Religious Wars Are The Devil's Work

I truly do not understand why the followers of the major Western religions are so thin-skinned. Nor do I understand why they claim to be religions of peace. Regardless of what the Prophets or Jesus may (or may not) have written or said, there is little in their behavior, either recently or historically, that would confirm that they are anything but warlike in the extreme.

Muslims "civilized" Northern Africa, parts of the Middle East and the Iberian Peninsula at sword’s point. The followers of the Prince of Peace chased them out of Spain, attempted to evict them from the Holy Land by force, and generally raised hell throughout the northern part of the Muslim countries for hundreds of years.

On other fronts, Christians saved the souls of the Indios of the Americas and, in a massive genocide just as effective — if rather less-publicized — than that of the Nazis, stole roughly 1/3 the land area of the planet from its previous tenants. Several million of those saved souls were released to their maker during that period of spreading God’s Word. The British spread their peaceful religion throughout the far east, Australia, and the Indian sub-continent, and the depredations of the various European nations in Africa are well-known.

Islam established itself in much of Asia and Africa in similar fashion, but with its spread facilitated even more by the precedence of the hated Christians. And, of course, the Israelis have been keeping things stirred up in the Middle East as clients of the United States for the past sixty years, their forebears famous for ravening the Middle East millennia before.

When it comes to wars, no one has the moral high ground, save from a relativistic point of view, and even then the facts must be bent grotesquely in order to accommodate claims to any rational system of ethics. Wars are always about economics, regardless of the excuses given the rank and file — who would be loathe to die if they understood the real reasons.

With the possible exception of the Buddhists (who haven't been looking so good lately themselves) all the major religions have filthy hands at one time or another in their histories. It matters not what their founders said, wrote, intended or wanted. Those are the facts, recorded by historians and pounded into the blood-sodden ground beneath the believers’ feet. The remaining questions are, how much more killing and mayhem will take place in the names of those founders? When will the cannon-fodder wake up to the depravities in which they are being encouraged by those taking advantage of their faith and ignorance? How many more will die for the wrong reasons?

My guess is a whole bunch, because those who control the information do not adhere to the beliefs they claim to espouse. Many, if not most, leaders give lip service to religious, moral and ethical imperatives while using the power of their positions for political ends, but even after picking and choosing their scriptures, they are unable or unwilling to adhere to the precepts of the founders.

The numbers of believers who try to live peaceful lives number in the many millions, because most people just want to be left alone. But the leaders — about four percent of the world’s population are sociopaths, by most estimates, and many of them become politicians, soldiers and tycoons, driven by the high levels of stimulation and excitement that they crave. (As Holmes said, "The game's afoot!") There may not actually be anything we can do about that, but calling a spade a spade doesn't hurt.

In any case, as far as religious ideals go, accusations on any side are so patently a case of the pot calling the kettle black that you’d think everyone would just laugh and get back to the business of destroying the world.

But wait — keeping things stirred up is part of their business (and certainly the Devil’s work, no matter how one perceives him).