© www.dawn.comBlasphemy: the accused
Is this only true to Islam or are there similarities at work in other religious systems as well? Let's look at recent events to illustrate the concern:
Blasphemy: Utter-ly a Death's Sentence
a horror story...
Christians beaten to death for allegedly desecrating Qur'an in Pakistanand this one is unthinkable...
An angry crowd attacked and killed a Christian couple and then burned their bodies at the brick kiln where they worked. Rumors circulated that the couple had desecrated a Qur'an the day before, although the circumstances of this accusation are not clear [...] the latest example of violence against minorities accused of blasphemy...
Girl saw her mother burn alive for blasphemy in Pakistan...and then the mob tried to set HER alight as welland then this crazed old guy...
A four-year-old girl and her 18-month-old sister were forced to watch their pregnant Christian mother 'twitch' in the flames when a Muslim mob burnt her and her husband alive after accusing them of blasphemy and were savagely beaten...
A 70-year-old Briton suffering from paranoid schizophrenia is facing a death sentence in Pakistan
When Mohammad Asghar claimed to be a prophet sent by God, his psychosis talking, a police officer at the maximum security prison shot him in the back because he had to "kill the blasphemer..."
© www.thecommentator.comFreedom of speech or blasphemy...depends on where you are from and what you believe.
Historically, literal interpretation of the Qur'an has often led to mass conflict, massacre or genocide over the centuries, as it encountered other ideologies, such as Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism and Buddhism. It is said that violence is so ingrained in the religion that Islam has never really stopped being at war, either with other religions or itself. It shuns self-examination and brutally eliminates criticism. Predictably, we find similar profiles in all the major religions.
We're good, they're bad...some perspective!
Critics of religion opine that all monotheistic religions are inherently violent and claim Judaism, Christianity and Islam will destroy the world unless they confront the violence in sacred texts and temper the message. This is unlikely. Jews and Christians are myopically self-convinced Islam is the only violent religion, ignoring the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible's 1000 passages that refer to YHWH as acting violently or supporting the violence of humans, and over 100 passages that involve divine commands to kill humans.
So with that in mind, let's take a quick peek at a bit of the ongoing shadow histories of three "peaceful, god-fearing/loving" mega-religions that have influenced most of humanity in one way or another, and perhaps see the repetitive pattern of the hidden hand.
Jewish Terrorism: There are strains of radical Zionism (a pathological and secular construct) and Zealotry (known as the "4th Sect") that promote aggressive wars and falsely justify them with biblical texts. Examples, of violence described in the Book of Esther, are carried over to modern times as in the Cave of the Patriarch massacre (1994), the ongoing violent and heinous treatment of the Palestinians by Zionists, and the Jewish militias that used verses to justify massacres, such as Deir Yassin. The Kingdom of Israel group (Tzrifin Underground) carried out attacks on the diplomatic facilities of the USSR and Czechoslovakia, shot at Jordanian troops and tried to bomb the Israeli Ministry of Education. Brit HaKanaim (Covenant of the Zealots) was a radical religious Jewish underground organization which fought against the widespread trend of secularization . The ultimate goal of the movement was to impose Jewish religious law in the State of Israel and establish a Halakhic state.
Radical Zionist ideology encourages the killing of non-Jews and claims it is legal to kill Gentiles and the babies of enemy forces (as is happening today in Gaza). The Jewish Defense League (JDL) began with the purpose to protect Jews from harassment and antisemitism, but over time, the league perpetrated at least 15 terrorist acts in the U.S. verified by the FBI.
