I’m not at all religious, but sometimes I thank God for religious people, such as those who are risking their lives to assist some of the most oppressed people on earth to escape their prison: North Korea. This BBC story reminds me of the TV broadcast I saw some years ago on German TV, in which escapees who had been raised in coercively atheist North Korea related how they were told that, upon getting across the border into China, they should look for buildings with a certain sign on it, because the people in such buildings would help them. The sign was a long vertical line intersected at right angles about 1/3 from the top with a shorter horizontal line.
Tom: the “look for the intersecting lines” story is extremely moving — but it isn’t about religion. It’s about caring for your fellow man. All sorts of things can trigger this.
Davis Hume, Adam Smith, and many others argued that man has an innate moral sense that competes with other aspects of ourselves. Neuroscientists and pschologists such as Harvard’s Marc Hauser say the same thing. We do have a moral sense.
Religion is just one thing that can trigger the moral sense and make us care about others. But religion can as easily make us hate our fellow man — it can work on those other aspects we have. So “we” bash gays, bomb Jewish kids trying to buy pizza, shoot Muslims in the midst of their prayers, etc.
Religion “explains” both the inhumane and the inhumane. We should simply be thankful for humane people.
I meant to say “Religion ‘explains’ both the inhumane and the *humane*”.
If I believed in Freud, I’d say it was a Freudian slip.