I'm so sick of this awful feeling that we are being forced into a world conflagration

[Skidmore]

on the backs of religious zealotry. Every fundamentalist group among the big religions appear hellbent on making certain that political alliances devolve to the basest level. I'm disgusted beyond belief. At this point, the death counts don't matter anymore nor do the affiliations. What does matter is it appears that very little effort is being put foward to meaningful resolution of any of these conflicts. There is no peace process anywhere. There is no will to find ways to resolve grievances. There are too many silent people who only respond when there is a tragedy or a crisis. I will not participate in justifying the slaughter of people by any group who claims religion as a justification--any. I will call out people for zealotry and bigotry based on religion. Not one group among the monotheistic traditions of the earth is more worthy than the other two or deserving of a superior place among humankind.

[KT2000]

1. fundamentalism at its core is

ego worship - narcissism. Religions now are being represented by the mentally ill and they should be treated as such when their behavior impinges on the security, safety, and rights of others.

[Skidmore]

3. So many of yhem have made it into

positions of power and have no sense of moral behavior beyond their own narrow sliver of twisted ideology. I find it truly frightening because I think a goodly number of people just get immersed in the cultural stew of the time and cease to question as long as some element of it all seems to address their own grievances in some way. Also we have a generation which has been raised amid this claptrap. I fear it will take a while for reason to prevail.

[ReRe]

2. Amen, Skidmore

Imagine what the world would have been like without religious zealotry.

[The2ndWheel]

4. Within every solution is the seed of the next problem

Society is always fighting against entropy. It takes a lot of energy to keep everything together. Sometimes you wonder how we're able to do it at all on such a scale. Of course what we do in order to keep it all together on such a scale is also part of our environmental issues, which can push people into conflict by itself, let alone with the added political and cultural reasons.

Diversity can also create that sort of conflict. Like with everything, there's an upside to diversity, and also a downside.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

5. Well, just this morning someone on DU was petitioning to have public displays of faith

criminalized. So apparently the idea of using the power of the state to compel adherence to one's preferred ideology is not the exclusive domain of the religious.

[Fumesucker]

6. They also got rather thoroughly mocked for that

[Nuclear Unicorn]

7. I'll feel better once Charlie Hebdo does a cover about it.

[Taitertots]

8. We have major wars when society reaches a point where discontent would turn slaves on their masters

The people in control realize that they need to send the able bodied to fight someone else before they realize that their problems were created by the people sending them to fight.