Our Religious Beliefs Are Killing Us
And he gathered them together in a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon.
- Revelation, XVI: 16
A titanic collision of core religious beliefs is once again igniting the tinderbox of the Middle East, not only along
the borders of Israel, but throughout the entire region. Countries there seem poised to topple like deadly dominoes into
an armed conflict which is looking like the apocalyptic nightmare we have been fearing for centuries.
Some of the fundamentalist crazies among us are welcoming the confrontation as the fulfillment of Biblical prophesies
about the end of the world, which must unfold in a final and decisive war between the forces of good and the forces of
evil. The rest of us are waiting to see if sanity will prevail (something that seems less likely with each passing day),
so that more bloodshed and anguish will be prevented.
When religious core beliefs clash, disaster and death follow. In the present conflict we are witnessing, both sides
believe that their God is the true God -- and that, therefore, the other side is the "infidel" and must, according to
their holy scripture, be killed. Take a close look at the Bible and the Qur'an and you will see numerous injunctions to
kill those who do not uphold the "correct" concept of God. And to see just how deep these core religious beliefs can
run, recall what is happening in the Iraq civil war, where two branches of Islam, which we had thought was based on a
common religious belief, are torturing and murdering each other over minute distinctions of faith.
Religious core beliefs are incredibly powerful -- so powerful that they make us forget the most basic of human needs,
that of self-preservation. We rush into battle, swords waving above our heads, ready to kill and be killed in the name
of the loving creator of us all. It seems ridiculous, but it has been been happening, with devastating consequences, at
least since the advent, 4000 years ago, of the sky-god religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Many of us used to think that organized religion, if we didn't subscribe to it, was something we could ignore and go on
with our lives. But now we are seeing that religious zealots, guided by their "divinely inspired" scriptures, have
become a menace to those of us who want to live peaceful and fulfilling lives. The true believers in all three of the
Big Religions cannot be ignored any longer, because they are locked into a nihilistic course to destroy not only each
other, but us with them.
The time may be coming when, for the sake of the planet and all living things upon it, the humanistic sane will have to
somehow defuse the ticking timebombs of the religious insane. How we do it can be debated; whether it should be done
cannot.
This dangerous moment in history does not require of us to be polite, to be politically and religiously correct, but to
speak out against the deplorable state of affairs brought on by ignorant people blindly following dysfunctional faiths
that need the blood of the enemy to stay alive.
*************
Your comments: info@lifepathretreats. See also… http://www.lifepathretreats.com/