End of Faith pt 2

Now, at approximately page 102, we have delved into the history of the Inquisition, complete with scriptural and liturgical references for why it is all right in the eyes of the church (Catholic and Lutheran, actually)- we have touched on anti-semitism and are just going into world war two.

One of the things which Harris points out is that there were a few people in charge at the time who took a step back and tried to moderate what was happening. It didn'’t work so well generally.

Another, and more important thing he points out is that, once the idea of witchcraft was floated, rational- within the bounds of of the assumption of witches existing - evidence against the accused was sought. (What constituted rational evidence was pretty flimsy, let's face facts, and often elicited by torture- something which we would do well to remember is not the most reliable source for information.)

While his arguments and examples are well-put-together, there are a few things which stick out.

On page 75, he points out that "“Karl Popper has told us that we never prove a theory right; we merely fail to prove it wrong." This is just not so, as we can easily see in the use of germ theory, to name just one area. Karl Popper- at the severe risk of diversion- I would like to direct you to this good explanation of post-modernist thought and its incompatability with historical accuracy http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/aug2005/le12-a30.shtml. The very idea that we can never know the truth (or, Truth) is one which has stymied scientific research, and opens the door for exactly the kind of muddied thinking which Harris is lobbying against in his decrying of religion. There is such a thing as Objective Truth on Earth, and *this* is what we need to concentrate on when dealing with religious issues in the public sphere.

Harris points out that "“all spheres of discourse are not on the same footing, for the simple reason that not all spheres of discourse seek the same footing (or any footing whatsoever). Science is science because it represents our most committed effort to verify that our statements about the world are true (or at least not false)." I agree here not just with the form, but the content.

On page 79, he says: "“Consider the millions of people who were killed by Stalin and Mao: although these tyrants paid lip service to rationality, communism was little more than a political religion."”

I am not about to defend Stalin nor Mao. What I am about to do is to point out that, like rationality, communism was another idea to which lip service was paid by these two. Both were responsible for the deaths stated, but what is unstated is that neither were actual communists- they were nationalists and tyrants. They were not the natural outcome of the revolutions in which they took part.

After Lenin'’s death, Stalin had his agents hunt down and arrest (for show trials) or kill the Russian Bolshevik leadership (including Trotsky, who was the political heir-apparent to Lenin), and he ordered Mao to submit to the KuoMinTang, thereby assuring the murder of thousands of (actual)communists. What you had under Stalin was a travesty, to be sure, comprised not only of the cult of personality but also the betrayal of the workers'’ revolution of October 1917. His insistance on utter loyalty without question (and his paranoia-inspiring secret police) surely does recall a religious-type hysteria. The religion here was not communism, though, but Stalinism. Pretty much the same thing could be said of Maoism. They also took the liberty to re-write the gospels- in the form of the history books- and to leave out or demonise those who met with disaproval.