«Religion can distort people's moral sensibilities as much as it can inform them. The unimportant becomes important, the important becomes unimportant, as we're seeing with gay adoption and gay bishops.
Curiously enough, most of the social problems we have now are not addressed by religion. Both right and left claim equal Christian pedigree. Religions have far more to do with stoning homosexuals than with social welfare provision or affordable housing.
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Christianity in the 18th and 19th centuries was used to justify very violent societies, where it was thought impious to raise the level of the poor. The Levellers, however, saw the Bible enjoining no private property. It's amazing what different people can take away from the same text.
At the present juncture we have to ask whether religion does more harm than good. The Church of England is a fairly docile Labrador, but as we saw last year over Lord Joffe's proposals for assisted suicide, the bishops make tremendous noise and exert tremendous public pressures. I don't see why we need 26 people in the Lords speaking up for one religious minority.
(...)
I don't see that religion is particularly bad, but at certain historical moments it is very dangerous and this is one of them. There is a risk that we will undermine the West, that we will go back to the religious wars of the 17th century. The only reason Christians are not still burning each other is because the secular state stopped them.»
(Simon Blackburn)
Curiously enough, most of the social problems we have now are not addressed by religion. Both right and left claim equal Christian pedigree. Religions have far more to do with stoning homosexuals than with social welfare provision or affordable housing.
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Christianity in the 18th and 19th centuries was used to justify very violent societies, where it was thought impious to raise the level of the poor. The Levellers, however, saw the Bible enjoining no private property. It's amazing what different people can take away from the same text.
At the present juncture we have to ask whether religion does more harm than good. The Church of England is a fairly docile Labrador, but as we saw last year over Lord Joffe's proposals for assisted suicide, the bishops make tremendous noise and exert tremendous public pressures. I don't see why we need 26 people in the Lords speaking up for one religious minority.
(...)
I don't see that religion is particularly bad, but at certain historical moments it is very dangerous and this is one of them. There is a risk that we will undermine the West, that we will go back to the religious wars of the 17th century. The only reason Christians are not still burning each other is because the secular state stopped them.»
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