Adam Lee on November 11, 2011, 6:37 AM
In my previous post, I quoted the letter I wrote to John Buehrens, Unitarian Universalist minister, to ask if he stood behind the anti-atheist denunciations in his book A Chosen Faith. The same evening I sent it, I got a response. I regret to report that not only did Buehrens not express regret for his language; he doubled down on it, with more insults and accusations even worse than what's in the book. His reply is reproduced in full below:
Dear Adam,
The relationship between religion and violence is complex. But the reaction against religion is often far more murderous than those disillusioned with religion will allow. My claim is that religion, at its best, across confessional lines, tries to stop, or at least reduce, the cycle of violence and revenge.
Cultural evolution, I believe, supports this. Some of the most murderous episodes in modern history have been in attempts to get rid of religion entirely. Example 1): During the French Revolution, no sooner had the Goddess of Reason been set up in Notre Dame than the Terror began, with the guillotine.
2) This summer my wife and I went to what Yale historian Tim Snyder calls The Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. Both tyrants hated religions of the Golden Rule. Hitler hated the Jews for introducing what became Christianity, which he regarded as wimpy, weak and lacking in a basis for German "volkische" self-assertion. Stalin had studied for the priesthood, yet began that period by deliberately starving 3 million Ukranian peasant families. Between the two of them, they orchestrated state policies - quite apart from war - that murdered, between 1930 and 1945, some 35 million people.
http://bigthink.com/ideas/41051Part 1:
http://bigthink.com/ideas/41021