[king_buzzo]

Very, very interesting discussion

[Rob Instigator]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

that is absolutely full of shit. what about the cold war (i am talking about the proxy wars fought in Asia, Latin America and Africa during the 1950s-1990s), or WWII? or Stalin? was any of that religious? and yet these events killed hundreds of times as many people as any religious war or any disease previous... we are talking about hundreds of millions of people who have died or were killed for reasons that had nothing to do with religion..... your logic is faulty.

you just happen to be more motivated to look at religion as a cause of human suffering, and this bias has made you overlook the reality of the 20th century, where religion has little to do with the actual conflicts. today the poverty gap between developed and developing nations is the major contributing factor in war and human suffering. religion is just a clever subterfuge in the 21st century....

the proxy wars during the cold war were in no way equal to the amount of people kiled by the crusades, the war betwene the italian pope and the german pope, the national socialist extermination of unfit peoples (remember they were catholic), the mass genocide /conversion of native people's in the americas by spanish and portuguiese priests, the endless violence in the middle east, The protestant persecutions of hundreds of thousands of catholics in europe and england, the mass genocide of armenians, the Roman wholesale extermination of christians, the egyptians wholesale extermination of hebrews, etc etc etc etc. You do not know JACK FUCKING SHIT!

[tesla69]

There was a religious component to the Cold War - remember the Godless Commie part? But I might argue the real battle was the religion of capitalism vs. the godless ones who didn't believe in the God of Capital.

What I want to know is if God tells me to kill someone, can I use the Bush defense (God talks to Bush, so he can talk to me too)?

Someone should update the history books for Americans. That way political debate on the internet would be a little more stimulating, if you only had to scratch your own arse for a few hours.