Christian Terrorism: Christian terrorists have relied on scriptural interpretations of the Old and New Testaments to justify violence and killing or to bring about "end times." Christian views on abortion have been responsible for threatening, assaulting and murdering doctors, and bombing abortion clinics. The idea that North European whites are direct descendants of the lost tribes of Israel has spawned The Aryan Nations, Aryan Republican Army, Army of God, Phineas Priesthood and The Covenant, The Sword, the Arm of the Lord and the Hutaree Christian Militia movement. The Soweto bombings of 2002 were an outcome a violent racial-religious belief system which asserted a "God-given right to rule the nation" and suggested that the bombings were "the beginning of the end" of the African National Congress. And, not to leave out two of the all-time worst: we have the Holocaust and the Spanish Inquisition.
Of infamous religious militant terrorist organizations, the Ku Klux Klan is still in action. Arson, beatings, cross burnings, destruction of property, lynching, murder, rape, tar-and-feathering, and whipping are on its menu. Its targets are African Americans, Jews, Catholics along with other social or ethnic minorities. The KKK terrorist ideology is based on a religious foundation in Christianity to reestablish Protestant values by any means possible. They are renown for vigilante justice.
National Liberation Front of Tripura is a Christian militant organization in India, whose violence is motivated by religious beliefs. It aims the forced conversion of all Hindu tribespeople; those who resist are killed or raped. A Baptist church supplies arms and gives financial support to the group.
Lebanon: Maronite Christian militias perpetrated massacres of Palestinians and Lebanese Muslims during Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war. The 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre was considered genocide by the U.N. General Assembly.
Uganda: The Lord's Resistance Army, a religious cult and guerrilla army, is responsible for committing crimes such as: massacres, abductions, mutilation, torture, rape, using forced child laborers as soldiers, porters and sex slaves.
Buddhist Terrorism: Buddhist barbarity and torture in Asia lasted 1600 years. Justification for violence comes from the Mahayana Chinese version of the Mahaparinirvana Sutra,Upayakaushalya Sutra, and the Kalachakra Tantra. In Thailand, killing of Communists did not violate any of the Buddhist precepts. In Myanmar and Burma, Buddhist religious aggression centers on persecution and extermination of Muslims in an anti-Islamic national movement. Buddhist violence reached contemporary prominence in June 2012 when over 200 Muslims were killed and 100,000 displaced. The 969 Movement refers to numbers associated with the Buddha, his teachings and monkhood. As of 2012, the 969 helped create anti-islamic nationalist movements in the region resulting in the persecution and extermination of Muslims.So, you see, while we consider a religious bias underlying Pakistani injustice for relatively innocent victims, the religious foundation for violence is widespread and deeply ingrained, suggesting a common pattern, common vector and common origin. Let's explore.
Buddhists gained a reputation in Japan via a long history of feuds and the rise of the "warrior monks." In Osaka, they defended their temple with the slogan "The mercy of Buddha should be recompensed even by pounding flesh to pieces. One's obligation to the Teacher should be recompensed even by smashing bones to bits." Japanese Buddhist-inspired terrorism was responsible for the Aum Shinrikyo, the organization that unleashed Sarin gas into the Tokyo subway, killed 13 and injured 50 based on Buddhist ideas and scriptures. The religious justification for Aum Shinrikyo's use of violence was connected to the Buddhist rationalizations of taking the lives of "less spiritually advanced" beings, and that killing a person "in danger of accumulating bad karma in this life was to save them in the next life," thereby advancing them toward salvation.
Religion is a "psychopath machine"
Ideology is a pathology of the mind, a memetic virus that shields the mind from rational debate. Once the emotional reward centers are gratified it then discards true information that did not fit the emotional bias.
There is a definite connection between psychopathy and religion. What psychopaths apparently discovered in the past is that they can make much of the world "psychopath friendly" and one way in which they did this was by inventing and promoting various religions. We can define [psychopaths] as "anti-human" beings [belonging to a different gene pool]. They do whatever they can to thwart the progress of humanity and that is a large part of their motivation for creating religion.As a control-based system, a faith structure divides "what is in" from "what is out" and reinforces dependency on, and fidelity and obedience to, this framework. "Successful religionry" consists of a compelling narrative, implicit directives from the ethereal realm, along with divine and inherent truths. Religions, by their very nature, incorporate "notions of sacrifice and martyrdom" which are so integral that without them any religious concept would be almost unthinkable. This includes the example of a sacrificial hero archetype found in, or as the basis of, both major and minor religions.
