| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"johac" |
| Date: |
29 Mar 2006 01:11:36 AM |
| Object: |
God's Torturers: From Torquemada to Opus Dei |
Torture in the name of God. More reasons why religions suck.
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God's Torturers: From Torquemada to Opus Dei
Torture Works
By MANUEL GARCIA, Jr.
Does torture work? Can foul means prevent a fouler catastrophe and thus
redeem themselves by producing a greater good? Of course not, but those
in power need discussions like this to continue, to give them a fig-leaf
of official respectability. Consider this testimony by Ana Valdes.
"I have been following with attention and curiosity the discussion
about torture, if torture works, how it works, and why we are still
using it, despite our declaration that we live in a civilized world. As
one who has been tortured, I can say, yes, torture works, not because of
the pain inflicted, or the feeling of loneliness and despair, but
because torture acts at a level of consciousness we seldom have access
to.
I was 19 years old when I was tortured, in Uruguay, at that time one
of South America's most 'exemplary' countries, with a long tradition of
democracy and legality. Uruguay, a country with a small army and without
any military conscription, demanded several CIA agents to train its
military in torture and pressure. The agent who trained my countrymen in
torture was the American Dan Mitrione. He was executed by guerrillas in
1971. Afterwards, a swarm of agents came to our country to 'take the
reins', vindicate Mitrione, and dismantle the guerrilla force.
We were tortured by people we knew. I was raised in a family with
several members in the military. I was beaten and tortured by friends of
my uncles and my cousins.
Some years ago, I went to church in Spain and confessed (I am a
freelance Catholic, I accept some aspects of the Church and its
doctrine, but about others I am critical or skeptical). I didn't know
the priest was a member of Opus Dei, the Catholic right-wing sect who
supported Franco and Pinochet. He asked me why I have not been in
confession for so many years, so I told him briefly about my four years
in jail, and my exile in Sweden. He asked me how I felt about the men
who interrogated me. I was a bit struck by his question ... up until
that time, I had not given them much thought. Yet he insisted, and so I
said "Today, I am not sure how I feel. I can accept that many of them
believed they were right, and that torture or pressure were only methods
to gather information, but ..." He interrupted me and said: "But you
should love the people who tortured you. They did it to save your
immortal soul. If you died under torture, you should go directly to
heaven. They were good Catholics, and only wanted to save you from the
devil, and from Marxism." Torture is still in my body as a memory and as
a trace. It's still a challenge for me to discover the reasons why
friends of my uncles, and good Catholics, could torture and kill, and
still go to church on Sundays. (1)"
* * *
I have never read a more succinct justification for abandoning religion.
The falsity of Catholicism, Judaism, Islam and all other denominational
"higher power" cults is vividly expressed right here: "But you should
love the people who tortured you. They did it to save your immortal
soul. If you died under torture, you should go directly to heaven. They
were good Catholics, and only wanted to save you from the devil, and
from Marxism."
Thus, love Tomas de Torquemada and the Inquisition; love the Falangist
and Franco's death camps; love Himmler, the German SS and the Nazi
officials running the death-camp nation of Poland -- most "good
Catholics" and "good Lutherans"; love the CIA-backed Latin American
fascists (see the Costa Gavras' film on Dan Mitrione, "State of Siege");
love Pinochet (see Costa Gavras' film "Missing"); love the Salvadoran
and Guatemalan Armies, especially after dark when they prowled as death
squads; love the CIA-proxy Nicaraguan Contras who targeted rural school
teachers and doctors for torture and death; love the US "interrogators"
in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and other shadowy locations; they are
all good Catholics, or Episcopalians, or Methodists (like Bush and
Cheney), or Baptists, or "Christians" of one kind or another, who go to
churches, sing hymns and spout pieties of a "superior god" they share
with Jews, a god deemed likely to win against the inferior god of the
devilishly heathen Muslims, who yet seem capable of finding the exact
same divine love and inspiration in their hearts to torture, shoot and
behead other human beings whose presence on Earth they find offensive
because they are "Shia" or "Sunni," or worse yet a Christian convert who
"renounced Islam," or perhaps was a wife or daughter who was raped and
now deserves stoning to preserve the male "honor" (as many Pakistani
wives and daughters found out after the 1971 India-Pakistan war over
Bangladeshi independence).
