Religion and terror

Remember the time God said to one of His prophets: They are ‘sinners’, go kill them? No? No, neither do I. I have never read anything of the sort in any holy script. I’ve read about prophets being told to leave because a great calamity will hit the place where the ‘sinners’ dwell. One even made an arc and took off with animals as if animals were worth more than people of that era and location.

We are now in 21^st century. No prophet ever carried out mass murder (though many did fight, but those were always ‘fair’ fights; armies clashing, defending yourself and your rights, and their behaviour after victory speaks volumes of their morals – freedom of religion was their true way), yet in this day and age, we have all kinds of individuals claiming God wants us to kill innocent people. The bunch that claim to do it in the name of Islam are perhaps most widely spread, larger in numbers than those who claim to do it for Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity etc. We’ve heard from true followers of each of these religions that that is not the way. In fact, we have stories from all over the place about Prophets forgiving infidels, being patient with them, giving them time, praying for them etc.

The amazing thing is that atheists now have this fantastic argument that humanity is better off without religion, even though, in the past, each and every prophet that ever came left their society much better than they found it. So, my thinking is that religion is important, in fact, it seems to be so important to so many, that it is the greatest tool ever. It is currently being used to spread evil, but we could and should use it to spread good. Imagine if this force was applied to do good! That would be a world I’d be proud to leave to our future generations.

What is the real purpose of the ‘use religion to spread terror’? Power, money and more power. That’s the simple answer. Those who lead people to murder and death are not doing it for God (if God wanted us dead, He has His own ways), they do it for god, and their god is their own ego, arrogance and greed. The God, capital G, is far from it. In fact, He is the very opposite of it. It seems too simple to be true, but it seems we need more religion, more faith in God rather than god to set things right.