compassion revisited

A while back I gave Karen Armstrong credit for being right about the centrality of compassion in all creditable spiritual worldviews, religious, secular, and ethical. But I want to be clear: she's not right to credit all historical religions with actually practicing and defending (as opposed to just preaching) compassion and tolerance themselves. They don't all do even that. Ophelia Benson, as usual, is blunt about this. Here she's quoting (and skewering) Robert Wright, whose Evolution of God is on our reading list in "Atheism & Spirituality":

All the great religions have shown time and again that they're capable of tolerance and civility when their adherents don't feel threatened or disrespected.

Bullshit. All the great religions have shown time and again that when they have unquestioned power, they use it, and they don't use it for tolerance and civility, they use it for social control and for their own protection and well-being. Robert Wright should take a few minutes to ponder the tolerance and civility of the Irish Catholic church.

OK, point granted: compassion is still a goal and an ideal, not an institutional value to be found and consistently cherished in the church-centered mainstream. I agree. But Karen's still right to urge the pursuit of that goal. No reason why atheists shouldn't be happy to endorse it too.

Give Ms. Armstrong partial credit, and please sign her charter. It's not disloyal, Randians, to live for the sake of one another as well as for ourselves.