Yes indeed, with a Sky-God whose power on earth is mediated by a male
hierarchy there is always an excess of fatal love for those who do not
fit into the divinely attributed social structure, and our mullahs and
inquisitors and South Dakota legislators and priests must exert full
control over the frightening power of unrestrained woman, birthing, life
and thought, or "all" will be lost to "the devil" and "Marxism." Better
YOU (never they) die and "go directly to heaven" -- guaranteed even
better than the lifetime of your car's tires -- than to upset this
finely honed hierarchy of domination and denial. GOD IS MURDER.
Torture exists because some people are "better" than others by virtue of
their power, which they invariably declare a right descending from a
Divinity that favors them as Its agent, Its "disciple," Its "servant."
They are merely "soldiers in the Army of Christ," men who humbly submit
to Allah and man His jihad, all to bring you into alignment -- defined
by your betters -- with the "will of God." Priests are the executioners
of the human soul, the headsmen of human intellect, stunting and
poisoning the growth of human potential. Camus describes how Catholic
priests blessed the barrels of the rifles of Falangist firing squads
executing Republican prisoners during Spain's Civil War (1936-1939) and
the following dictatorship.
Objectively, there is no compelling reason why a person of any religious
or non-religious view should be more or less likely to be a torturer.
But, as one looks at the sweep of history it is clear that torture
follows religion, because torture is cruelty practiced by fear and
ignorance. As one moves to social groups more firmly based on the
Enlightenment (post-Renaissance humanism and socialism) and Buddhism (as
a philosophy and psychology more than a devotional religious practice
and sectarian division) one moves away from the likelihood of torture.
And don't tell me about Communist torture until after you have read
Camus's book "The Rebel" and understand that Stalinism was just another
man-made religion -- as they all are.
We have Stalinism in the USA right now, just as they had it in Imperial
Rome, just as they had in Pharaonic Egypt; we have become our own gods:
Hail Pharaoh!, Hail Caesar!, Greetings Comrade Chairman!, I'm blessed to
meet you Mister President! Our Church is the State, our leaders are our
gods, we obey the divine will. Who can contend with that? Who can say
our acts are not the implementation of Divine Good? That we have this
power PROVES it is just, it is ordained, and we who implement it, who
submit to it, are blessed, "saints" in rapture.
When torture "works," we have reached the point of deep decay along a
path of descent laid out by both Lord Acton and Euripides: "Power
corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely;" "whom the gods would
destroy they first make mad." When torture "works" it is time to tear
everything up and start over.
Leave the churches, the synagogues, the mosques and the patriot-church
of government; real justice and real humanity are to be found outside
them. Salvation is in seeking your full human potential in association
with others similarly involved. Because there is no "higher power," nor
"purpose" nor "intelligent design" to the universe, life is "empty" as
the Buddhists say; and this is "marvelous" because it means every life
is of equal value, and the fulfillment of that life is to be found in
what its individual chooses to fill it with. Isn't this truly
marvelous?, you are free to seek your fulfillment in your own manner,
and it will have the same cosmic significance as any other life.
Goodness is not a product of external control and compulsion -- let
alone torture -- it is an outgrowth of the individual effort at
fulfillment. We "make good" by "being good" in the same way we "make
peace" by "being peace," by being the living embodiment of "goodness"
and "peace" to the experience of others. Our actions may be
breast-feeding a baby, packing a school lunch, or devising an economic
development plan for a nation.
Similarly, we can act out goodness by dismantling the churches, the
religions, the governments, the corporations and the economics that
torture humanity.
---
http://www.counterpunch.org/garcia03282006.html
--
John Hachmann aa #1782
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities"
-Voltaire
Contact - Throw a .net over the .com
.
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| User: "*nemo*" |
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| Title: Re: God's Torturers: From Torquemada to Opus Dei |
29 Mar 2006 02:30:56 AM |
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In article <jhachmann-AFC4A1.23113628032006@news.giganews.com>,
johac <jhachmann@sbcglobal.com> wrote:
Similarly, we can act out goodness by dismantling the churches, the
religions, the governments, the corporations and the economics that
torture humanity.
I'm glad you're finding this stuff, John. I have about given up on
seeing much of a supply of this sort of stuff from the Internet
Infidels' Newswire. Talk about slackers!
--
Nemo - EAC Commissioner for Bible Belt Underwater Operations.
Atheist #1331 (the Palindrome of doom!)
BAAWA Knight! - One of those warm Southern Knights, y'all!
Charter member, SMASH!!
http://home.earthlink.net/~jehdjh/Relpg.html
Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus
Quotemeister since March 2002
.
