I would like to write a response to Mr. Crawford’s article that ran on 1/13/15.
I believe Mr. Crawford to be mistaken in his view that religion is inherently violent. He is right to point out that religion, over the eons, has been used time and time again to perpetuate violence. Also, some specific religions are inherently violent.
But what I believe that he does not understand is that any system, whether religious or otherwise, that claims any sort of power has the potential to be abused toward wicked ends. The lust after power causes man to do horrendous deeds.
Religion unfortunately is very susceptible to being used for nefarious purposes because it claims to have the ultimate source of power and truth. One must look at the original teachings of a religion, such as the parables of Jesus or the musings of the Buddha, to see if it is truly evil. He also writes of religion catching up to “progressive moral standards.”
I would like to know where Mr. Crawford thinks these moral standards originated. The moral ideals of love, grace, kindness, empathy, respect, self-control and so on come from religious teachings. These are not instincts that we as humans innately have and, in fact, in many cases, these and other morals run contrary to our native selfish ways.
In closing, I would also like to point out that the majority of unnatural deaths to have occurred in the last 100 years were due to opponents of religion, not religions themselves. Joseph Stalin and his communistic atheism is responsible for an estimated 30-60 million deaths including thousands of priests and nuns.
The North Korean government and its strictly secular ideology annually rates as the worst country in the world in how it treats its citizenry. Chairman Mao, Pol Pot, Plutarco Calles, the leaders of the French Revolution, the list could go on and on of how atheistic and secularist governments murdered millions of innocent peoples, sometimes just for proclaiming to have a religious faith.
It seems to me frankly that instead of trying to portray reality, Mr. Crawford is using an extremely sad and despicable act (Charlie Hebdo attacks) to carry out his personal vendetta.
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