Religion is not representative of the true natural human thought process - it is a distortion of that. We can say that in essence what religion actually is, is a "psychopath machine." It destroys the human mind and was indeed designed to do just that. Religion contains elements of psychopathic thought in it which cause normal people to become [border-line] psychopaths if they are not already so. This is not a phenomenon of one religion, but of all religion.
Believers are dumbed-down and kept ignorant. Ignorance and superstition go hand-in-hand. In order to preserve, protect or keep that belief in things which really do not make any real sense, the human mind must be kept down to a certain degree of ignorance. They have found religion to be one of the greatest means in which to do this. Many believers simply choose to ignore anything which contradicts what they believe - they just do not let that information enter their mind; it is like they have built a shell or wall around it. This is not natural and is very dangerous. - Roman Piso, Psychopathy and Religion
Concepts and perceptions morph into beliefs that limit and separate mankind from its true existence and destiny. Beliefs foster interpretations that are identified experientially as guidelines for actions. Under the holy cloak, man is unwittingly subjugated by, and made dependent upon, his beliefs. This opens the door for all kinds of evil in the guises of benevolence, sacred duty, proselytization, etc., without suspect or introspection to its motives by the followers. To be "good" is to submit unquestioningly. (Isn't that convenient!)
But man's resourcefulness goes beyond simply protecting a belief. Suppose an individual believes something with his whole heart; suppose further that he has a commitment to this belief, that he has taken irrevocable actions because of it; finally, suppose that he is presented with evidence, unequivocal and undeniable evidence, that his belief is wrong: what will happen? The individual will frequently emerge, not only unshaken, but even more convinced of the truth of his beliefs than ever before. Indeed, he may even show a new fervor about convincing and converting other people to his view. - Leon Festinger, When Prophecy FailsBeliefs are not knowledge, nor based therein. They might be considered as unifying ideas of the collective. Mainstream religion is not created to enhance consciousness nor further the soul journey of the supplicant. By offering predefined perceptions, it mandatorily short-circuits an individual's quest for enlightenment (knowledge). In a broader and more insidious sense, we discover a form of "sleeping sickness" and pathological mind control.
Religious legitimacy, on the big stage, can only be guaranteed by achieving a critical mass: the unified and exclusive acceptance by followers, unequivocal defendability of its principles and the attraction of converts. Here are two well-traveled and opposite trajectories to the same end:
The West has adopted "an ascending theory of legitimacy," in which "power" appears to come from the choice of the people thus giving them a "right" or "resistance" which is very manipulable by hidden agendas (a perception control). The people choose their religious master.
In contrast, religious legitimacy in the East can be used to justify actions that might otherwise be unthinkable, (such as mass suicide, mass murder, attacks on unarmed civilians) and comes from "a descending theory of legitimacy" in which power is handed down from God to the rulers (divine right) and, accordingly, people have "no right or resistance and no power." In other words, they must accept with blind faith (a perception control). Their religious master has chosen them.
We don't have to imagine the pitting of these two vectors against each other, just read the headlines. Keep in mind the question, "Who benefits?"
When does a religion become an ideology?
"A religion becomes an ideology when the followers of the religion cannot tolerate the existence of those who have different views or beliefs, and when they understand their religious text literally and refuse to accept any way of understanding the religion other than their own way of understanding."So to put this into context, transcendent moral truths are never the content of an ideology, as they are over and above society. However, ritual, dogmatic and historical aspects of a religion are acceptable, in that it fosters sacred obligations. In Islam, the obligation to wage jihad can be the highest obligation of a Muslim and measures all actions in terms of the extent to which this obligation is carried out. The doctrine of the Jews as the "chosen people" is also an ideology. Because the ideology is processed at the subconscious and emotional levels of the brain, it is almost impossible to change.
