Re: God
In response to all the talk about atheism and the two well read nytimes articles “God Talk” (part I and II) I want to post a question.
How can atheists argue that religion is “a device for rationalizing horrible deeds” (nytimes, God Talk)?
Religion must surely satisfy other needs, since we all know very well that the ways to rationalize bad behavior are in fact infinite.
To take a quick example—how about the War in Iraq? Fought in the name of “Democracy” and the “national security” and which we all know it was actually for oil? If you don’t believe me listen to Jon Western, author of American Foreign Policy. He wrote about Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Iraq war and said, “American forces secured the oil fields and the oil ministry in Baghdad, but none of them were sites of primary interest to the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency]—the ones apparently looted in the days following Hussein’s defeat” (p. 115, Jon Western, American Foreign Policy).
