Send God Packing?

I have to respond to a brief post by The Rambling Taoist

Citing a very interesting article from Intervention Magazine he quotes,

Religious fanaticism in all its forms leads inevitably to bigotry, hatred, and, too often, violent confrontations. Let's end it like reasonable human beings. How many more Crusades, Jihads, Holy Wars, whatever you want to call them, must we live through to see the light? Let's put belief in a personal God, who tells us that only we are right and that everybody else is wrong, on a dusty top shelf, out of reach, where it belongs.

He then offers this concluding commentary:

I realize many of the religious will argue that there's nothing wrong with God -- it's how some people interpret him/her/it. Frankly, it doesn't matter whose fault it is. Religion spawns fanaticism and fundamentalism. There's no escaping this.

Therefore, if we jettison the concept altogether, we certainly wouldn't be any worse off than we are today.

Setting aside the obvious fact that he and the author of the article are advocating the denial of an inalienable right and that should scare the bejesus out of anyone who loves liberty. But more to the point of his summation, both he and the author of the article take just one side of the issue and glibly ignore the flip side of the same coin. Were not Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln and Mahatma Gandhi, just to name a few, each devoutly religious/spiritual leaders who acted against tyranny precisely because of their religious/spiritual beliefs? Slavery and racial bigotry are as old as human history. There is no compelling evidence that either were caused by religious beliefs at all. So, to say that humanity wouldn't be any worse off without the intervention of deeply religious men like King, Gandhi and Lincoln seems to me to be tantamount to cutting off one's nose to spite one's face.

And then there is the truly frightening call for the elimination of an inalienable right...

I guess a timely reminder that those who love freedom have as much to fear from the devoutly anti-religious as they do from the devoutly religious was in order. So I suppose Taoist and the author of the Intervention Magazine piece should be thanked for reminding us of the Newtonian principle that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. And that often both the action and the reaction are equally objectionable.