Gazizza.Net

Once again, borrowing one of Hube's topics, I present a letter from this mornings paper: Religion has compounded human suffering for ages:

The controversy surrounding the documentary, "The Lost Tomb of Jesus" is not surprising. As with Dan Brown's novel "The Da Vinci Code" and the subsequent film, and Martin Scorsese's movie "The last Temptation of Christ," biblical scholars and archaeologists deride anything contrary to established church doctrine.

They are the descendants of those who put Galileo under house arrest for insisting the Earth was not the center of the universe. Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" was criticized for revealing the biblical creation stories are myths.

The atrocities committed in the name of God are documented. The Crusades, the Inquisition, the decimation of the millions of indigenous peoples living in the Americas, the Holocaust were caused by irrational belief in a superior being. Genocide in the Balkans and in Darfur, along with sectarian violence plaguing Iraq and Sri Lanka, are but a few examples of this illusion that has held humanity captive for millenia.

With close to half of the Earth's human inhabitants living in abject poverty, dispensing with God is necessary if we are to alleviate the suffering of those less fortunate. The developed countries, especially the United States, have the means to eliminate hunger and poverty within a relatively short period of time. Ignoring the plight of fellow humans by holding superstitious beliefs dear is morally reprehensible.

David C. Martin, Wilmington

It boggles the mind how this short a letter can contain so many errors.

First, it's not just Christians who have trouble with The DaVinci Code and the "tomb of Jesus." Historians reject many of Dan brown's supposed "facts' in his work and many archaeologists roundly reject most of the arguments supporting the claim that the tomb was Jesus'. (And did it five years ago, before the documentary was even conceived.)

While the Church was far from blameless in the Galileo controversy, he was not put on trial for his claims about science as much as attempts to use his scientific discoveries to attempt to change Church doctrine. The Church then overreacted by making him recant his discoveries. As far as Darwin proving the Creation story was a myth, early Christian thinkers (Augustine, for one) clearly interpreted it that way.

The Crusades, while having many sins committed during their fighting, as all wars do, were largely a defensive war against continued Muslim aggression. The Middle East and Northern Africa were once largely Christian until conquered by Islam. Forced conversions and murder destroyed once thriving Christian communities. Europe was being invaded by Muslim armies from the East through the Balkans and the West through Spain. The Crusades were an attempt to push back the invaders.

The decimation of the indigenous people in the Americas was done in spite of Europeans' Christian beliefs, not because of. Many Popes spoke out in support of the rights of indigenous peoples. The conquering of the Americas was done for political, not religious, purposes.

His final paragraph begins: "With close to half of the Earth's human inhabitants living in abject poverty, dispensing with God is necessary if we are to alleviate the suffering of those less fortunate." Hmm... where do we see concern for the poor as a central value? Who is it who encourages charity and love?

Hey! That would be a religious value! But Mr Martin assures us that religion is the source of all evil in the world. If only we dumped religion, we'd be living in paradises like Cuba, the Soviet Union and North Korea where poverty is a thing of the past and the rights of all people are respected.

Or maybe not.

Perhaps Mr. Martin needs to remember that human rights is a religious concept. It's Darwinists that believe we're just a collection of random cells that arose through a random process that makes us no more special than a rock or (shudder) a cat. It's only because religion teaches us that each person is special that we have the concept of human rights. Drop religion from society and see how quickly the poor are abandoned.

The religious aren't perfect, but without the constraint and support of religious values things would be a whole lot worse.