Religion: angry and organised
I think Philip Pullman just about nails it here:
Religion, uncontaminated by power, can be the source of a great deal of private solace, artistic inspiration, and moral wisdom. But when it gets its hands on the levers of political or social authority, it goes rotten very quickly indeed. The rank stench of oppression wafts from every authoritarian church, chapel, temple, mosque, or synagogue – from every place of worship where the priests have the power to meddle in the social and intellectual lives of their flocks, from every presidential palace or prime ministerial office where civil leaders have to pander to religious ones.
My basic objection to religion is not that it isn’t true; I like plenty of things that aren’t true. It’s that religion grants its adherents malign, intoxicating and morally corrosive sensations. Destroying intellectual freedom is always evil, but only religion makes doing evil feel quite so good.
Giving or losing power to these kinds of people, as with any institution, is nearly always going to lead you up some blind alley or other. Anti-intellectualism, however it is masked and on behalf of whatever creed, has always been a tool of control. You don’t need to be Galileo to know that.
(Via Jim Jay.)
Posted on September 29th, 2008 at 5:14pm under Culture, media and sport, Religion and theology
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• 4 Comments |
Sorry, I don’t buy the “Religion, uncontaminated by power, can be the source of a great deal of private solace, artistic inspiration, and moral wisdom.”
Religion is power. In it’s most base and terrible form.
Better of without it I reckon…
Daniel Hoffmann-Gill´s latest blog post… God is not Great: Religion Poisons Everything
So it can’t be the source of artistic inspiration?
ejh´s latest blog post… When did you last see your lawyer?
Anything can be a source of artistic inspiration, but that doesn’t make it a good reason to keep tolerating its terrible foibles.
Daniel Hoffmann-Gill´s latest blog post… God is not Great: Religion Poisons Everything
And who has said you should? Not me, not Philip Pullman. But you took issue with a statement, not that it has “terrible foibles” (or that it has them not) but that it can be a source of private solace, artistic inspiration and moral wisdom.
We’re now down to two …..
ejh´s latest blog post… The Socialist Fogey