Uponnothing.co.uk

I was in conversation yesterday with a colleague about the merits of religion and one phrase that consistently crops up is “Religion causes war and if it was banned there would be no war”

Without using insulting terms of reference , I think that this phrase shows the intellectual bankruptcy that exists in so called educated people who think that because they’ve heard John Lennon’s Imagine on the radio then they can pass comment on how to make the world a better place. I mean, John Lennon was one of the biggest hypocrites of recent years – while he was preaching peace and sympathy for the dispossessed, he had a fleet of Rolls Royces and several mansions across the world.

How anyone could suggest that banning religion would result in a lessening of conflict and suffering is beyond me. How then can these idiots explain that some of the biggest killers in history have been atheists – men like Stalin and Mao Zedong? But you don’t hear the secularists mention this in their daily attacks on religion. I can understand why people would view religion as a bad influence especially when you consider the numbskull monkey that currently resides in the White House who claims he’s on a mission from God. But equally, there are many religious figures who’ve protested against the terrorist warmongering emanating from the bowels of Washington. Men such as Pope John Paul, Archbishop Rowan Williams and Archbishop Desmond Tutu have consistently rejected the policies of George W Bush and Tony Blair.

Let me give you an analogy – Before you drive, you have to pass a driving test. One of the criteria is to observe the rules of the Highway Code. If you follow this then you will drive correctly and the roads will be reasonably safe. But if you don’t then the chances are an accident will occur. So by the arguments of the anti religious crowd, would you then dispense with the rules and the Highway Code because someone didn’t follow the rules. No. So why is religion attacked in the same way?

After all to anyone who has studied history and military history in particular, such as myself, most wars occur due to several factor based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs – i.e the needs of shelter, consumables etc as well as the base human emotions of greed and jealousy. Religion (as well as nationalism and ideology) is merely an excuse to go to war. So by removing it, would the stupid fools not see that war and violence would simply use other excuses?

I mean, come on now, can’t anybody see that the latest excuse to going to war is now about Spreading Democracy? Democracy is the new religion for the neo-con warmongering dogs and they are anything but democratic. So stop blaming religion for the wars that have occurred – rather blame humanity for being a bunch of fuck-ups.

Even where so-called wars of religion have been fought, there has always been an element of land grabbing or materialism. Look at the Palestinian/Israeli situation – that’s about land. Northern Ireland – it’s about land. Essentially what I’m trying to explain is that all things being equal, if you have 2 countries side by side, both with adequate resources and thriving economies, and the only difference is religion, would there really be a war based on an abstraction? Whereas if one of the 2 countries had need of resources and was willing to go to war for it, then they would use religion to justify it – such as in the Crusades. So rather than picking an easy target to denigrate, try looking at your own goddamn faults. After all, if it wasn’t for religion, Humanity would not have got to where it is today. This is because religion allowed us to think in abstractions and thus set us on the path to culture – some of the first buildings ever erected were temples – and from temples grew cities.

It reminds me of the saying: a bad workman always blames his tools.

“War is the ultimate profession for the ultimate practitioner - man”
(Anon)