"You know your god is made up when he hates the same people you do"

Organized religions are a massive threat to world safety. If it's not Jews vs. Muslims in the Middle East, it's Hindus against Muslims in the Indian subcontinent, different Christian sects against each other in the Balkans, Catholics against Protestants in Northern Ireland, and Christians against everyone else in Rwanda. I don't trust any of them, primarily because all of their religious books are open to such massively different interpretations. The Old Testament says Thou Shalt Not Kill, but reckons War is a good thing, and killing is OK sometimes, the New Testament was the justification for both the Spanish Inquisition and The Crusades, and the Koran says both that Islam is a religion of peace and one of war against other religions.

It's hardly surprising that we see so much trouble from the religious, most of whom want to make everyone else into copies of themselves and discourage critical thinking. They also believe there is a controlling and creating figure who can see everything and do anything, yet they can't see him (or her), feel him (or her) or detect him (or her) in any way whatsoever.

And people wonder why I'm such a huge skeptic!

Cheers, Tom.

The god botherers are indeed worrying and somehow gathering in strength ovewr here thanks I believe to being bankrolled by the American fundys.

I think the thing to remember about the USA is that many people left Europe for the new world in order to practice their own brand of Christianity without persecution, however some may argue that it was to practice their own brand of intolerance without fear of state interfearance.

I posted this comment on someone elses blog just before so I'm just going to say the same thing here. My point is that religion is not at fault but the human way of conducting ourselves:

"Modern conflicts (and most of the past ones) have not been religious. Do you believe that the majority of Muslims are terrorists? No, I don't think you do. So who causes wars? Governments cause wars, not religions. Look at all the conflicts - even the ones that purport to be religious ones - are political.
This explains our suprise and inability to react correctly towards 'jihad' because actually most wars have been about any of the following: Land, Race, Money (resources), Personalities.
For this reason I agree that just like forcing religion upon people is wrong, there is no inherent justification in preaching aethiesm either - it won't change a thing.
And for the record, the Crusades had the appearance of religious wars but was actually closer to a peace-keeping interventionist action (the Christians were not simply invading Muslim territory, they were trying to get the Muslims out of the 'Holy Land' who had recently invaded. They went there to protect the Christians who had been living there for sometime (it did after all originate in that place) and their interests - in the context of the age it wasn't really unjustified).
The closest we've come to religious wars recently in my opinion has been the clash of ideologies of Communism, Capitalism and Nationalism - all ideologies that either ignores, denies or relegates any God-like figure.
The problem lies in our flawed politics - to regard religion as the problem I think is looking in the wrong direction - it is a fallacy (and maybe a politicians evil plan??) to think that it is human religion that causes these problems, after all we have achieved greatness so far and it is only in the last century that secularism in the West has become institutionalized."

The biggest threats to world safety are not fundamentalist religions - in fact they've done fuck all in comparison to governments. Nuclear war, imperialism, capitalism, famine, are not about religious differences. In my view that would be like saying that the causes of the Second World War was the extermination of the Jews - in fact the two events were quite seperate.

The Jesus freaks in America are odd and worrying but I know that you're more intelligent than to take what you see on TV at face value - it is channel 4 remember. If ITV did a similar program on Muslims in Britain or somewhere else I'm sure you would have turned over in disgust. There's no point in picking on fundametalist Christians as they're such an easy target, might as well have a program called "Where Pol Pot went wrong".

I do seem to keep having this discussion with people, but in an age where TOLERANCE and UNDERSTANDING is called for, I think it is wrong to all run to the other side of the boat and attack religions. It's the amoral politicians who should be against the wall not the regular god-fearing common folk.

by the way can you write more blog entries, my work is very tedious and it's not helped by the numerous blogs starting:
"Woke up this morning, ah Wednesday i thought, what a miserable day..."

A very interesting post.

One minor point.

Christianity, Islam, Judaism etc ... aren't necessarily fundamentalist religions.

I'm a Jew. My philosophy's live and let live.

xxx