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: God's Torturers: From Torquemada to Opus Dei |
29 Mar 2006 02:32:55 AM |
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*nemo* wrote:
In article <jhachmann-AFC4A1.23113628032006@news.giganews.com>,
johac <jhachmann@sbcglobal.com> wrote:
Similarly, we can act out goodness by dismantling the churches, the
religions, the governments, the corporations and the economics that
torture humanity.
I'm glad you're finding this stuff, John. I have about given up on
seeing much of a supply of this sort of stuff from the Internet
Infidels' Newswire. Talk about slackers!
I had been thinking the same thing. Maybe spring was a touch early
there?
--
Nemo - EAC Commissioner for Bible Belt Underwater Operations.
Atheist #1331 (the Palindrome of doom!)
BAAWA Knight! - One of those warm Southern Knights, y'all!
Charter member, SMASH!!
http://home.earthlink.net/~jehdjh/Relpg.html
Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus
Quotemeister since March 2002
-Panama Floyd, Atl.
aa#2015, Member Knights of BAAWA!
EAC Pace Car Driver
"..the prayer cloth of one aeon is the doormat of the next."
-Mark Twain
Religious societies are *less* moral than secular ones:
http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html
.
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| User: "*nemo*" |
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| Title: Re: God's Torturers: From Torquemada to Opus Dei |
29 Mar 2006 09:56:21 PM |
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In article <1143621175.746873.116670@v46g2000cwv.googlegroups.com>,
wrote:
I'm glad you're finding this stuff, John. I have about given up on
seeing much of a supply of this sort of stuff from the Internet
Infidels' Newswire. Talk about slackers!
I had been thinking the same thing. Maybe spring was a touch early
there?
Those guys have been dead slow on the uptake for at least half a year
now. I'd offer to take over, but I already have a couple of volunteer
positions.
--
Nemo - EAC Commissioner for Bible Belt Underwater Operations.
Atheist #1331 (the Palindrome of doom!)
BAAWA Knight! - One of those warm Southern Knights, y'all!
Charter member, SMASH!!
http://home.earthlink.net/~jehdjh/Relpg.html
Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus
Quotemeister since March 2002
.
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: God's Torturers: From Torquemada to Opus Dei |
30 Mar 2006 02:01:16 AM |
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*nemo* wrote:
In article <1143621175.746873.116670@v46g2000cwv.googlegroups.com>,
panamfloyd@hotmail.com wrote:
I'm glad you're finding this stuff, John. I have about given up on
seeing much of a supply of this sort of stuff from the Internet
Infidels' Newswire. Talk about slackers!
I had been thinking the same thing. Maybe spring was a touch early
there?
Those guys have been dead slow on the uptake for at least half a year
now. I'd offer to take over, but I already have a couple of volunteer
positions.
I lurk on II a lot, but have resisted the temptation to participate
over there. My temper would get me in trouble soooo quickly over
there..<g>
--
Nemo - EAC Commissioner for Bible Belt Underwater Operations.
Atheist #1331 (the Palindrome of doom!)
BAAWA Knight! - One of those warm Southern Knights, y'all!
Charter member, SMASH!!
http://home.earthlink.net/~jehdjh/Relpg.html
Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus
Quotemeister since March 2002
-Panama Floyd, Atl.
aa#2015, Member Knights of BAAWA!
EAC Pace Car Driver
"..the prayer cloth of one aeon is the doormat of the next."
-Mark Twain
Religious societies are *less* moral than secular ones:
http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html
.
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| User: "johac" |
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| Title: Re: God's Torturers: From Torquemada to Opus Dei |
29 Mar 2006 11:55:11 PM |
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In article <nemo0037-68BD24.03281529032006@news.east.earthlink.net>,
*nemo* <nemo0037@earthlink.dieSPAM.net> wrote:
In article <jhachmann-AFC4A1.23113628032006@news.giganews.com>,
johac <jhachmann@sbcglobal.com> wrote:
Similarly, we can act out goodness by dismantling the churches, the
religions, the governments, the corporations and the economics that
torture humanity.
I'm glad you're finding this stuff, John. I have about given up on
seeing much of a supply of this sort of stuff from the Internet
Infidels' Newswire. Talk about slackers!
Thanks. I'm retired now, so I have a little more time to do my own net
searches. I find a lot of this stuff in the liberal/progressive
websites. I look for church state articles in particular.
--
John Hachmann aa #1782
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities"
-Voltaire
Contact - Throw a .net over the .com
.
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