Common Gound

In last night's religious exploration class we viewed the third and final episode in the series of the Jonathan Miller documentary, "Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief". Lively discussion followed the film and something interesting came out of that discussion. As we were talking about the many atrocities that had been committed by various religious movements over the centuries (the Inquisition comes to mind for example) we also noted, as was brought out in the film, the first Atheist State (The USSR) had also committed horrible crimes against humanity as well. Bill suggested that the atrocities committed by religions were carried out by extremist individuals or groups and did not represent the Religion as a whole. Steve was pointing out that the USSR under Stalin also committed atrocities but that these were not done in the name of Atheism, per se, but rather because Stalin wanted to maintain his power. I think that there is some common gound here between believers and non believers, in that in each case, it was due to the excesses of individuals or smaller groups within the larger population that these horrible acts were committed. The end result was that also in each case, Religion and Atheism, the blame or the negative image was planted in the minds of many people who observed this from 'outside'. Perhaps this is one area in which believers and non believers can come together and agree. Common Gound.