Rewriting my own history.

I wrote something for this weblog about three hours ago, posted it, then reclassified it as a draft after being live for about half an hour or so. Though it wasn't my intention, I swung pretty hard at this fella in my home state that keeps popping off in a typical conservative/Republican way.

He posts a paragraph or two from a news wire piece and drops a line of his own at the bottom. That's enough to annoy me, to use somebody else's words like that, then tack a throwaway thought on it as if it proves something. And the latest one actually got me riled up quite a bit.

Most people know about the guy in Afghanistan who was facing trial and probably death for converting to Christianity. Given the bloody legacy which Christians often seem to forget, it seemed rather ironic to have them in such an uproar over persecution. Nature understands reciprocity.

I pulled down quotes, statistics, and information from Human Rights Watch which confirms the brutal lives that most Muslims endure in their countries, including our supposed allies in the Middle East, as well as other countries like Northern Ireland, Chechnya, and even the United States where religion and terrorism have been reshaping things for a while now.

The truth is there are very few places where religion and terrorism don't walk hand-in-hand, and it makes me wonder if the only reason we haven't seen a proliferation of Christian extremism/terrorism is because the religion is so dominant that we don't even recognize it for what it is, like the Crusades. Or we simply disassociate it from the extremists, like the KKK. If it's dealing with the good book then these guys are just fringe extremists, if it's Muslims, then it's all of Islam.

The post I've put on hold took these thoughts to the next level, putting Christianity on the defensive, and I found myself just playing the same old blame game. Look at these people over here, look at how they act and how stupid they are. Oh but look at you, you're pretty stupid yourself and how can you act like that? I fell into that hole and started digging deeper with everything I had, and pretty soon I had as much dirt on me as the person I was trying to throw down. And for what? So I could feel superior? I don't.

Persecuting someone because of their faith is bad, on that, most people can agree. What I wrote a few hours ago was an attempt at showing how irrational and deadly any religion can be when taken to extremes. The Crusades were extreme, the KKK is extreme, Al-Qaeda is extreme, and the reason is quite clear. There are no limits to what humans can do to each other when religion rules above all else.

Religion is not the foundation of civilization, rational thought is, and it's the only thing that's going to save this world.

Technorati tags: Rant, Religion