-Tawfik Hamid, author and Senior Fellow and Chair of Islamic Radicalism, Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, former Islamic terrorist with Jemaah Islamiya
"A religion becomes an ideology when man-made dogma is treated as infallible truth."
-David Satter, author and Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute and scholar at Johns Hopkins University Nitze School of Advanced International Studies
Ideologies are very useful tools. A religion becomes an ideology when its man-made elements become a fixed idea and permeate into other realms of power and control such as: politics, justice, finance, business and societal constructs.
Here's an example of how the corruption of justice, coupled with the radicalization of religion and ideology, facilitated a covert CIA agenda that produced the Pakistan we recognize today:If it is worship, it is a religion. If it is used as a society control, for political gain or dominance, it is an ideology. Islam is perhaps the most equally integrated with both.
General Zia ul-Haq took control of Pakistan in 1977, ousting Prime Minister Zulfickar Ali Bhutto in a "bloodless coup." In the early '80s, he "Islamicized" the existing blasphemy laws and the Federal Shariat Court of Pakistan made the death penalty obligatory. Zia changed Pakistan into a self-authored version of the Islamic State, which gave rise to the Taliban (thanks to Uncle Sam). Despite his radical view of Islam, Zia forged close ties with the U.S., became a CIA asset and was listed by Interpol as an international drug trafficker. (Drug trafficking and radical Islam? Where have we heard that before?)
Perhaps not so coincidentally, the CIA's Operation Cyclone, which saw the CIA arming, funding and radicalizing the mujahideen in Afghanistan, occurred during the period of 1979-1989. Were there similar ties to Zia's Pakistan? Yes. In the '80s, Pakistan facilitated covert CIA weapons shipments to Afghanistan that would return loaded with freshly processed heroin, protected by Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI. Zia moved his drug money through BCCI, a bank with numerous shady connections, including the Israeli Mossad.
So, what is fundamentalism?
Fundamentalism is a mindset, a paradigm embodied in certain "near-divine" individuals and movements, which provides an exo-skeletal strategy by which "beleaguered believers may preserve their distinctive identity as a people or group. Feeling this identity to be continually at risk, they fortify it by a selective retrieval of doctrines, beliefs and practices from a 'sacred' past. These retrieved 'fundamentals' are refined, modified and sanctioned in a spirit of shrewd pragmatism: they are to serve as a bulwark against the encroachment of outsiders who threaten to draw the believers into a syncretistic, areligious, or irreligious cultural milieu."Based on this, it is not a surprise that the rhetoric of war and intolerance becomes an integral part of most religious traditions. Fundamentalism proves to be a successful, fear-based, mind-locking and useful end product of a hidden psychopathic process, which is why the CIA has been able to successfully use it as a recruiting tool for its proxy warfare "strategy of tension" (to divide, manipulate, and control public opinion using fear, propaganda, disinformation, psychological warfare, agents provocateurs, and false flag terrorist actions in order to achieve their strategic aims).
- [Hardacre, 1993; Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby (The Fundamentalism Project), 1993:5-7] excerpt from Ethnoreligious Conflict in the Late Twentieth Century, Jonathan Fox, p. 22-23.
Religion as an apparatus of social control
In order to protect and re-enforce the religious community, the differences between insiders and outsiders must be observable and maintained. Rules and standards emphasize the "proper modes" of behavior that must be adopted in private life to successfully build distinctions between "us and them." In Pakistan, they include the misuse of the political system to force these standards on others and they work brilliantly on the most basic level to achieve the highest result, as in accusations of blasphemy, followed by the elimination of the "other." In this sense, the religious construct becomes organism-like with predatory survival instincts, even if it must turn on some of its own members... a deviant's way to divide and conquer (and pathological in nature).
