait. Any god deserving of my respect is above such human frailties.