Dear Jonathan J. Ariel,

I think I can assist.

There you go.

http://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-system-of-apartheid/

See no slur, just a proper assessment of what the world already knows from the highly regarded Amnesty International.

David F said- "I think the total destruction of what those people hold most dear to be replaced by kindness, rationality and the scientific method as a way of thinking would be a great improvement over what many people hold most dear."

Question- With respect- Do you think that the perception or good intention of "kindness, rationality and the scientific method" is sometimes used as an excuse for force in it's varying forms either in the eyes of the giver or the receiver?

Dear Yuyutsu,

The loss of religion is a step toward peace. There will be conflict for other reasons. However, religion is a great source of hatred, conflict and evil. It separates peoples for no good reason. Most people's religion is neither a consequence of choice or revelation. It is the religion of their parents. Religion inculcates hate for people who believe in a different kind of nonsense or reject the nonsense. Crusades, wars of the Reformation, slavery of ‘heathen’ people, suttee, 9/11, Joshua’s genocide, forced conversions, missionaries following gunboats, compounds where indigenous people were forced to deny their culture and the Holocaust are examples of religious evil. It is nothing but organized superstition. It is the relict of a pre-scientific age, but most people are in thrall to that nonsense.

Good and evil is often a matter of perspective.

I was told, each time I drew my sword, I should consider not what I killed, but what I allowed to live- D'Artagnan

Dear David F.,

Clearly you do not understand what religion is because the people you just mentioned - the Crusaders, those who fought for Reformation in cruel ways, those who enslaved ‘heathen’ people, those who murder widows, the 9/11 terrorists, the Biblical Joshua, those who forced conversions, violent missionaries, those who denied indigenous people their culture, and obviously the Nazis - were all pretenders, superstitious maybe, but none of them was religious!

So you seem to swallow their false religiosity claims, hook, line, and sinker.

True religion does not separate people and has nothing to do with superstition: true religion uncovers our unity in God and nobody can approach God until they rid their mind of hatred, conflict and evil.

This "scientific" age has not been helping us to uncover our unity because modern "science" tries to limit reality to only the outermost physical shell, only that which can be detected by our gross limited senses and processed by our gross limited minds, thus missing our true identity as God, instead mistaking us to be separate human bodies that must constantly compete over physical resources. Here is one outcome of science - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-28_Sarmat

Dear Yuyutsu,

You are like many religionists. They disown the stench of religion by labeling the rotten parts 'false religion'. Jesus, who many accept as a religious authority, said, 'By their fruits shall ye know them.' Many fruits are rotten. I cited some of those rotten fruits. There is such a thing as a Holocaust denier. They admire some of the things that Hitler did so they deny his crimes. I don't feel your apologies for religion are any different. You find value in some of religion so you label what you don't like as false religion. I find value in some aspects of religion, but its evil outweighs the good. The difference between you and me is that I don't deny the evil of religion or call it false religion. Much of religion stinks. I understand what religion is. Religious people condemn those who understand.