A Mel Gibson Moment

[e_dog]

religion and ethnicity are not synonymous.

at all.

Ethnic Jews can be atheist or unitarian or Buddhist or Christian, for that matter.

Hence, an ethnic Jewish state need not be a theocracy. that being so, and given that most so-called secular democracies like France and the US are really Christian theocracies in disguise (the old France, and the past and present US), to single out Israel as a theocracy is arbitrary bullshit.

all nationalism is basically pretty stupid, but why French nationalism or American assumed to be inherently better than religiously oriented nations?

i doubt that religion is identical to intolerance as Firsty claims. most Buddhists are rather tolerant.

the problem ain't religion, it's militarism including its capitalist-secular forms. religion's neither good nor bad. it is just a cultural form that can create fanatics but can also resist power too.

would the Indians have thrown off the British without spiritual inspiration?

Science creates or enables the worst fanaticism, the kind that leeds to blitzkrieg, extermination camps, and nuclear genocide (to cite the oh so irreligious politico-militarism of the Germans and the Americans).

[stilltrucking]

There are four million Palestinian refugees that can never go home again because it would be the end of the Jewish state. Not sure what has to do with anything but it is a problem.

[mnaz]

e dog, I agree that nationalistic militarism is the problem, over religion and/or ethnicity per se, and that the biggest aggressors (in the name of "security" or "freedom" or "spreading democracy", etc.) are tied to capitalist forms, if not entirely "secular" (getting less "secular" every day, it seems). However, don't underestimate why the Jews reclaimed the "holy land" to begin with.... a sense of religious entitlement, at least on some level, right? And don't underestimate the powerful "End Times" believers here in the States who keep Israel well-armed-- no questions asked, more often than not. Religion is intertwined in this pointless, endless vicious circle of militarism, it would seem.

[stilltrucking]

militarianism?????????
, just read the got dam bible
how many friggin slaughters and many military campaigns
it this some sort of intellectual debate we are having?

yes our god is a mighty smighty god
there were dead arabs to the left and dead arabs to the right
dead arabs in the dawn's early light.
Jose can you see?

[mnaz]

Yeah, I don't know how literally to read the wholesale genocide-land grab thing described in the book of Joshua and beyond.... you know, the slaughter of Canaanites and Samson slaying 100,000 Philistines with the jawbone of an ass and all that stuff.... but I know many take it quite literally as the "will of God", etc.

Yeah, it's that militant monotheistic thing. Inevitably, "God"-- pick a God, any God-- is overrun with too many well-connected chosen deputies running around enforcing profit-driven takes on "His Will", or pandering to believers to further their profit-driven takes. It comes and goes, but monotheism inevitably gets top-heavy, greedy, and impatient to remake and redivide the world. Yeah. Monotheism kills. Directly or indirectly. Repeatedly.

And, of course, monotheism saves. It giveth and taketh away. God works in mysterious ways.

[stilltrucking]

Well maybe monotheism was a step in the right direction
Now we should maybe take one step beyond

[firsty]

all wars are the fault of monotheism. monotheism is exactly when all this shit went right to shit.

god saves. religion kills. the path to peace is to burn all the churches.

[Arcadia]

to burn all the churches??. People of more than sixty years use to talk about it here from time to time.

[e_dog]

all wars are de fault o monotheism?

like the Peloponesian war?

preColombian wars b/t the Incas and their village tribe neighbors?

the path to peace is to shun all people who say the path to peace is to burn x.

[stilltrucking]

it's nobodies phault
it's asphault

Way more people alive now then have ever existed
More people killed in the wars of the past century than all the prvious war dead squared.

Monotheism had a large part to do with the western culture that started those wars.

you right e-dog
but firsty got a point
right now at this point in time
Monotheism and the religons that claim to be the true faith
got a lot to do with this brewing shit storm

[e_dog]

in the end, religion could be the one thing that prevents someone from nuking the region.

or that causes it. who knows!