Positioning Putin’s Invasion of Ukraine as a “Holy War”

Great minds have been studying the relationship between religious belief and moral goodness for thousands of years–and with essentially no resolution on the subject.

Yes, historically, most of the killing, torture, and other gross mistreatment of human beings have been committed in the name of God in one form or another, and nothing has changed much in this regard in our world today.  Yet those who live according to the teachings of Christ are people of kindness and compassion.

Given all this, some may conclude that religion and ethics are orthogonal, to use a term from mathematics, meaning that they are independent, or have no bearing on one another, like the price of gold and the snowfall in the Alps.

The invasion is an atrocity.  Now, Putin has put a religious spin on it, in the hopes that doing so will make it less atrocious.

Putin is betting, and wisely so, that there are members of the Russian population who find the new slogan “The Motherland’s Greatest Holy War” (or whatever it may actually be) to be compelling.  They are not, to be sure, the college professors, authors, medical professionals, and contributors to the advancement of technology.

But what do intellectuals matter anyway?  To ward off an overturn of fascism, people of intelligence must be ignored, or preferably, removed altogether. Putin knows that well.

 

Tagged with: