Killing in the name of God

Too often I hear people condemn religion, because too many wars are fought in the name of God. How can people kill in the name of God?

Well, you can kill in the name of anything. Or at least, people do. People kill in the name of justice, for example, when often it's really just revenge or some warped sense of vindication. People also kill for the sheer thrill of it. So it's really a lame question to ask how one can kill in the name of "X".

The real question is, can one rightly kill another person. And if so, when?

If you want to start a war, and you need a lot of good people to kill other good people, you have to have a cause that will move them. People need a good reason to kill other people. The highest good is God, by most people's cultural standings, therefore, if you tweak their religion a bit, you can get people excited enough about "God" to kill other people who have (presumably) slandered that god.

But don't stop there. Wars aren't really started by religion so much as the lust for power and domination and greed. God is just the twisted excuse.

Wars can be fought in the name of "Democracy" or "Liberty" or "Freedom", too, as we've often seen. These are all good things in themselves, as I believe religion is a good thing in itself. We don't condemn true liberty or true freedom or true democracy because people have gone to war over these ideals, or because these ideals have been perverted by evil men who get rich on the wars they start. I don't think we should condemn religion any more than we would condemn democracy.

Let's blame the real culprits. Blame the love of power and unbridled greed; and the ignorance of people who allow themselves to be swayed by the powerful and greedy. Because at a certain point, ignorance is culpable. And when we're done blaming, we have to get back to work to overcome ignorance.

But this dividing of unbelievers against believers (or the other way around) only divides the unified voice we need to overcome the oppressive powers that are rising up like Titans all around us.