"Religion and ethnicity are often overlapped and intertwined." Gurr argues that "in essence, communal (ethnic) groups are 'psychological communities.' These are groups whose core members share a distinctive and enduring collective identity based on [similar] cultural traits and life-ways, [...] reinforcing traits that set a group apart in its own eyes or in the eyes of others" (control perceptions, gain perception control).Because of this, Christian minorities in the Middle East are generally indistinguishable from the region's Muslim population other than by religious affiliation. To suppress or stamp out minorities from Islam (in order to protect and perpetuate the Islamic machine), there must be a telltale religious commandment breach by the infidel, punishable by death.
- [Ted Gurr, (Minorities at Risk project)1993a:152-1553] excerpt from Ethnoreligious Conflict in the Late Twentieth Century, Jonathan Fox, p. 25.
The global picture
As per the PewResearch Religion & Public Life Project, the world's two largest faiths, Christianity and Islam, make up almost half of the world's population and were the most widely targeted in 2012, facing official and social hostility in 110 and 109 countries respectively. Jews were targeted in 71 countries. Over a six-year period: Christians - 151 countries, Muslims - 135 countries, Jews - 95 countries. (Does this tell us something about the ongoing grand distraction of mankind and its unwavering subservience to irrational religious ideals? Where's the love? Better yet... what's the reason?)
"In ponerogenic processes, moral deficiencies, intellectual failings, and pathological factors intersect in a time-space causative network giving rise to individual and national suffering." - Andrew M. Lobaczewski, Political PonerologyWith global populations on the increase, it is easy to miss the rise to power of psychopaths and their quest for physical and political domination, accomplished outright, in part, through the structures and veils of religion, ideologies, perceptions and gullible congregations. In addition, mainstream societies currently do not offer the checks-and-balances, utilized by tribal societies,* that would limit their bid for control. Instead, psychopathy is on the upswing by consolidating power and manipulating the unsuspecting masses for personal gain, devoid of moral context or constraint.
*- Christopher Boehm, Moral Origins: The Evolution of Virtue, Altruism, and Shame
Inflicting pain, violating rights and acts of terror do not register in the brain-work of a psychopath. They do not have an emotional center that monitors right and wrong when they observe or inflict harm on others. Religious conformity and its sacred demands become "turf advantage" for psychopathy, given such manipulative affects and constraints on the non-psychopathic populace as in "turn the other cheek" or "kill the infidel."
"While approximately 6% of the world's population are born psychopaths, there is a significant percentage of border-line humans that experience an emotional deficiency that keeps them from feeling bad about hurting others, or who have been traumatized early in life that causes them to become this way. With more than 7 billion people on the planet means there are as many as 70,000,000 psychopaths alive today, whose self interests, greed and risk-taking tendencies dominate or subjugate those around them through manipulative means." - Joe Brewer, Common DreamsThe upshot
In many nations, fundamentalist religion and ideology supersedes the state to an extent that it is incompatible with a modern, liberal society. By pathological design, ignorance leaves an "opening for interpretation" to the advantage and utilization of psychopaths. Therefore, when a religion that allows radical interpretation is given undue credence, psychopaths and authoritarian followers, who would not otherwise have a political or social context to behave badly, are conveniently and subversively provided one.
A personal insult is, well, insulting. Add a religious reference and it becomes a "divine insult" - a unifying and obligatory mandate for retribution that cannot be ignored. Following the prescribed psychopathic pattern for a Muslim: To ignore is to disrespect. To disrespect, or abstain from participating, is akin to a death wish (a perception control). In Pakistan, if the mountain won't come to Muhammad, simply claim "they blasphemed."
See also:
The Psychopath: A New Subspecies of Homo Sapiens
Psychopathic Kyriarchy - Our Rulers Really Are Unempathic Predators
Psychopathy and Religion
The Lunacy of International Blasphemy Laws
Child sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church
Political Ponerology: The Scientific Study of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes, Andrew M. Lobaczewski
Reader Comments
. . . Thank you.
