I'm reading a series of novels at present where the main themes are terrorism and sectarian violence.
The protagonist is Israeli so a lot of the stories deal with Jewish vs Moslem conflict, particularly in dealing with ISIS fanatics and their campaign against Israel and Western countries. Covered also is the conflict between Israel and Palestine, Iran vs Arab nations, Sunni vs Shiite Islam and other inter-Arab wars along with, of course the Irish sectarian 'troubles'.
The writer, Daniel Silva has an in-depth understanding of these having worked for many years as a journalist in USA and the Middle East. For Robert's interest he is, or was, a Catholic. He goes into detail about the characters and the conflicts while maintaining very readable thriller plots. It's not thin sketching like Dan Brown's rubbish. There are many social, cultural and political reasons and centuries of history to explain the Irish 'troubles', the rise of the Moslem Brotherhood, al Qaeda and ISIS but I can't help feeling that if the silly religious nonsense could be removed then the social and political issues between the opposition parties could be resolved from sensible debate and negotiation. Yes, yes I know that this isn't happening in the Russia/Ukraine war but that is definitely economic based with Russia feeling the squeeze as a result of Ukraine's oil discoveries and restriction of gas pipeline access to the West. The political, cultural and social issues are used as a smokescreen for the basic fact that Russia wants to bully and rob Ukraine.
The silliness of the religious conflicts is what I want to discuss here.There can be no resolution to the Irish situation, the Israel-Palestine conflict, Moslem extremism vs Western democracy and Christianity until fatuous religious tenets are put aside. Unfortunately these are endemic in a too great a percentage of populations and cultures and, even at the lowest level can be dangerous.
Christians, especially Catholics, bang on about loving their neighbour but are quick to denounce, and even hate people of other religions. Not satisfied with that they even create conflicts within their Christianity religion denouncing and even hating others of different denominations. 'Our' own Catholic Robert is just as guilty of this as the rest. You've read in this and other blogs in the blogging community how Robert loves people all the time. "I love you Richard" or "I love you Peter" is a common refrain in his comments especially if he can't think of a clever riposte. OK, I'm OK with that, I mean, what's not to love? I do react to the about face that he does though when talking about non-Catholic disciplines. It's hard to find examples of this in his blog, not that they don't exist but because he regularly purges the post and occasionally the entire blog (so as to not leave a trail I guess). I did find a couple of recent things that he's written though.
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OK, these are quite mild but there is an undercurrent of disdain and denunciation. It's not as bad as the murderous divisions between Indian Hindus and Pakistani Moslems but still, Catholics, Anglicans, Presbyterians and the other Christian sects and denominations all hold to the same silly belief that a Christian god created and rules the world. Why can't they all just be happy in their delusion?
Illogical and does not make sense.
ReplyDelete- Robert.
Yes, I know he is.
ReplyDeleteNo, there is no logic in "God exists by default". That's like saying, after someone makes a very, very, very silly statement like ... "Wood pigeons invented motorcars" and no-one stepped in, because it was so silly, to refute it - that wood pigeon's invented motorcars is true by default.
ReplyDelete"Is there a correlation between intelligence and religiousness?
ReplyDeleteIt is well established that religiosity correlates inversely with intelligence. A prominent hypothesis states that this correlation reflects behavioral biases toward intuitive problem solving, which causes errors when intuition conflicts with reasoning." -from Neoroscience News.
A post relating to this is forthcoming.
This may come as a surprise to you Robert but even though I'm an atheist and have plenty of time on my hands from not sitting (or kneeling) about praying to an imaginary god, I still have things to do and don't sit at my computer waiting for you to comment on my posts. That sort of neediness comes from Richard who likes comments. Go and bother him.
ReplyDelete"If this many people believe that there is a God who created us why do you not conform?"
ReplyDeleteHave you heard the latest from Indonesia? If you have sex outside of marriage they throw you in jail.
Have you heard how women are suppressed in many countries?
Have you heard how the Palestinians are treated by the Israelis?
This is all god based stuff.
Do I want to conform? Fucking no way!