How long? How much longer must we as a species live as thralls to desert mythologies cooked up a couple of thousand years ago? Make no mistake - the fundamental divide in America today is religious. The entirety of the Republican platform is religious in nature. Whether it's their anti-science viewpoints, their thirst for war, their disparagement of women/minorities, on and on, all these "viewpoints" bubble up from a Fundamentalist religious outlook. Funnily enough, in America at least, the most Fundamentalist among us usually have no idea what values are espoused in their so-called "Holy" book. Jesus was a dirty hippie, after all.
And as yet another war heats up in the middle east, reflect on this picture of some young Israeli settler's "Welcoming" a Palestinian woman who was just forcibly evicted from her home. While ostensibly the violence in Gaza is territorial, religion of course underlies everything. My side versus your side and one of us will die and be proven wrong in the dying. It's ridiculous, we should all know better, and yet here we are, still killing one another over imaginary sky fairies and associated stories. It's especially pernicious that Israel has become a de facto Apartheid state, committing atrocity after atrocity on the ghettoized Palestinian populations - did no one learn anything from WW2?
"Opiate of the masses?" More like rage-fuel for ever more wars and violence. No thanks, Religion. You've done your part - kindly exit, stage left.
No comments:
Post a Comment