Today I read an article by one who once was training to be a priest.
Alex Mooney says:
There are no gods, no heaven, no hell, no miracles. There never has been. There never will be. This is way beyond reasonable doubt now.
There is not one shred of evidence anywhere to prove the existence of a supernatural entity.
Yesterday I read two articles. In the first people are fleeing Christian militia.
Christian vigilantes wielding machetes have killed scores of Muslims, who are a minority here, and burned and looted their houses and mosques in recent days, …
In the second article, Boko Haram have killed an estimated 2,000.
… a senior government official in Borno, said Boko Haram killed more than 2,000 people which, if true, would mean the group equaled its total kill count last year in one attack.
All this death over religion. Over othering. Where is the western outrage over these deaths?
I accept that people believe in some almighty creator. I don’t understand it, but I accept it.
Believe if you like – just stop the killing!
I also recognise that if there were no religions, fanatics would simply find something else to be fanatical about. I’m not convinced no religions would solve the problem.
I’ve also heard it said something along the lines of “religions don’t kill people, people kill people”. That is a line the American gun lobby like to use too: “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”
I have no solution, I just wish the killing would stop! Do we have so many fanatics because of some environmental damage we’ve done?
Random Observations of Life 
Believe me, there are also religionists of all stripes who “bask in the glory of self-assessed superiority” – and that’s often what gives rise to the violence in question. It is part and parcel of the human condition. Renée Girard, an anthropologist, did some excellent work on mimetic theory and the way religion becomes a vehicle for scapegoating the “other.” Power hungry tyrants use this phenomenon to their advantage, often with great subtlety. Compassion and empathetic appreciation of the “other” negates such scapegoating.
This is where I see some hope in the “I’ll ride with you” and, to a lesser degree, the “je suis Charlie ” responses (better would be “Nous sommes Charlie et Ahmed”). They go part way to raising a conscious response that is not just polarised violent reaction. They subvert the radical aim of creating and justifying so-called sanctified animosity that perpetuates a cycle of violence.
But how to tackle the necessary awareness raising and education on a world scale? I think we can only continue from where we are and refuse to be overwhelmed.
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Have you seen this? I thought you might find it interesting.
http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/804/8206.htm
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Thanks, I had not come across Abdennour Bidar – hopefully a powerful voice that can be heard where it counts. Just as the unexamined life is hardly worth living, neither is the unexamined belief system. His critique of Islam could well be applied across other belief systems (incluiding my own) whose worthy contributions to the common good have become crystalised and bogged down in mindless (and heartless) dogma. He lays a heavy burden on the more aware within those systems, but that’s the nature of the struggle.
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I am glad you liked it. There was another writer I’ve quoted somewhere who said Islam is not meant to be frozen in time, also a good writer. I will try to find it tomorrow.
Yes, too many humans of many “schools of thought” bask in their own self-assesed glory! As you say, the human condition. What we need is a cure! 40 mg a day……
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I, a theist, ask similar questions. I cannot abide a faith that won’t face it’s own dark ambiguity and that allows fear and hate to trump the compassion that I believe is at the pinnacle to which all faiths, at their best, aspire.
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I often think it much be much harder for theists. Atheists, we can “bask in the glory of our self-assessed superiority” of being non-believers, but REALLY these acts are part of the human condition, religion is merely the vehicle used to justify abhorrent acts.
The bigger question humanity faces is how to detect and manage the people before they become radical and a danger.
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