Cafe of Broken Dreams by John scientific terrorist in action

Religious Roots of Liberty

Today I have read an interesting article about roots of freedom in religions, as the article had been written by a reverend, you rightly assume that the idea of freedom is to originate in Abrahamic religions, especially in its Judeo/Christian branch.

Well I don’t want to criticize his points in a much deep way, just if we want to see some monument in Palestine from the times of Israelites what about Solomon's Temple?

In fact we should not be surprised by the fact that some parts of our political philosophy might originate in religions, they are actually first attempts of people to understand the essence of life – philosophy. Ayn Rand said in an interview for Playboy:

You must remember that religion is an early form of philosophy, that the first attempts to explain the universe, to give a coherent frame of reference to man's life and a code of moral values, were made by religion, before men graduated or developed enough to have philosophy. And, as philosophies, some religions have very valuable moral points. They may have a good influence or proper principles to inculcate, but in a very contradictory context and, on a very - how should I say it? - dangerous or malevolent base: on the ground of faith.

Yes Religions stand behind the first ethical and sociological values and we also can find in them similarities to philosophy of liberty. But classical liberalism should not be used as  “propaganda” for confirmation of truthfulness of each religion.

Liberal Hindu or Buddhist can find reason for liberty in his religion texts, Chinese liberal fighting against oppressive communist government will use his books of Taoism and Muslims are today convinced that the European Renaissance has been imported to Europe due to Islamic philosophers like Ibn Rushd and that founder of liberal economics is Ibn Khaldun.

Whether or not we should also realize how has been religions effectively fighting against human liberty, in response to  Rev. Edmund A. Opitz:

Collectivist regimes, in the nature of things, must be profoundly irreligious, even to the extent of pressing a corrupted religion into service to shore up tyranny. via Mises.com

No they don’t, irreligious regimes based on the human reason and proclaiming liberty can be put into practice as easily as religious regimes. As well basics of  religious and irreligious regimes (faith and reason) can be easily stolen and used as an instrument of oppression.

Contribution to classical liberalism should not be associated to any particular religion group, but to few individuals who by their thoughts gave to the humanity a chance to prosper. The forefather of classical liberalism John Locke in fact opposed the classical Christian philosophy valid at that time.

In the end I will quote Steven Weinberg, a theoretical physicist challenging the classical idea that Christianity played a huge role in abolishment of slavery:

Where religion did make a difference, it was more in support of slavery than in opposition to it. Arguments from scripture were used in Parliament to defend the slave trade. Frederick Douglass told in his Narrative how his condition as a slave became worse when his master underwent a religious conversion that allowed him to justify slavery as the punishment of the children of Ham. Mark Twain described his mother as a genuinely good person, whose soft heart pitied even Satan, but who had no doubt about the legitimacy of slavery, because in years of living in antebellum Missouri she had never heard any sermon opposing slavery, but only countless sermons preaching that slavery was God’s will. With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion. see the whole great piece here

It is not about any religion it is about basic realization of violence and injustice.