A comment in Rimjob's
There Is No Math (And You Know It), a response to yesterday's monolithic
There is No God (And You Know It) caught my eye this afternoon, and has had me thinking all day.
The comment was a quote from one Daniel J. Boorstin, who was quoted as saying
No atheist ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic or an unbeliever.
Really?
Judging from the handful of 4's the comment generated, apparently at least a few DKos readers believe it.
Well history has shown otherwise. I have no intention of painting all atheists as murderers, any more than I would paint all Christians as such. Rather, I would simply like to remind everyone of the root cause of much of the world's misery, and the fuel of terrorism everywhere: FANATICISM.
More below the fold...
First, back to Boorstin's quote. I reject it, and as Exhibit A, I give you Joseph Stalin. The Wikipedia entry for the
Russian Orthodox Church informs me that
During most of the 20th century, the Russian Orthodox Church had to coexist with deeply atheist government of Soviet Union. Although freedom of religious expression was formally declared by one of the first decrees of revolutionary government in January 1918, both the Church and its followers were deeply disadvantaged and sometimes persecuted. Prior to the Russian Revolution, there were some 54 000 functioning parishes and over 150 bishops. Many religious hierarchs fled the country during the revolution and the civil war that followed, and eventually formed their own organisation that became known as Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. During the 1920-30s, most churches were razed or converted into secular buildings; over 50 thousand priests were either executed or sent to labor camps ( many of these suffered as part of the Great Purge of 1936-37 ). By 1939, there were less than 100 functioning parishes and only four bishops.
Sounds to me like at least a few atheists were getting a little pushy with their beliefs.
I could also direct your attention to Pol Pot in Cambodia, or Chairman Mao in China. Believe me, atheism and tolerance do NOT always go hand in hand.
And as I'm sure you already know, the same can be said of Christians.
So who the hell is this Boorstin guy, who apparently is worthy enough to quote, but has gotten things so damned wrong?
A quick Google search informed me that he was Librarian of Congress Emeritus from 1975 to 1987.
Jeez, sounds like he was a smart guy. Didn't he ever read any of the books in his library?
So I looked around a bit for the source of his quote, thinking that maybe I was missing something from the context in which it was stated.
Turns out, he was MISQUOTED. A fuller version of the quote, which is from The Amateur Spirit from Living Philosophers, can be found here
I have observed that the world has suffered far less from ignorance than from pretensions to knowledge. It is not skeptics or explorers but fanatics and ideologues who menace decency and progress. No agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever.
Ahhh.... No AGNOSTIC ever burned anyone... Bit of a difference there.
My guess is he is probably still wrong, given the gazillions of murders that have occurred over the centuries. Still, he is probably pretty darn close to the mark.
But he is DEAD ON in the sentence immediately preceding.
It is not skeptics or explorers but fanatics and ideologues who menace decency and progress.
All day long, I kept thinking that same thought. It's not Christianity that leads people to kill other people. Neither is it atheism that leads people to kill others.
It is, quite simply, fanaticism.
Which is what makes me so worried for our country right now. We are being led by fanatics and ideologues, who have a cult-like flowing of fanatics and ideologues. And whether we like to admit it or not, there are fanatics and ideologues on the left as well. I find them all dangerous.
Terrorism is fueled by fanaticism and ideology. By declaring war on terrorism, we are declaring war on a symptom, rather than a disease. It's like trying to treat a cough, when you have lung cancer. The Bush administration is fanatically trying to stamp out the terrorists while ignoring - or more accurately, feeding - the fanaticism and ideology that is behind it.
Fanatics and ideologues on both sides. Sounds like a recipe for a death spiral. The only way out is for one side to step away from the fight completely. And unfortunately, that won't be likely until the Bush administration is history. The War on Terror will be a permanent war, unless we can replace these idiots with someone reasonable.
Reasonableness. I sure miss that in my federal government.
But let's be careful ourselves. Recognize that there ARE fanatics and ideologues among us. I wrote a diary following the death of John Paul II last spring that quoted heavily from the comments of some of the diaries that were out there at the time. I found them scary. And in many diaries dealing with the topic of religion, I continue to see similar ones.
Let's cool off a bit on those, shall we?
The only thing that pisses me off as much as a smug, self-righteous, know-it-all Christian is a smug, self-righteous, know-it-all atheist. I have no use for fanatics and ideologues.
And I'm glad as hell that Daniel J. Boorstin didn't either.