I don't even pay attention to idiots who blame religion for everything. It's a stupid trend with people these days because it makes them feel smart. "Religion is stoooopid! Faith is not scientific and it is illogical!!!" The funny thing is, these people are pretty uneducated in regards to what they're condemning. They'll probably cite something like the Crusades and say how violent religion makes people not knowing that the driving force of the Crusades was politics and not faith. It's best to ignore the ignorance.

Except that the reason religion gets a bad image from things like the crusades is that politics used religion in order to do some bad things. And I wouldn't be too quick to dismiss the church's hand in the crusades, I'm hesitant to consider them a duped puppet of politics in such matters.

Religion is *used* to facilitate terrible things such as crusades, jihads, inquisitions, genocides, etc. That's why it gets at least some of the blame. But of course you can just deny that it has anything/much to do with such things, I just don't see how you rationalize it.

Religion is still not the sole source of ill in the world. That's just crazy utopian thinking. It's been tried occasionally....

"Gee, if only there wern't any *BLANK* in the world. Let's kill'em off, only then will the world be in a better state!"

While it doesn't exonerate the Catholic Church, the Popes that carried out, the Byzantine Emperor that laid the seed, the people that carried out the killing people all still shared a semblence of responsibly for their actions. What about the people that didn't participate but just went along with it? Are they not responsible to a certain extent as a decent rational human being for not decrying these actions carried out? To act against them? To undermind them at the very least?

It's human nature to assign blame. By assigning blame you are abdicating any responsibility for your actions or lack therof.

I agree that assigning blame to one thing while ignoring the other factors is false and foolish. But the truth that there were other factors at work to justify the group/factor etc. that one likes doesn't really work in my view. Sure you can know that religion isn't the sole reason for all the ill it's been involved in, but how does that matter? That there is blame to spread around doesn't in any way make an offending party's role any less offensive.

Didn't mean to come across as blaming all these things on religion alone. Just trying to make the point that it doesn't have to be a black and white debate between "It's all religion's fault." and "Religion isn't the only reason, so it's not at fault." There is an obvious middle ground for anyone willing to see it.

I like how the article was proven to be a total lie but people are still debating...

oh my god, are you guys actually debating whether religion is the source of all evil in the world?

Don't you ever get tired of that?

the answer is: any organization of people, no matter where it gains its legitimacy, is possible of evil. As far as evil can be a 'thing', it's a human trait. There, I solved it for you.

It doesn't really matter. It should just put things into perspective.

Look at it from a different prospective. It has to be a very clear black and white situation. There is no middle ground when you're talking about a religion that collectively believes in a dualist world of good and evil. It's an all or nothing proposition. Just maybe not for you.

Did you even read the post that you are referring to?? I said time would tell whether or not the story was true and that because of the nature of the Iranian regime, people find the possibility of such a thing easy to believe. Never indicated whether or not I believed it......Munchkin

The fact of the matter though, is that Ahmadinejad isn't as crazy as everyone thinks he is. He is posturing to gain populist support in the Middle East, and receiving it. He is doing what Nasser and Qadafi tried to do from the sixties to the eighties. He is building on extreme discontent in the region stemming from America's blind support of Israel. No, hes not crazy, in fact, hes brilliant. You have consistently failed to realize that his popularity in the Arab world builds every time he says this, and that, not security guarantees or a nuclear weapon, are the greatest tools he can have to stay in power.

That my friend, is what scares the other governments of the region. He is trying to turn Iran into the leader of the Middle East, and frankly, unless the West realizes how poorly of a job they're doing at stopping him, any posturing to stop him from getting a bomb is pointless, because no matter what happens, the West looses.

If what is going on now continues, any foreign action to deny Iran a bomb forcefully would result in a fury of anti-American sentiment across the Arab world, one that even Iran's traditional foes and other regional powers like Egypt and Saudi Arabia couldn't contain.

No, hes no idiot. He's mounting one of the best foreign policy and populist coup's in the Middle East that is going to result in a great shift of power, and the irony is that, yet again, America and the West is failing to realize what is happening.