21 July 2006

The Root Cause of the Problem

In a briefing to Congress on the recent G8 summit, President Bush said
Everybody abhors the loss of innocent life. On the other hand, what we recognize is that the root cause of the problem is Hezbollah.
But the root cause is not Hezbollah, or Syria, Iran, or even Israel. The root cause is religion.

Three incompatible and mutually exclusive religions (Islam, Judaism, and Christianity) fight each other, basing their beliefs upon two of the world's most violent books (the Bible and the Quran). A more perfect recipe for mutually assured destruction could not be found.

When people of Israel, Lebanon, the Middle East, and the world no longer believe in (or pretend to believe in) the Bible and the Quran, there will be hope for peace. Religious belief is the root cause of the problem, and until it is addressed there will be no peace in the region -- or in the world.

4 comments:

Steve Wells said...

"Israel is 25% Atheist"

What about the other 75%? When they become bacon-eating atheist Jews, there might be a chance for peace.
(Unless they also believe that God gave them the land of Israel, in which case we may have to wait until they are all just bacon-eating atheists.)

Anonymous said...

I have to disagree, slightly. Even religion is not the root: it is merely the stump.

The root is [i]fantasy[/i]; the inability to tell the difference between what is in your head and what is in the world.

As long as people are more interested in themselves than they are in others, as long as they are willing to settle for amazing fantasies instead of mundane realities, they will act in ways that no rational person can understand.

Here is a link to an article that explains what I mean:

http://www.policyreview.org/AUG02/harris.html

The problem is, quite simply, childishness; and the solution is growing up. Now if we could just find a way for society to reward grownups, instead of pandering to children...

Anonymous said...

A fine place the Jews have found to escape Jew haters! I'm sure religion had nothing to do with it...

Anonymous said...

I knew this second gulf war had turned into "the big lie" (did you know that most of the army soldiers returning to the states from the front lines in rotation now quietly call it that?) when our lower ranking officers stopped calling this a war to stop the Saddamists and their WMD's -- of which these WMD's were never found by any of us yet, then they started calling this a war of our manifest destiny to put American democracy in place where there was none -- and later they started calling this a war of religion, of righteous moral Christians versus the wrongheaded religion of Moslems and their 17 virgins they plan to enjoy up in heaven after they croak in battle. What struck me is there is a disconnect from their judgmental morality and the actual reality of the people dying around us in Baghdad because stereotypical Shiites named Ali hate all Sunnis named Omar, and vice versa, because they differ on their interpretation of ...whatever!