No, it is not. For one thing, and this is the last time I think one ought to have to repeat something, Maoism, and Stalinism, were, for all practical purposes, *religions[/I.? To say that these were non-religious societies, even if they were ostensibly atheistic societies, is to hold the debater to the strictest form of semantics. If you choose to do so, fine; they’re personality cults. Whatever. Having said that, I’m not even certain they could be called atheistic societies, given that they made gods out of their leaders. To denote them as such is to resort to a flimsy technicality, then. To his subjects, Mao, in my last example, was a kind of god. Even today, in the minds of many, he still is. That should be evidence enough to suggest there was something very special about this form of “atheistic” government.
Now, within a system of thought we more classically refer to as a religion, the purported soundness of one’s judgement one way or another can deremined purely by personal revelation, logic, and interpretation of scripture. In such a system, there is no way to independently verify or gainsay any assertion; any proclemation can be said to be Truth if it can be shown to be in some way compatible with a religious tradition, and informed by personal revelation. If followers have faith that an individual is authoritative in their personal revelations, such revelations have such weight they be accepted as Truth by many without question. The infallibility of the Pope is a good examle of this line of thinking. These days Popes lack the power or inclination to wage wars, but in the past that was not always true. Who are you or I to question the orders of such a figure, if he has the vested power of the faith to take your life or preserve it? If you are found to be a heretic, upon what grounds do you appeal for your defense? Is empirical evidence required? Should it be, if faith is the greatest guide? Many have characterized the excesses of the Inquisition as perversions of faith, but I cannot see how this can be supported. There’s no difference in kind between a benevelent Papal Bull and a malignant one; the difference is only in quality. One who claims Judeo-Christian faith, for instance, can only preach benevolence, seems to selectively ignore many aspects of the core tradition. Which parts of that tradition are more valid than others? And how are the standards for validity met? How do the faithful pick and choose what parts of the tradition are to be read literally, and what parts are meant as allegory or metaphor? Personal revelation and the logic this informs appears to be the only means of analysis, and such personal impressions provide no means by which they can be judged except through trust in faith, within the confines of religion. Since this requires no evidence to support or refute, almost anything could be deemed True if one simply felt it must be. How is one interpretation or another, if it can be shown in any way to not violate some part of a tradition, be judged false? And if faith is the only guide, who can say for certain one approach or another is perverse?