Am I missing something or is the reference to the common dreams text quote which states that 70 million psycopaths represent the 6% of potential psycopaths out of 7 billion right out to lunch?
7 000 000 000 x .06 = 420 000 000
Whereas 70 million represents just one percent of the estimates global population. It occurs to me that any argument which uses statistics ought to have its basic arithmetic figured out, lest it's credibility be denied due to a simple accounting error.
Not that I disagree with anything else in the article, that math bit just sort of stuck in my craw. Interesting to consider that if the statistical 6% is true, then a population a fifth larger than the US's might be clinical psycopaths.
. . .but it was an empty thing, who actually knows how 'many' 420 million of anything might actually be, in everyday terms ? ?
Then I thought that I live in a city of a million people, so 420 cities just like this one - except- every single inhabitant was is a psychopath.
One of the truly sobering thoughts of my life . . .
Monotheistic, polytheistic, who's counting? If you really need a rule book to stop you thieving, killing, raping, and generally screwing people over, you've got a problem that obviously is not going to be solved by whacky interpretations of smelly old books.
Joe Brewer's math "error" may actually be close to reality: "...70,000,000 psychopaths alive today, whose self interests, greed and risk-taking tendencies dominate or subjugate those around them through manipulative means."
He is, not very clearly apparently, saying that 1% of the 6% have FOUND the means and methods to exploit the rest of humanity. The rest (5%) have the capability when they find, make or are given the opportunity. Muslim ideology and religious dictates, in particular, easily offer up these sorts of scenarios for the common man (i.e.: blasphemy) up to the PTB, as do religious constructs in general.
I think he just missed his maths up.
capitalism, neoliberalism and other idoelogies all have religious characteristics now and would also qualify as being psychopathic by this analysis.
I have seen the numbers re psychopaths before and they are pretty accurate - and frightening.
Also they closely map in proportion to religious, political and capitalist authority figures/managers et al (careerists etc)
Let's not forget that one. While Islam provides ready examples today because adherents of its worst excesses have been encouraged to do so by paymasters in the West, the judeo-christian beliefs underpinning Western rationalism ('Big Bang' = 'Genesis', 'uniformitarian universe' = 'God is in Heaven and all is right with the world', 'time is linear, and all tends upwards towards progress' = 'heaven awaits in the afterlife') are every bit as insane and destructive in their results.
The 'Big Bang' is a creation myth like God's 7 days of work to create the world 'from nothing'.
Catastrophism - the study of recurring cataclysms, particularly concerning the collapse of civilizations - is 'denied' (sorry to use that term, but Establishment Science uses it all the time!) at every turn in reports about meteor fireballs, asteroids and comets. This means life here on Earth is only stable periodically: environmental upheaval is just as historically and geologically prevalent.
Then the notion that time is linear, and concurrently that civilization tends only towards progress, towards betterment, is belied by the fact that things are getting worse, that, if anything, everything tends towards entropy. We have religion to thank for this too: everyone looks forward to a future 'certain point in time' in which either He will return to save us, or we will be lifted up to Heaven. The myth of uniformitarian progress, where everything was always worse in the past, is the illusion that time is linear.
The sum result of 'rational science' today is a technologically competent - but morally empty - mechanized and global police state on a permanent war footing against Nature.
Just do a little bit of Googling and leave your assumptions at the door, and it will become quite obvious.
"Science is not so much about knowledge as doubt. Never in the field of human inquiry have so many known so little about so much.
Why is this? The answer, I think, is that those who are scientists, or who pretend to be scientists, cling to the mantle of a kind of religious authority. And as anyone who has tried to comment on religion has discovered, there is no such thing as criticism. There is only blasphemy."
_ttp://www.theguardian.com/science/occams-corner/2013/sep/19/science-religion-not-be-questioned
Good article for the context with which it puts these things, but still toeing the mainstream line nonetheless. Take it with a pinch of salt.
