When you look back over history, while much misery and death has been the result of conquest (Norman, Portuguese, Dutch, British) or assassination (World War I), the greatest harbinger of murder, misery and miscellaneous death has always been that in the name of religion.
Now I have always found this rather perverse. Because people causing death in the name of religion, I believe, have something fundamentally wrong with them. Committing gross acts of murder and violence because one group of people believe in something scientifically unprovable over another group of people believing in something different that is equally scientifically unprovable, is inexcusable.
Could you imagine justifying the killing of someone because they don't believe that in the 7th Century, raspberries were actually blue in colour. There is no proof either way! They are currently red. Because we can see them, buy them and eat them for ourselves. Now throw into the mix a demonstration where the group of 'Blue Raspberrians' take to the streets with placards demanding "death to all non-believers in blue-raspberries" and you can see how twisted religion can really be.
I have no problem with people believing in virgin births. I have no problem if people believe their marital sins and wife-cheating can be totally absolved by telling a celibate man in a box about it. If a science-fiction writer declares that we are descended from little green men following a nuclear explosion in a galaxy far, far away (having admitted that he started his 'religion' thinking it a great way to make money), ok. You're the fool believing it and parting with 10% of your income. If you class it as 'creation and work' to flick a light switch on at home on a Saturday, yet you feel a three-mile walk in the pouring rain and biting wind without an umbrella, to sit in your house of prayer soaking wet for three hours and then face an identical walk home is not hard work, then good luck to you. Providing you leave me alone, I do not care. You can believe that we are all descended form nettle soup for all I care, providing you leave me and my people alone!
Strange though it may seem, regardless which side of the fence you sit on regarding religion, the majority of people tend to be upstanding citizens who, unless they have opted-out of religion altogether as either atheists or agnostics, tend to follow one of the current 4,900+ religions in the world today. And as I have said, good luck to them. It is just a small minority of ignoramuses for whom nothing will divert them from their narrow-minded, closeted and bigoted view on the world and anyone who is different to them.
Perfect harbingers of this deluded form of racism are the likes of the Klu Klux Klan and other assorted lunatic right-wingers, Islamic fundamentalists, and a very hotch-potch mixture of some very confused and quite nasty nationalists and socialists throughout the world.
But ask these sick individuals why they hate Blacks, Jews, Muslims or 'non-believers' and infidels, and they really cannot answer you.
Because they don't actually know themselves.
Their fathers did likewise, as did their grandfathers and their great-great grandfathers before them. So it has become simply a family legacy to be hateful, bigoted and racist towards fellow human beings. To accept ill-informed invective passed down through successive generations. To be devoid of any academic, social or educated reason for hating a group that is different to that of your own.
In this day and age, it is inexcusable. And to use being a complete ignoramus, is not a viable excuse either.
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