What hubris!

Submitted by Fay Voshell (United States), Jan 25, 2009 at 10:58

Do you have any idea of how arrogant and elitist you sound when you dismiss the role that religion plays in the lives of billions and billions of people in the past and present?

Your underlying assumption is that if people were only as smart, as educated and as "rational" as you, they would immediately repent, ditch the opiate of faith and give up their mythological beliefs in God and the hereafter.

Then they could assume your unassailable and infallible beliefs in the god of a self who is autonomous, filled with contemptuous dismissal of others who don't think like you and stuffed with a self-righteousness belief that you and a few elite like you can assume the role of saviors of the earth--maybe even saviors who help to to purify this wretched planet by eradicating those who resist thought reform by stubbornly adhering to outdated superstitions like belief in God.

We know how well your sort of thinking worked out in Russian, Chinese, Cambodian, and Cuban history of the twentieth century--just to name a few examples of elitist thinking which led to eradication of the superstitious masses.

I'd be willing to bet you think of yourself as the most tolerant and open person you know, but in your own way you are as intolerant and vicious as any Islamist who disdains dissent, will not tolerate any religion other than his/her own and who seeks to totally eradicate opposing belief systems.

It's just that in your case, your religion is radical secular humanism.

Fay Voshell

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