Religions create wars - therefore I am not religious!

After all -"all religions do is create wars".the chant oft repeated . NO as Ghandi said - Men create wars

One of the greatest paradoxes of the new milleneum is the failure of most anti-religious elements in the West to take their own tutors seriously.
Modern mind Science supports the idea and importance of all people having "a religion" It's not only good for you, you have to have one to be sane . Denial doesn't avoid the risk that religion creates- the thing that drives people. Sure religions are dangerous but so are hormones , ideas and life forces.
Shock horror you say! You mean we have to have one ! what about if it we just don't call it religion ( maybe it will go away? ), like the ageing reactionaries in the West do ; Boxing into thin air like the babes they are!

NO The box is not to be rejected, but accepted and faced like any Dangerous part of our pyche.

We all need a world view to live. We can use our world vew to kill too , but to NOT take the whole idea seriously is anti western intellectaul . all the West will do by denying religion is find excuses to DO nothing and DO nothing positive to resist the WVs that we really do disagree with . Pretending we have no emotions - no religion is no defence - infact its more dangerous than we admit here in this country right now !

DENIAL of this reality turns attention away from the real issue in daily politial affairs yes religion is critical and if you need a word for it try World view .
American theologian William Cavanaugh at Melbourne University this month,

The myth plays a valuable role for secularists. It helps them marginalise Christians and demonise Muslims, and creates a blind spot about violence by the West. It confirms an "us" (the rational, peace-making, secular West) against a "them" (violent fanatics in the Muslim world). To quote Cavanaugh: " Their violence is religious, and therefore irrational and divisive. Our violence, on the other hand, is rational, peace-making and necessary. Regrettably, we find ourselves forced to bomb them into the higher rationality."

Most religious believers have bought this myth, too. They try to fight it by two arguments. First, they say that violence in the name of religion is really usually about politics or economics. Second, they claim that people who perpetrate violence, by definition — the Crusaders, for example — are not really religious.

Australian Muslims constantly say this of terrorists: "These people aren't really Muslims, because Islam is a religion of peace." I understand their predicament, but the argument doesn't work.

First, it's impossible to separate religious motives from the rest to make religion innocent. So the first argument by defenders of religion shares the same flaw as the myth itself. How can you separate religion from politics in Islam when Muslims themselves make no such separation?


Complete article - three pages :