Psychopaths are correctly identified as the real problem, but it is important to differentiate weaponised religion from true religion. The weaponised version is more akin with politics, being a set of fixed ideas that must be upheld in order to be recognised by the group and admitted as a member. There is a group mentality which is equally identifiable in mobs, and the rigidity of ideology is strenuously enforced. This is the genesis of insanity.
The big error is in failing to see that religious philosophy and religious practice are polar opposites in many ways. It can be postulated that religious practice came into being partly as a way of conveying abstract concepts to ignorant peasants, partly as a way to protect the group in a dangerous world by enabling easy identification of enemies (the concept of the shibboleth).
Religious philosophy is the real substance of any religious group and is remarkably uniform across the boards. Notably, Judaism was the basis of Christianity, and Islam was founded on the same basic principles. The chief differences are cultural rather than ethical or ideological.
The slant of the article appears to suggest that all religion is basically the same, all based on devious scheming of its leaders. That is a misidentification. There is no question that the fundamental of all genuine religions is the idea that Man is not just a physical animal, but that there is an inner spark of self-awareness that is the true self. You can maybe recall images or sounds in your mind. Who is looking or listening to them? That is you. Call yourself the spirit, the soul, or any of dozens of names. That is the one constant of religion. It is the source of love, compassion, creativity, all the things the social person most prizes in life. It is not complicated or mystical. It is just you, the individual personality.
This idea in various forms is common to all religious faiths. Faith at its most genuine is not "faith in" something, but being faith. Maybe a tricky concept, but that is what it is. Faith is properly not a hanging onto someone, something or their ideas. It is generated from one's self and cannot be qualified or limited by any other. What is true for you is only what you have observed for yourself. Without that, you are lost.
The idea of "faith in" something is clearly a construct of the aforementioned psychopaths, who found that religion, as a fundamental understanding of the world and universe, was an extremely powerful thing. They sought to leech off this power as a way of subjugating the rest of the population, who were seen as a clear and present danger in their demented little minds. They infiltrated the trusting groups and perverted their teachings. They set themselves up as the source of teaching and as judges of the people. But read between the lines of any of the scriptures, and you will see truth, if you know how to read it. If you know only war or hatred, likewise you will find that.
And so we have the present-day situation, where politicians rule both the religious and secular domains, and where countries and religions fight each other over the top of the wishes of most of their members.
The problem is not religion, but psychopaths and the failure to recognise and banish them. Religion is correctly an understanding of who and what we are, and the nature of the universe. In centuries past it was the overarching field that contained the arts, the sciences, medicine, philosophy and learning at times when the greatest progress was being made in civilisation. To divorce these fields will be seen to be a nonsensical idea. The world must be understood as a wholeness, not as any number of mutually exclusive cults.
We have a long way to go. But first, boot out the psychos!
Karyn, you forgot to mention the super-turbo-spiritual-practice of circumcision. It doesn't get more holier-than-thou than children genital mutilation. That right there is the essence of religious purity.
Many links in the article, mainly those linking to reference books are not working.
Other than that, another great article!
and having just reviewed it again, if missed, it is of timeless importance and an excellent read. With world affairs such that they are, elections in many countries looming, new government "bills" presented and being rolled off the presses that further erode, increasing religious posturing and alignments, racism and brutality on every city block being perpetrated from the ends of batons, tasers and guns, geopolitical madness from the interconnected empire of chaos - pipers piping a tune to the ears of the authoritarian followers who will acquiesce at every turn or, do their dirty work, which is echoed day after day in the MSN, it all looks pretty grim.
In religious and ideological context, in the hands of psychopaths in power who are bleating to the universe of being "right", sheesh, what a mess we find ourselves in. Is it any wonder that there is a cosmic human connection [Link] and the time certainly seems nigh as a response - as above so below.