It's an essay by Col. William M. Darley available via smallwarsjournal.com, and it struck a cord with yours truly.
People fight for what they believe in, and belief is a matter of faith, not something that can be empirically tested and proved or disproved with a high degree of probability.
Those who profess to not believe in anything that cannot be proven are poorly equipped to fight for much of anything - with the possible exception of responding to the most immediate threats of bodily harm.
If the effect of worship is to accrue to the worshipper some portion of the admired attributes assigned to that which is worshipped, then those who insist on not worshipping anything deprive themselves of the incentive to defend their own interests.
Darley proposes an international struggle to drive religion out of politics and any political ambition out of religion - specifically out of Islam and Christianity. I don't doubt that the end result of such an effort, if successful, would be a more peaceful and tolerant world. But it is based on a rational argument, and as Darley himself notes, people don't fight for ideas, they fight for beliefs. So who the hell is going to fight this good fight? The secularists? They literally don't have it in them, or have driven it out of themselves. The religious? What is the incentive to change? They worship as they do because that works for them and their communities, provides them with a clear competitive advantage.
Where this paper is strongest is in its discussion of the biological/genetic/adaptive roots of faith, worship, and ritual, and in noting the resulting pointlessness of waging a "war of ideas." Quote:
"...seeing the conflict as merely a struggle between “ideas” is increasingly an emperor with no clothes. Rational consideration of “ideas” played comparatively little role in stimulating large crowds of mainly illiterate, non-Arabic speaking Pakistani peasants (most of whom were not even capable of reading the ideas supposedly defamed in the desecrated Koran), to participation in mass demonstrations and violent riot over the reputed incident at Guantánamo. Nor do ‘ideas’ shape the judgments of many American congressmen or European parliamentarians whose “faith-based” biases are just as impervious to reasoned argument and facts as those of rioting Pakistanis. What the members of such groups “think” in terms of rationally and empirically derived ideas has much less influence on their behavior than what they “feel”—and what they feel is largely a product of what they have chosen to worship.
So, if you believe - stand and fight.
And if you don't - why do you even bother to breath?
Just think about that for a moment... and realize that if you can answer the question, you might just worship something after all.
Posted on 17 November 2008 @ 12:01 GMT