Well its a good thing someone is religious. Its now generally agreed that pope paul is responsible for the fall of russia and ending the cold war. If it weren't for the pope and the millions who put their lives on the line for him europe and the united states would be staring at 1000s of russian icbms aimed directly at them. If the pope hadn't traveled to poland , poland wouldn't have fallen , if poland hadn't fallen then eastern europe wouldn't have fallen , and if eastern europe hadn't fallen then russia wouldn't have fallen. And only for the pope and for god would those millions of polish citizens have put their lives on the line. The other side of the equation is a little more difficult to answer and i'm not sure anyone really knows. Why didn't the russians react with their customery force like they previously had. There is a clue but i don't know how accurate the story is. Supposely after the cold war was over mikhail gorbachev traveled to rome , kneeled before the pope and asked forgiveness for russia's sins ? You can also ask didn't the pope , by his actions , put us potentially in harm's way. The answer is twofold : 1.} the pope was fulfilling a 1917 prophesy 2:} the world was in a precarious situation - any mistake on either side and a world war would arrive { we had come close a number of times }. How long could we live like that ?
The question has also been asked before here what would a world be like without religious beliefs or put it another would we be better off without religious beliefs ? Actually there have been attempts to remove religious beliefs in our time. Now i'm not saying this is always the result. I'm just pointing to 2 examples. The first is russia and lenin"s " religion is the opium of the people ". Communism , in practice , was an attack on our economic models , political system and religious beliefs. Marx and lenin may have had a grand plan but stalin may have ended up murdering up to 100 million russians. The result was a cold gray world. Now i'm not as clear with my second example. The horrific nazi government of germany who simply elimated any opposition. They are other horrific governments of course but not with the power of the nazis. They basically , i think , had won world war 2 easily except for their mistakes of invading russia in the winter and dragging an isolated america into the war. The then pope has been criticized for not speaking out forceably enough against nazi germany but the nazis would put the fear of god into anyone. I believe during world war 2 axis troops surrounded but did not invade the vactican. I wonder what stopped them. The nazis slaughtered people in a new york minute. Is there any example in history of a society which has elimated religious practices and remained peaceful , resourceful and viable ?
