What I read
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My response
The ongoing disaster in Venezuala seems to me a good example of the fact that socialism is doomed to failure. Before Maduro and his socialist predecessor had come to power, Venezuala's economy was growing well and living standards were improving. That all changed when it went more socialist than capitalist. The recent and ongoing power failures that are leaving people without light or other basic amenities powered by electricity, such as heating and refrigeration, are just one symptom of the harm that the socialist religion has forced on the Venezualans, many of whom have decided to flee to other countries in the hope of a better life for themselves and their families. The same thing happened on Mao in China: his policies forced by the law onto the entire nation plunged it into famines that killed tens of millions of Chinese in his "Great Leaps Forward," which were really leaps off a cliff, although it was the ordinary people who were pushed over the cliff by the bad rule of law made up by the rulers. The communist leaders like Mao, perhaps even Stalin, might have believed they were doing the right thing, but they were wrong. By sticking to their morally bad policies and refusing to listen to dissenting opinions, I think that they proved themselves to be bad people, however good they might have thought themselves. But dictators are bad people. It is no accident that they always make up laws to punish people who think differently or who dare to criticise their favourite myths and heroes.
I often have arguments about religion with one of my oldest friends, who thinks that religion makes people good, a claim that I don't think the facts, statistical and historical, support. He is especially keen to compare the killings committed by communists, who profess atheism, to the deeds of the religiously inspired, but they seem the same to me. I think that communism, fascism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and so on are all exactly the same sorts of things. If you want to call Hinduism and Islam religions, then so too are communism, fascism and monarchism. Their important similarities are a belief in rituals, whether going to mass on Sundays, or gathering in Red Square, celebrating the birth of their god or their Marx, and so on. They also share magical beliefs about the world: that their god made everything, that communism makes everyone a true human, and they also think that they have the truth about what is right and wrong: that it is what their god says, or their prophet, or Stalin or Mao. But what all of these types of ideology have in common is that they are so certain that they are right and everyone else is wrong that they are willing to use force against people who might think differently. Hence, we see the Christians imprisoning, torturing and killing people of different religions or doing the same to scientists who say that the Earth is not the centre of the universe and that we are related to every other living thing on Earth because we all evolved from the same ancestor. Religions such as communism and Hinduism are especially confident that they are right about moral questions, so they say that gay people are bad, or that alcohol must be banned, or that people who change faith, for example changing to democracy or to Christianity, are bad people. But all such claims are false and harmful, whether the religion is socialism, Islam, fascism, Christianity, or one of the other ideologies that rejects reason and evidence in favour of blind, untested belief in its dogmas.
I often have arguments about religion with one of my oldest friends, who thinks that religion makes people good, a claim that I don't think the facts, statistical and historical, support. He is especially keen to compare the killings committed by communists, who profess atheism, to the deeds of the religiously inspired, but they seem the same to me. I think that communism, fascism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and so on are all exactly the same sorts of things. If you want to call Hinduism and Islam religions, then so too are communism, fascism and monarchism. Their important similarities are a belief in rituals, whether going to mass on Sundays, or gathering in Red Square, celebrating the birth of their god or their Marx, and so on. They also share magical beliefs about the world: that their god made everything, that communism makes everyone a true human, and they also think that they have the truth about what is right and wrong: that it is what their god says, or their prophet, or Stalin or Mao. But what all of these types of ideology have in common is that they are so certain that they are right and everyone else is wrong that they are willing to use force against people who might think differently. Hence, we see the Christians imprisoning, torturing and killing people of different religions or doing the same to scientists who say that the Earth is not the centre of the universe and that we are related to every other living thing on Earth because we all evolved from the same ancestor. Religions such as communism and Hinduism are especially confident that they are right about moral questions, so they say that gay people are bad, or that alcohol must be banned, or that people who change faith, for example changing to democracy or to Christianity, are bad people. But all such claims are false and harmful, whether the religion is socialism, Islam, fascism, Christianity, or one of the other ideologies that rejects reason and evidence in favour of blind, untested belief in its dogmas.
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My question
Are religious ideologies, whether theistic or atheistic, more good or bad?
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Reference
- Venezuela power cuts: Blackouts hit Caracas and spread. (2019, March 8). Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-47492624
I like to add an image from my source to the summary. You might like to do the same. If it's appropriate, you are also welcome to add one or two to your response.
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