You may consider this inflammatory, or offensive, but I am amazed at just how dangerous religion, especially this monotheistic, almost slavish devotion to God is. You will note I said is, rather than, has become because for the better part of the last 1000 years, the devotion to God's word, or God's will has been behind some of the bloodiest, most infantile acts of atrocity ever committed by man against man, and all in for the betterment of God's people. Hogwash.
Now those who have read the Scriptures and I mean read them, not just had snippets read to them from some pontificating prelate in a cassock, whether white, purple or muslin will tell you that the word of God is pretty tangled, full of conflict and many cases, contradictory (the best example is pointed out in the play A Man For All Seasons where Sir (later Saint) Thomas Moore and King Henry VIII discuss the king's divorce and argue over the contradictions between two books in the Old Testament - one that supports Henry's position and one that supports Moore's position (which happen to be in opposition). If a scholar of Moore's stature is stymied, then how is the average individual supposed to come to grips with it.
This is not unique to the Judeo Christian world. The Muslim world is just as full of conflict. The Qur'an, which is supposedly the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed, just as the New Testament is supposedly the teachings of the Prophet (Son of God) Jesus and the Old Testament is supposedly the teachings of a variety of other Prophets, is no clearer on what it expects. Because you are supposed to read the Qur'an in its native Arabic, errors in translations will crop up (especially when translated into a language as imperfect as English) just as they have cropped up in the Bible over the centuries since it was passed down as an oral tradition (which introduced its own errors).
So what we have been left with is a translation of a translation of a translation of an interpretation about what God wants from us and for us to do. Further, when then have taken this as, if you will excuse the usage, gospel, and carried out holy wars in His name.
Don't believe me? Shall we start way back at the beginning with the Egyptians and their slaves, the Israelites? How about the Crusades - a classic example of my god is better than your god except we worship the same god. The Inquisition where not only is my god better than your god, but if don't pay me, my god will seek retribution on your miserable souls. Sounds harsh, but money was behind it. The destruction of the Templar was over money, but was cloaked in religion. World War II was to depose a madman who believed in the purification of the race based on what he had read in the Bible (regardless of the fact that Jews were there before the Ayrians). Even today, we see religion used to justify everything from the sanctity of marriage as only being between a man and a woman, even though the divorce rate among the good people is ridiculously high, to the taking of the "head of the snake," as al Qaeda's mission is described in the 9/11 Commission report.
In the old days, when people were a little more naive (perhaps) there were multiple gods, responsible for everything from bad weather to agriculture. Didn't like the fact that someone died, you complained to Hades, or Hel, or Anubis. Had a really good party - send Dyonisis a quick tribute. These days, it is God's problem. One would think that God is a little overworked and has started outsourcing to contractors that just are not doing the job very well, because if they were, one would expect a thunderbolt, or holy flame of destruction to take care of some of these individuals and groups that seem to be inventing the word of God out of whole cloth, rather than the texts that God supposedly gave us.
It comes down to this - one should not have to interpret the will or word of God, it should be pretty clear. The fact that it is not only not clear, but being interpreted for such evil uses leaves one to question whether the word of God really is. Or is just the desires of man?
10:34:14 AM 
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