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Re: poptarts with a twist of lennon

On Mon, 12 Aug 2002, Dan Temmesfeld wrote:
> Bruce Lachey <b_lachey at hotmail_com> wrote:

> > I hope that if there is a God, He'll send to Hell anyone that fought
> > in His name.  Fighting with someone over religious beliefs is dumber
> > than fighting with my toddler nephew over a lukewarm pop tart that I
> > barely enjoy.
>
> agreed.  while it's nice that people have differing and strong
> convictions about all things spiritual, forcing any one's belief on
> another one is the crux of too much misery in this world.

And you don't have to have beliefs *in favour of* things spiritual in
order to cause too much misery -- the atheist regimes of the world have
certainly proved that.

> it's generally what's caused just about every war.

I haven't surveyed all the wars in the history of our planet, but I think
I would place economics over religion, personally.  Until a couple
thousand years ago, it was just assumed that each country had its own god
or its own religion, and while religion was certainly one of the *tools*
of warfare, I don't think it was a primary *cause*.  I don't think the
Egyptians, say, stormed Canaan looking to force their religion on people
-- they did so because Canaan was useful to them for military reasons or
whatever.  My hunch is religion didn't become a primary cause for warfare
until the rise of evangelistic religions like Christianity, which were not
necessarily tied to any specific nation.  Before the advent of such
religions, my hunch is that nations were more interested in *dominating*
other nations than they were in *converting* them to their own faiths.

But I could very easily be wrong about that.

--- Peter T. Chattaway --------------------------- peter at chattaway_com ---
 If true love never did exist how could we know its name? -- Sam Phillips
          Happiness happens but I want joy. -- Marjorie Cardwell

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