X-Message-Number: 19966
Date: Mon, 2 Sep 2002 08:07:04 -0700 (PDT)
From: Dani Kollin <>
Subject: Jeff Dees Challenge Round 3

Hi Jeff,

I sent your challenge over to my brother Eytan, A CI
member and occassional lurker. He's also far more
knowledgable than I am when it comes to historical
perspective.

Dani Kollin

Mr. Dee, 
If you wish to claim that a belief in a theistic diety
is irrational and therefore harmful and we are better
off hoping that a "rational" set of values replaces
one that is "God" based I think you are in for a
dangerous and depressing world.  The truth of the
matter is that religious movements have a far better
track record of creating a just and safe world than
anything a secular, for lack of a better word,
ideology has ever come up with.  The religions of the
world for all the harm they have caused, have given
the world some vital precepts.  For all the horror of
the inquistion and the stupidity of Crusades and
Jihads with all the intendent suffering - they have
not come close to doing the harm of the secular
movements of nazism and Communism. The great religions
of the world have done a great deal of good.  Babies
were left to die of exposure if not physically perfect
until the Church decided that all persons have souls
and are INDIVIDUALLY valuable. Something that was
unheard of before the rise of the monotheistic
religions.  Judiaism was among the first to say the
power of a king was tempered by the law of God, the
first successful experiment in limited government and,
as anyone who has ever lived in an absolutetess regime
can tell you, a vital one.

  The secular movements have nothing good they have
accomplished that they can point to with pride. 
Whereever a secular movement becomes dominent, you get
hell.   The only place we can point to where
secularism has managed to be benefit is the experiment
called the United States. But that is because the
founding fathers knew how vital a religious center is
to a community.  Remember, many of our greatest
triumphs, from victory in the civil war, to Rev. King
and the SCLC were accomplished by the religious, not
just the secular. 

 In short if I had to choose which world I would want
to wake up in, the odds are good I could live in a
world motivated by religious ideals.  I would bet good
money that a world motivated by secular ideals would
be one in which I would request to go back to the
freezer. Speaking historically that is.

Eytan Kollin


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