Maybe a President who didn’t believe our soldiers were going to heaven might be a little less willing to get them killed
Provocative? Perhaps.
But I know that I, personally, am much less willing to ask people to die to secure more oil to maintain my lifestyle now that I believe that once they die they are completely, irrevocably dead. I didn’t realize how precious life is until I knew how easy it is to lose it forever.
No, the soldiers who die won’t see their families again in heaven. Their mothers and fathers, spouses and children will never see the fallen again. Children will have to grow up without Mommy or Daddy. They will never again speak with them, hug them, or kiss them. They will never hear them laugh again.
Who am I to ask someone else to pay that eternal price so that I can drive my car and watch my DVDs?
Tags: Atheism, belief, Bill Maher, compassion, death, faith, life, religion, secularism, superstition, video, war
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Anonymous said,
September 25, 2007 @ 7:12 am
You are and IDIOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
September 25, 2007 @ 8:29 am
Well said.
Though I could have hoped for a more detailed criticism, but passion must count for something. Your strong feelings are obvious from your 42 exclamation points and ungrammatical sentence.
cybr said,
September 25, 2007 @ 8:56 am
I’d have to agree with Anonymous. Jon, a had just asked you about Machiavelli’s work after dinner. It doesn’t take a theist to be a calculating warmonger. It takes a calculating warmonger to be a calculating warmonger. However, being a warmonger I do not agree with President W. Bush’s war strategy.
“Was it for oil? Or was he trying to show up dad?”
September 25, 2007 @ 9:20 am
Well, we could debate the root causes of the Iraq war all day (e.g. oil, war profiteering, revenge, etc.), but our freedoms have very little to do with it. That is what most soldiers thought they we were going to war for, but the tragedy is that they are dying for the sake of the war pigs.
The only reason to stay in Iraq now is if we have some hope of stabilizing the region before we leave. Unless we get a lot crueler, I don’t see that happening. I think we broke Iraq and there’s not much hope that we can make it better. It’s Vietnam all over again.
Anyway, what I’m saying in this post is that I personally am more reluctant now to ask people to die for me because I don’t believe in happy reunions in heaven. The human cost is infinitely higher than I had thought before.
cybr said,
September 25, 2007 @ 11:10 am
As a theist, and a Mormon at that, I would have to say that the cost of human life is high. We should not needlessly go off to war. It should be for our defense and for the defense of those who cannot defend themselves against oppressors (I’m not gonna debate whether Bush falls in this category cause I think we have established that’s a mute point). Is it an honorable death we seek? A protection of life? Or independence and freedom? (Maybe we should go back to being ruled by the British)
Ah yes, the Vietnam War. Fought and lost for entirely different reasons. Hell, we weren’t even getting cheap goods from them yet. Yah, you can’t find cheap child slave labor like you used to. Thank goodness for China (oh wait, state of atheism).
But, back to the point at hand. I don’t think it takes a theist (or atheist) to wage senseless war. It takes a person with an senseless agenda who has power, whether they believe in a God or not. Sure, he/she can use religion to promote their agenda. But, they could use other avenues or even antireligious reasons.
But then again, I guess every person of faith has an agenda and uses religion to promote war for their own selfish gain and atheists don’t wage war for their own pocketbooks. People of faith have no regard for human life and only atheist care for the value of human existence.
September 25, 2007 @ 11:43 am
If anyone ever thinks of the fallen soldiers in Iraq then comforts themselves, even subconsciously, by saying “At least they’ll be rewarded in heaven for their heroism” or “At least their family will see again them in heaven”, then they are allowing their own wishful thinking to cloud their capacity to see the true dimensions of this tragedy.
No one that I’ve heard of can give a good reason to expect life after death, so we should stop acting as if it were a reality. It seems truly callous to ask someone to risk eternal destruction on the off chance that the thin thread of an unjustifiable hope for an afterlife actually pans out. If we as a nation truly acted according to the evidence at hand, we wouldn’t send these people to die in foreign lands so easily (i.e. because the President says that they have evidence that Sadam has weapons of mass destruction and will probably use them). We as a people would demand more than his uncorroborated word.
I’m not saying that theists are all callous to the suffering that this war causes. I’m just saying we would appreciate the tragedy more if we saw death for what it probably is: irredeemable destruction.
No, it doesn’t take a theist to wage senseless war, but it takes a nation of theists to justify it with visions of immortality and glory after death.
By the bye, Vietnam may have been fought for different reasons, but it is being lost for very similar reasons and it is having a similar effect on our troops. And Ghandi wasn’t the paragon of virtue that we’ve created in our own minds.
cybr said,
September 26, 2007 @ 1:24 am
It’s like the iron gate talking to the stone wall.
If the cause is appropriate and if I had to fight, religion aside, I would hope for a honorable death. And I don’t feel the need to justify myself further, because you either wouldn’t understand the mindset or you would downplay it as theistic when it would have nothing to do with God anyways. Or even better, you’d do both.
“Never share a foxhole with someone braver than you.”
September 26, 2007 @ 11:23 am
If the cause is appropriate and if I had to fight, religion aside, I would hope for a honorable death.
If I supported the cause, and I felt the risk of my death was an appropriate trade off for the possible benefits to me and my community, I would also fight. The critical difference is that I would work like hell to make sure I and my compatriots stayed alive. I wouldn’t hope for an honorable death. (What distinguishes an honorable death from a regular one? From my perspective, I’m still dead either way.) I wouldn’t be needlessly heroic because I had an unjustified hope to see my family again. I would lay my life down if necessary, but the risks-benefits equations would be different for me than for someone who expected to wake up from death in heaven.
And I don’t feel the need to justify myself further, because you either wouldn’t understand the mindset or you would downplay it as theistic when it would have nothing to do with God anyways. Or even better, you’d do both.
That’s fine. You obviously don’t need to justify yourself to me. I am only addressing those who ameliorate the tragedy of death in war by appealing to thoughts of an afterlife. If that doesn’t fit you, well, what can I say?
September 27, 2007 @ 1:40 pm
Along the same theme as this video:
God as Their Running Mate
Romney’s Religion
And the dissenting voice…
Can Honest Intellectual Doubts Become Anti-Religious Bigotry?
For my part, I wouldn’t immediately disqualify someone from public office if they were religious. However, I want people of sound reason and judgment in office. If you’re superstitious, then I want to know so that I can make an informed decision.
If you believe, for example, an apocalyptic war in the middle east will usher in a thousand year period of peace presided over by your messiah, then I want to know. Having all that power in your hands, it might start to seem like you should help move the time line forward. After all, God said the gentile nations are supposed to help Israel. (Isaiah 49:22–23)
Ash said,
November 4, 2007 @ 6:02 pm
LOVE the quote!! Totally agree, rock on!