I have finally decided that I do not believe in religion in any form. However, the debate as to whether a God of some kind exists is still open for debate.

Religion and Faith is simply too convenient of an excuse to murder, oppress and control large populations of people. I am not being narrow minded in this decision, it is the result of observation of modern events and historical fact.

Fact: Three Christian “Crusades” were fought in the name of God and with the permission of the Catholic Church. Though, the third crusade is debatable as to if it was really fought, or simply the act of enslaving groups of teenagers called to arms and the destruction of a single City (too many historical documents are missing, apparently).

Fact: Thousands of people were needlessly tortured and murdered under suspicion of being practitioners of witchcraft during the Spanish Inquisition.

Fact: Many more people, mostly women, were tortured and burned alive during the Salem witch trials, usually simply because they were disliked or new to a given town.

Fact: The Christian Catholic churches did not discourage early explorers of the Americas & Australia to hunt down and murder native people. Many encouraged it. After all, if they don’t believe in God then they are just Animals. “I claim this land for God and Spain.”

Fact: A later Roman Cesar decided to switch the state Religion to Christianity. Why? Because his popularity was waning, and found it would be a convenient way to control the population if he also controlled the Church. The exact details are a bit hazy to me, but it boils down to the fact that his administration for a few years hunted down and murdered Christians and their Priests. When the attrition of Priests had reduced them to a handful and the population was ripe, it was time to take over. And take over they did. It took a while and there was much hostility to the idea, but it was a genius long-term goal for controlling and oppressing the population for each Cesar that followed him.

Fact: Catholics and Protestants (basically two offshoots of the same faith) have been fighting over north Ireland for a good couple hundred years new. Let’s hear it for car bombs and small arms fire. At first it was not discouraged by ether church, but it ended up being expected by each church.

It is now currently frowned on and much progress has been made to quell the violence in that area. I guess they finally recognize that the current Churches do not hold as much political control as they once did in that area (thank goodness).

Fact: The Jewish people felt, and I admit this IS a generalization, they deserved to have their own country since Hitler’s goons slaughtered them like Cattle. They returned to a tiny postage stamp of land that they have always claimed as being the homeland of the Jewish people, only to oppress someone else who has been there for some time. The problem was, the Palestinians who were already there didn’t want to leave the home they had made over the course of a century or two.

As a result, the Palestinians decided it would be a good idea to blow themselves up, one by one, to show they don’t like being oppressed and forced out, all in the name of a documented Religious example and the promise of going directly to Heaven as an act of Martyrdom.

I know it is a simplification of the whole thing, but is it really that far from the mark? I still think it is moronic on both sides of the story. What right do the Jewish people in Israel have to force out people who have held that area as home for just as long a time as the Jewish people? Many Palestinians are probably descendants of ancient Jewish people!

My one overriding question to someone that has decided to blow themselves up as an act of martyrdom:

If the force of the blast is not strong enough to shatter the skull, turn the brain into pudding or render them unconscious before brain death occurs, will that individual realize how stupid the idea really was?

Also, how the heck can a KKK member truly justify his views and beliefs? If they are supposed “Good Christians”, how do they explain the fact that the individual they idolize, Jesus, was Jewish? Don’t they hate Jewish people as much as everybody else with some shade of color or level of industriousness? How exactly does that work?