Is “Thou Shalt Not Kill” Optional ?

 General, Religion  No Responses »
Mar 202007
 

I do not understand Christians (and I guess this applies to some related religions too but I am thinking more of Christians here). They have all sorts of rules to live their lives by, but there is a “Big Ten” set. One of which is “Thou Shalt Not Kill”. Yet they will quite happily run around killing people (we’ll skip killing other things including animals for now … it is possible that the original words should be translated as ‘thou shalt not kill people’ or something).

Well, perhaps not happily except for the deranged, and this little piece is not about them. But given sufficient incentive … like ‘go out and kill these soldiers or we’ll put you up against a wall and kill you’. Now do not get me wrong, this is not a criticism of soldiers who have a job to do. Do not forget that I am not a Christian and I believe it is sometimes necessary to kill (preferably when sanctioned by society).

But Christians seem to behave that the rule is “thou shalt not kill unless it seems pretty important” and that is not what the commandment says.

History would have been a great deal less blood splattered if Christians had kept to that rule!

Fundamentalists Are The Enemy

 Politics, Religion  No Responses »
Sep 092006
 

There are many people today are worried about what fundamentalist moslems are up to with their suicide bombers, insistence on sharia law, and general intolerance. They are half right.

We don’t have to worry about muslims any more than we have to worry about christians, hindus, or buddhists. It is the fundamentalists that we should be worried about. Whatever religion they claim as their own, their real religion is fundamentalism. It is not enough for them to worship their god, but they want to impose their god on everyone else without regard to how impractical that is.

And the more extreme fundamentalists are prepared to go to almost any lengths to get to their goal … a world that only tolerates the worship of one god and has no tolerance for any diversity. They don’t recognise and are not capable of recognising that people of a different religeon can be worthy in any way or even have any right to exist.

Whether it is desireable or not, such a world cannot and will never exist because there are more than one kind of fundamentalist in the world, and some of us will not tolerate being told what god to worship. The only result a fundamentalist is capable of producing is ferrocious conflict between like-minded “nutters of god” who just happen to worship different gods.