This column is in response to a letter written by Markus Johnson and published on Jan. 26 entitled "Letter to the Editor: Religion creates meaning, not necessarily violence."
Mr. Johnson,
I'd like to start off by disagreeing with your point that "most" religions do not make truth claims.
Let's start with the most known claim ever invented: There is an all-powerful, intervening god that both observes and judges us for our actions.
If you don't believe that, you are in no sense a theist or religious in any significant sense.
No, not all religions are necessarily violent but, because they handle the philosophical C4 of absolute truth, the instinct towards righteous violence in all religion can never be extinguished, even in the most passive-seeming faiths.
(I highly recommend Brian Victoria's "Zen at War," which chronicles how a religion as seemingly peaceful as Buddhism can simply give in to butchery.)
Any "religions" which don't claim to have this kind of truth, like some recent ultra-reform incarnations of Judaism and certain New Age sects, would be more accurately defined as "inspired life philosophies" than religion as we know it.
For the most part, these are harmless and share few characteristics with actual religion. Except, of course, for the fact that both are piecemeal fabrications of a primate species.
If religions are "tools" to create meaning, as you say in your response, then they are both man-made and easily manufactured. They are our earliest attempt to try to explain the world around us.
We now have much better tools, both in understanding the world and understanding ourselves. It is from the province of philosophy that we have the greatest fruits of modern society from morality, to meaning, to government.
Figures like Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine might have believed in a God, as you say. But, as Deists, they believed he didn't intervene in world affairs. They put a country together based on the advancements of humanism and philosophy in general.
Religion, as a code, was simply not needed.
Concerning Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), you're right: it isn't codified in any Islamic text.
But that doesn't mean that religion existence doesn't contribute to it. In the words of the World Health Organization: "Though no religious scripts prescribe the practice, practitioners often believe the practice has religious support."
Just because it isn't part of a religious text doesn't mean it isn't an integral part of the religion, or, at least, certain sects of it (Christmas, anyone?). Religions are not immune from adopting and institutionalizing barbarism.
I don't disagree with your analysis of the French Revolution. We are mammals with certain predilections towards aggression. Lack of religion and good fundamental ideas alone will not necessarily create a stable government.
The values of the Enlightenment were invoked but not present during the beheadings. Fanaticism was.
In your article, you say that the Charlie Hebdo murders are just an example of a group taking violent action, and that their faith is more or less irrelevant.
This baffles me. Radical Islam is the only group in existence that feels comfortable murdering civilians in broad daylight, and are willing to give their lives for that cause.
Your suggestion that "if a group feels wounded, they will retaliate," implicitly brings every single group on earth down to the level of fanatical murderers. Do Republicans retaliate with murder when they are satirized? Do vegetarians?
If this assumption were true, society literally could not exist. Neither could this article.
Also, by saying that the Hebdo attacks "could have occurred for a completely nonreligious reason" is to deliberately ignore the motivating force behind the attacks.
Is it possible to think that the people who yelled "we have avenged the Prophet Muhammad" after emerging from those blood-stained offices did so for non-religious reasons?
Lastly, I want to address what both you and Mr. Burgess call my "personal vendetta," a redundant phrase if I've ever heard one.
Anything I write is going to be personal — as I can only speak for myself — and sometimes I actively dislike things other people hold dear. If that's the recipe for a "vendetta," then I certainly have one.
I am not in the business of softening my views to avoid offending people. The only thing one can do is state one's views clearly and without shame and hope that the reader takes the time to look over it.
The only point of opinion writing is to challenge the idea that no idea should be challenged.
In this and every opinion piece, I can only hope that I've achieved that goal.