In a book review in the Times Literary Supplement of September 14th, Emmanuel Sivan says that warfare is a major precept of Islam, but a collective, not an individual one. The community, or part of it, has to be engaged in combating non-believers; it isn’t up to self-appointed small groups. Jihad is essentially offensive and hegemonic, justified in terms of the "moral superiority" of Islam, and the concentration is not on forcibly converting the heathen , but ensuring that Islamic law prevails in conquered territories. Islam is content to tolerate other religions as long as it gets privileged treatment. While jihad against occupying forces is a given, the major part of the current jihad is against oppressive regimes, such as that in Egypt.
Epicureans reject these organized religions, built upon violence and the "truth" as determined by priests and prophets, who generally are no more intelligent and humane than they ought to be. Epicureanism means tolerance and peace.
Religion is a convenient vehicle for the greed and violence of the human race. It’s quite likely that if these superstitions did not exist, human beings would invent other beliefs with which to oppress their fellow human beings.
Epicureans have to be careful not to erect a new and intolerant type of “religion”, which would be probably just as irrational and violent as the beliefs it opposes. Fortunately, Epicureanism has a tendency to attract relative loners and non-joiners (I plead guilty), who find mega-churches and packaged beliefs distasteful. The obverse side of the coin is that it also attracts antisocial libertarians, also known as free-riders, who are happy to take advantage of all the benefits of modern society without contributing a penny. Like everything else in this imperfect world, Epicureanism is far from perfect. But at least we don’t believe that we preach the immutable word of God and that we possess “moral superiority”.!
Indeed!! I think of the libertarians, especially, when it comes to parasites. 🙂
This touches on an “in my head” project of mine. To wit, making a religion, a modern religion, of Epicurean beliefs.
For, without a dogma, and some sort of religious content, it just does not work.
One essential componenet, I feel, is, the assertion of moral superiority. What good is a religioin without that? We must assert our superiority as a first step. People must have a reason to follow.
Anyone who rejects superstition must by definition be superior! (I am only just joking). But I am personally wary of creating a new religion and spurring more intolerance and hatred. Being slightly apart and not joining the herd isn’t such a bad strategy. An epicurean religion would inevitably be taken over by the most ambitious and strident people and we would end up with the equivalent of Ayatollahs and boy-crazed priests. ugh!