Monday, August 07, 2006
'Historic religions ... brutal weapons'
Monday. First day of a week-plus off. My list of household chores and to-do's is immense. Brain slipping into neutral. Before *that* happens, here's something to ponder:
There is no moral high ground in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict. Oh, the world has picked sides, but that's all it is. There is no moral high ground in any war because there is no moral nation! And the End Times fanatics, God love 'em, neither advance the kingdom of heaven nor assist the nations of earth.
--ER
"The full evil of human finitude and sin is most vividly revealed in conflicts between national communities. ... No party to the conflict has a perspective high enough to judge the merits of the opponent's position. Every appeal to moral standards thus degenerates into a moral justification of the self against the enemy. Parties to a dispute inevitably make themselves judges over it and thus fall into the sin of pretending to be God. ...
"The rivalry between Jews and Arabs in Palestine is a conflict between two races and religions, involving not only the natural will-to-live of two collective racial organisms, but the economic differences between the feudalism of the Arabs and the technical civilization which the Jews are able to introduce into Palestine.
"How can a high enough rational and moral perspective be found to arbitrate the issue between them? How is the ancient and hereditary title of the Jew to Palestine to be measured against the right of the Arar's present possession? Or how is one to judge the relative merits of modern Jewish against ancient Moslem culture without introducing criteria which are involved in and do not transcend the struggle?
"The participants cannot find a common ground of rational morality from which to arbitrate the issues because the moral judgments which each brings to them are formed by the very historical forces which are in conflict. Such conflicts are therefore sub-and supra-moral.
"The effort to bring such a conflict under the dominion of a spiritual unity may be partly successful, but it always produces a tragic by-product of the spiritual accentuation of natural conflict. The introduction of religious motifs into these conflicts is usually no more than the final and most demonic pretension.
"Religion may be regarded as the last and final effort of the human spirit to escape relativity and gain a vantage-point in the eternal. But when this effort is made without a contrite recognition of the finiteness and relativity which characterizes human spirituality, even in its moments of yearning for the transcendent, religious aspiration is transmuted into sinful dishonesty.
"Historic religions, which crown the structure of historic cultures, thus become the most brutal weapons in the conflict between the cultures."
--Reinhold Niebuhr, in An Interpretation of Christian Ethics (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1935).
There is no moral high ground in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict. Oh, the world has picked sides, but that's all it is. There is no moral high ground in any war because there is no moral nation! And the End Times fanatics, God love 'em, neither advance the kingdom of heaven nor assist the nations of earth.
--ER
"The full evil of human finitude and sin is most vividly revealed in conflicts between national communities. ... No party to the conflict has a perspective high enough to judge the merits of the opponent's position. Every appeal to moral standards thus degenerates into a moral justification of the self against the enemy. Parties to a dispute inevitably make themselves judges over it and thus fall into the sin of pretending to be God. ...
"The rivalry between Jews and Arabs in Palestine is a conflict between two races and religions, involving not only the natural will-to-live of two collective racial organisms, but the economic differences between the feudalism of the Arabs and the technical civilization which the Jews are able to introduce into Palestine.
"How can a high enough rational and moral perspective be found to arbitrate the issue between them? How is the ancient and hereditary title of the Jew to Palestine to be measured against the right of the Arar's present possession? Or how is one to judge the relative merits of modern Jewish against ancient Moslem culture without introducing criteria which are involved in and do not transcend the struggle?
"The participants cannot find a common ground of rational morality from which to arbitrate the issues because the moral judgments which each brings to them are formed by the very historical forces which are in conflict. Such conflicts are therefore sub-and supra-moral.
"The effort to bring such a conflict under the dominion of a spiritual unity may be partly successful, but it always produces a tragic by-product of the spiritual accentuation of natural conflict. The introduction of religious motifs into these conflicts is usually no more than the final and most demonic pretension.
"Religion may be regarded as the last and final effort of the human spirit to escape relativity and gain a vantage-point in the eternal. But when this effort is made without a contrite recognition of the finiteness and relativity which characterizes human spirituality, even in its moments of yearning for the transcendent, religious aspiration is transmuted into sinful dishonesty.
"Historic religions, which crown the structure of historic cultures, thus become the most brutal weapons in the conflict between the cultures."
--Reinhold Niebuhr, in An Interpretation of Christian Ethics (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1935).
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I have found more and more often that in most conflict everyone is wrong. The more violent, the more wrong everyone is.
When religion enters in, it is even more violent. When your god says it is OK to kill, your own inhibitions fall, that is the bloodiest of wars.
Thanks for this post.
When religion enters in, it is even more violent. When your god says it is OK to kill, your own inhibitions fall, that is the bloodiest of wars.
Thanks for this post.
Promptly forgotten in any conversation about the Israeli/Arab conflict are the hundreds of thousands of "Arabs" living an practicing Islam as Israeli citizens within Israel.
Israel is more than just a thorn in the side of the pro-male parternal Islamic faith, it is a dagger aimed at the heart of their power. Israel is not a religious nation as much as a secular nation that recognizes the equality of women. That single factor alone is enough for the Islamic power structure around it to need for it to be gone.
In fact at the very heart of the middle east conflict is the power of men over women. At the very heart of all fundamentalism is the power of men over women.
Ask Mark,ask D. Dadio, ask Bitch Phd, they know what's what. Until that balance is restored no other balnce can exist.
Israel is more than just a thorn in the side of the pro-male parternal Islamic faith, it is a dagger aimed at the heart of their power. Israel is not a religious nation as much as a secular nation that recognizes the equality of women. That single factor alone is enough for the Islamic power structure around it to need for it to be gone.
In fact at the very heart of the middle east conflict is the power of men over women. At the very heart of all fundamentalism is the power of men over women.
Ask Mark,ask D. Dadio, ask Bitch Phd, they know what's what. Until that balance is restored no other balnce can exist.
# posted by 
: 11:07 AM
: 11:07 AM
And that is the difference between democracy and freedom. They are NOT the same, despite the simple-minded conflation of the two by our fearless "leaders."
When our democracy finally got around to coughing it up. Which was, hmmm, what, 131 years after the Constitution decalred that "all men" were created equal ...
OK, I understand what you were saying now.
I like what you said about the End Timers. I agree.
Good, no EXCELLENT, point of view. I think we both agree here also. No moral nations no moral wars.
BTW I stole your image of Yosemite without asking. If I need to host it elsewhere I can
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I like what you said about the End Timers. I agree.
Good, no EXCELLENT, point of view. I think we both agree here also. No moral nations no moral wars.
BTW I stole your image of Yosemite without asking. If I need to host it elsewhere I can
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