RE: Burning the Bible
December 19, 2011 at 9:11 pm
(This post was last modified: December 19, 2011 at 9:18 pm by Anomalocaris.)
(December 19, 2011 at 1:20 am)helmespc Wrote:(December 19, 2011 at 1:10 am)aleialoura Wrote: I'd burn every bible and Que'ran in the world to have Alexandria's library back!
That brings up an interesting question.... say perhaps the entire world was entirely religion "free"... would it be ethical to burn all remaining "religious" texts in order to prevent the evils of religions from returning to the world? To me, obviously the trade-off would be worth it... but I can definitely see the argument that the destruction of any knowledge, whether it be science or religion is a very dangerous game.
It would not be ethical to destroy "all" religious texts because it would deprive future generation of valuable insight into the nature of their own species and how they got to where they would be.
Also, burning books at the very most may help superficially bury some specific existent religion. Note the burning of all inca kippu and maya text did not stop the native cultish practices amongst the inca and maya, despite 400 years of truly vicious spanish christian repression. It certainly won't kill the phenomenon of cults and religions itself. Even if all existent religionis buried, a society made religion-free by ignorance of religion will undoubtedly spawn nutcases and frauds to inflict new cults and religions on the ignorant. Human ignorance is the vacuum religion will spontaneously come into existence to fill.[/align]
The only way to keep a society religion free is to elevate the whole population's intellectual quality to such levels that rationalism comes more easily and comfortably to them than self deception and wish thinking.
Such society would remain largely religion free no matter how many copies of the bible litter the streets.
