Is Religion the route of all Evil?
OK it's time to get controversial in the old weekly question post, and I just hope that I don't offend anybody by what I am about to write. That is not my intention, my intention is to highlight what I think is the cause of all the troubles in the world, and hopefully to give people that little bit of doubt when it comes to the so called greater good.
I am sick to the back teeth of turning on the news every day, only to hear of more atrocities in Iraq, of more killings of men women and children who's only crime was that of been a different religion to those carrying out the attacks. At first the attacks were carried out on mainly military targets, but now it's free game for anyone. Why?? Because like I said they are a different religion.
So is Religion the Axis of evil?? Well....
Lets have a look at a few things,
Hundreds of years ago, somewhere in the world Christianity was born. I don't know where it all started really, and I don't know who started it up, lets just go with what people believe and that it was started with the birth of Christ. Now the thing is there were also lots of other religions around at the time, but all of a sudden this 'new' religion was the thing to be, it was the hip thing of the time and if you weren't a Christian you were a heathen.
So how if this all started in Jeruselem did it spread all over the world, except in the very area it all started?
Move along a few centuries to the Crusades.
What was the whole point of the Crusades? Well Wikipedia has the following definition;
"The Crusades were a series of military conflicts of a religious character waged by Christians from 1095-1291, usually sanctioned by the Pope in the name of Christendom,[1] with the goal of recapturing Jerusalem and the sacred "Holy Land" from Muslim rule and originally launched in response to a call from the Eastern Orthodox Byzantine Empire for help against the expansion of the Muslim Seljuq dynasty into Anatolia."
So in other words if you didn't join our religion and didn't like it, we are either going to forcibly convert you or kill you - your choice!
Starting to look like religion isn't all the good it is cracked up to be isn't it?
Now leaf through history and check all the wars that have taken place, a lot of them have some sort of religious overtones to them, once more religion is shown in a bad light.
So is the axis of evil religion itself?
Consider a world without religion, everyone basically has the same perspective and is brought up with the same views. There are culture clashes for sure, but not on the scale they are at the moment. Would it work? Probably not, so that means that we need religion to survive, and that makes it a drug, but aren't addictive drugs nasty things? Hummmm?
I could go on a lot longer but posting space is short and I would rather have your thoughts on things. Religion is to blame for a lot of problems in the world, but it also acts as belief and faith in a lot of cultures, and it is all some people have. I go to church occasionally, but I don't consider myself religious, and when I go to church I do get a sense of well being, but that is to do with me not the fact a church is seen as a place to worship a religious diety.
Is Religion the axis of evil then? Well I would have to say when it is taken fanatically it has to be, but when it is taken as an everyday thing? I have to say I am undecided.
2 comments:
I think George Carlin put it best, "More people have been kiled in the name of God then for any other reason." I consider myself religous but it is a very personal thing for me. It fits me, it doesn't nessasarily fit anyone else. This is the problem of religion, the thought that if you do not believe what I believe then you must be wrong or inferior or so on and so forth, (By the way, this fits race, too). The thing you have to remember about religion is that humans created it, humans practice it, and when ever there are more then a handfull of humans together, there will be differences and human nature will intervene. To get rid of conflict you would have to get rid of emotions like anger and it is these emotions that helped us be agressive and survive to be what we are now. So basically, religion helps people but it is still flawed because humans are flawed.
I think it's all a form of survival of the fittest. Those people that believe in something so deeply combined with the need to be all powerful are the ones that cause the conflicts. They must make everyone else believe in exactly what they believe in, no matter how they do it. For those peoples with quit natures, there believes get run over by the more aggressive.
Take the American Indians for instance. Not many people worship mother earth after Christianity came from across the seas. But, didn't the people that came to America run from religious persacution? They wanted to be free to practice religion on their own terms, yet when they arrived in a land with a gentler religion, the newcomers overpowered the natives and made them believe in their God.
So when you have too aggressive groups facing each other, there's your conflict. Neither one wants to lose their own believes. Both want to survive as the ultimate power, thus instill their believes into the underdogs...to make themselves more powerful, the fittest.
I just don't understand why people can't just accept everybody’s differences and go about their own business. Not only in religion but every aspect of difference there is between people.
I think it's the fanatical that makes evil. Not religion itself.
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