Peter2 wrote:Randomiser wrote:
That kind of anti-religious allegation is often bandied around these days. Then I think of Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot and even Mao, the devastation they caused and the millions of deaths they were responsible for, and wonder which religious 'governments' were so overwhelmingly worse than them. Have you any suggestions? Or are you willing to apologise for that piece of anti-religious prejudice?
You either did not read what I wrote, or read things into it that are not there. I used the phrase "ultimate power" – please note the word ultimate. I neither said nor implied – and nor do I believe – that religions should be powerless. On the contrary, I consider most of them (certainly the ones I know well) to be considerable and significant forces for good. But I maintain, as I said, that "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely," and when that absolute (i.e. "ultimate") power rests with people who feel justified in shifting responsibility for their actions on to the shoulders of their God(s), there is a greater probability for it to be exercised with less restraint. I stand by what I wrote.
For that matter, if you substitute things like "the General Will", "racial imperative", "the dialectic of history", or even "freedom and our way of life" for "God" in the same dynamic, you get the same results.