reply to post by SageBeno
If you dont have anything positive to add to my thread then leave no footprints.
Nothing positive? That depends on your point of view.
Have you heard of the Boxer Rebellion? In China, around 1900, a militant group called the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists launched an
uprising against the decadent and corrupt Ch'ing dynasty and its foreign sponsors, who had made China a nation of opium addicts and were bleeding the
country white. They were particularly antipathetic towards Christian missionaries, and several massacres of Christians ensued.
For a while the Boxers posed a serious threat to their enemies, but they had one fatal weakness: they believed they were invulnerable to bullets, due
to the strict physical and spiritual disciplines that were part of their training.
Well, they weren't of course. But their belief was enough to encourage them to start a terrible civil war and later to cause them to die in droves
with European bullets inside them.
That is the kind of thing that happens too easily when people start having foolish fantasies of supernatural power, or start to believe religious
fairytales that privilege believers above unbelievers.
The century just passed was the most horrific in human history, one in which the quantum of human violence and cruelty reached almost unbelievable
proportions. What drove it? Belief in pseudoscientific theories of racial supremacy and religious privilege, belief in fantasy economic systems, the
widespread use of lies as propaganda. In other words, the hatred and killing were driven by people believing things that were not true – in some
cases, things that a few moments' rational thought would show were not true.
You'd think that such an experience would have taught mankind better, and indeed it
has taught a good many of us. Sadly, we are still a
minority – the world remains plagued with religious fundamentalism, racism and ethnic intolerance, medical quackery and pseudoscience. Belief
systems based on magical thinking and false reasoning continue to dupe millions into doing themselves all kinds of harm – emotional, economic and
sometimes physical. Worse still, they encourage people to do
others harm.
Your thread is part of this miserable, potentially lethal weft of credulity and ignorance. My
positive contribution to it is to pour the cold
water of common sense and the salt of ridicule upon it. With any luck, my contribution will make a few impressionable readers think twice, and decline
to believe such nonsense.
Truth is relative and unfortunately for you, at the end of your life you'll realize what you have wasted.
Another dangerous lie to believe in, because it justifies any conduct. Truth is not relative. Truth is.
edit on 22/1/12 by Astyanax because: a few things needed to be clarified.
