In order to make an argument false, all that is necessary is to show that is not logically true and consistent.
If P, then Q.
Q therefore P is the fallacy of modus ponens.
It is exactly the way in which you are reasoning from the conclusion that religion is the cause of extremist behavior.
The majority of time, religious people do not engage in extremist behavior...especially the eastern religions.
So, if you want to find a causal relationship between a person and their behavior, you are going to have to find something other than religion to blame the behavior on.
Religion is not causal across the board. It might be a factor, but more than religion is the person who is attracted to extremist thinking and extremist movements. They may or may not be religious, therefore religion itself is not causal.
It goes to human nature, and by your own position...religion is not a product of human nature, but rather just an idea of some people.
History has forever shown that some people want to exercise power over others, politics has been around longer than religion, so again your position is flawed and illogical as you are not looking to the cause of the problems...you are looking at some symptoms and making fallacious jumps to erroneous claims via a generalization fallacy.
Hitchens arguments are flawed...and badly, because his reasoning is shoddy and full of selected situations, building a case that isolated and selected events are causal for an entire group, or an entire genre, etc. It is akin to racism in a way, as the same logical fallacy is in play.
How is that?
Say some blacks riot and cause problems in society. So a racist says, blacks are bad, because some blacks rioted.
Hitchens does the exact same thing, as he picks isolated events (not the totality of all events connected with all religions) and condemns all religions. He then suggest that
his way of belief is the right way for everyone...a totalitarian perspective.
Think about it deeply and you will discover the weakness in your argument.
"There are no innocent religions. History has shown that they all seek control and power in their own way."
False, of course. Religions don't do anything...human beings do. Human beings make their own choices, they have free will, they can decide not to believe one thing or another...for that is what you did right? You made a decision to believe what you like.
You want to blame some mommy and daddy religion for the ills of the society...I say blame the mind of mankind for the flaws of mankind, and we see religious people do good, we see them do bad, we see instances of totalitarian political thinking, and we see an Amish community do nothing of the kind.
So again, while you may
feel you are right, logically your argument doesn't cut the mustard.
Quote from Gabfly1:
Nice try, but not so. Sri Lanka was ravaged by violence and repression, and the contending forces are essentially Buddhist and Hindu. Ethnic tribalism, reinforced by religion, wrecked the society. You really should familiarize yourself with history. While you may not agree with Hitchens's opinions, his journalistic integrity is intact in his factual chronicling and is supported with full bibliography. He cites the first foreign visitors to Tibet who were appalled at the feudal domination, and hideous punishments, that kept the population in permanent serfdom to a parasitic monastic elite. Sound familiar? Japanese Buddhism became a loyal servant and advocate of imperialism and mass murder. During the Second World War, Japanese Buddhists regarded their country's membership of the Nazi/Fascist Axis as a manifestation of liberation theology. You really should read Hitchens, if not for his opinions then at least for his "investigative" reporting of factual history as compared to the revisionist variety. Brian Victoria's Zen at War described how Japanese Buddhists considered people to be children and that it was actually fascism rather than socialism that the Buddha and dharma required of the people.
There are no innocent religions. History has shown that they all seek control and power in their own way. Even in the world's single remaining super power and the shining light among First World countries, religion continues to attempt incursions beyond the religion/state divide. (And yet, ironically, this distinction and separation between church and state is what separated the experiment called America from all other countries.) You need only look at home at how religion seeks to pull people backward rather than forward. And history has amply demonstrated what happens when religion exerts power and control, which it always seeks to do.
