Quote:
Originally Posted by happy_terd
I think if this was a perfect world where there was no so thing as religion the same people would be controlling and killing the same people.
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I have always believed that religion isnt to blame. The regular guy doesnt care at all about attacking anyone or killing anyone just based off of what he or she reads. I do not believe any bible incites a riot or a call to arms. It is something that is manipulated and twisted by certain leaders to get the regular guy to fight for them.
Every time religion was organized to a certain degree the common man was forced to accept it. The crusades, the witch trials, modern day terrorists are not the common guy with the bible in hand. It is the little guy forced into something. There is no religion there.
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Exactly. In any conflict where religion gets the blame, there's always at least one other
real cause. Usually, the ugly face behind any conflict (involving religion or not) is a desire for power or money, which is of course the means by which one acquires power. When religion gets dragged into it, it is manipulated and twisted beyond all recognition. I mean, really, when 0.001% of a religious population acts out, can you really blame the other 99.999% too? It just doesn't make any sense.
As an aside, we really need to reconstruct the way we think about religious extremism. That term is thrown around so frequently and with such carelessness that it has become meaningless. I love the way Dr. King talked about extremism in "Letter from a Birmingham Jail":
Was not Jesus an extremist for love -- "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice -- "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the gospel of Jesus Christ -- "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist -- "Here I stand; I can do none other so help me God." Was not John Bunyan an extremist -- "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." Was not Abraham Lincoln an extremist -- "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." Was not Thomas Jefferson an extremist -- "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
Dorothy Day was a religious extremist. Gandhi was a religious extremist. Osama bin Laden is just an asshole.