Religious wars

Submitted by Janusz Kowalik (United States), May 26, 2009 at 21:06

Peter Herz is telling us that even without religions people would have other reasons for hatred and wars.This argument is a bit like arguing that :let us kill each other because even if we do not do so many of us would die of cancer anyway. But the main fault of every religion is not that it generates hate and justification for wars.The main problem with all Abrahamic religions is that they divert people attention from life on earth to an existence after death.

This makes it very rational to commit jihad suicide killing thousands of infidels and be rewarded by something much more important ,the eternal paradise. Of course, not every believer is so extreme in interpreting Holy Books but religious irrationality can easily become a basis of murder and criminal behavior. Peter also says that the Jewish hate of Muslims is justfied by the Islamic principles calling for the destruction of Israel.

I would like to remind Peter that the Holy book of Jews called by Christians The Old Testament contains horror stories of the ancient Jews destroying and murdering the entire tribes living in the territories of the land now called Palestine.Some of these people are called in the bible the Anaanites . The Holy Jewish books tell us that God proclaimed Jews as a choosen tribe and promised them a land .Unfortunately for Jews and their neighbors the land was already populated so the only way to fulfill God's wonderful promise was to mass murder Anaanites and others. Many centuries later the Nazi chief leader Hitler in his book Mein Kampf followed a similar idea. He maintained that the Germanic race is superior and need more lebensraum ( living space).

Finally I wish to respond to Peter's comments on the Enlightenment project. by which I assume he means the 18th Century intellectual ideas that created fundamental human rights , and put reason above religious fantasies. Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine and a Frenchman Voltaire were products of Enlightenment .Modern concepts of human rights and freedoms are deeply rooted in Enlightenment.We can say that America is one of the key results of this intellectual movement. If the Christian church had its way we would still have slavery. After all human slavery is justified in the bible. In the bible we can find instructions how to beat slaves and how they should be obedient.

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