I knew this was going to happen as soon as I broke down and wrote something about religion last week and it did.
I’m looking through the paper this morning and what are the headlines?
Coptic Christians and Muslims clash in Egypt.
Palestinians (read Muslims) killed in border clash with Israeli
(read Jews) border guards.
Shiites bomb Sunni temple in Iraq
Islamists fight non-Muslims in Tunisia
Miami Imam pleads guilty to helping terrorists
Florida preacher burns Koran.
Christians and Muslims eye each other over bloody border in
Sudan
Hindus fight Sikhs in Bengal
Buddhist monks clash in Tibetan monetary
We currently have clashes going on between various religious sects in Indonesia, Sudan, Niger, The Philippines, Turkey, etc., etc., etc. I could go on all night.
It’s madness, all we do is fight about how to worship god. Why is it, that all you true believers worship your god, by doing exactly what he tells you not to do?
Is there anyone out there who can give me a logical argument for why the existence of organized religion is a good thing for the planet?
I’m not sitting here saying there is no god, or that you shouldn’t worship the god you believe in, what I’m saying is that organized religion appears to be a plague on everyone’s house. Right now in a world with more than a hundred armed conflicts happening in various parts of the planet, you would be hard pressed to find one that did not have religion at its core. That’s pretty scary and as much of a blanket condemnation of anything as can be found.
I know that people need something to believe in, mainly because they don’t have the intestinal fortitude to believe in themselves. I know that people need someone to blame (Oh God why did you let that happen?) mainly because they don’t have the stones to stand up on their hind legs and take the responsibility for their own actions. But why do they feel it’s necessary to kill everyone who doesn’t believe in their version of the Supreme Being?
There are lots of good reasons to kill people. Well, maybe not lots, but disagreeing with the god he worships, really doesn’t belong on the list. I mean, what is more inconsequential than the way a person worships his god. Unless, of course his worship of his god gets in the way of the way you worship yours.
Is it really about objecting to the way your neighbor worships his god or could it be really about desiring the things or the land he acquires in the course of the worship of his god. Then your aggression is really about greed. But who decides that he wants the neighbor’s land and tells all the believers to go get it? The religion’s leader, that’s who, the Pope, the Imam, the High Priest, whatever. And, of course, greed is something that all gods, except possibly the god of Evangelical Christians, find offensive.
In any case we really have to stop using god as an excuse every time we want to smite our neighbor, cause if we don’t, God is going to get mightily pissed and smite us back. Wait a minute, maybe that’s what all the floods, earthquakes and tornados are about. It could even make one into a believer.