![\"Oaxaca_12315_0008\"](\"http:\/\/www.timporter.com\/seconddraft\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Oaxaca_12315_0008.jpg\")
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Ever since Man invented the concept of \u201cGod\u201d as a means to provide answers to the baffling origins of life and to soothe the inevitable and irreversible arrival of death, he has been killing other men, women and children<\/strong> in the name of god.<\/p>\n Five-hundred or so centuries into the self-aware existence of our species, the slaughter continues.<\/p>\n The homophobic Orlando massacre is the latest deadly embrace by a deranged individual with a weapon of the \u201cword of God\u201d \u2013 words written 1,400 years ago and which proscribe killing gay men by stoning them, burning them or tossing them from a high wall.<\/p>\n Sadly, killing homosexuals with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle is so much easer than these ancient punishments<\/strong>. Thus far, there has not been a terrorist attack on U.S. soil in which 49 people have been stoned to death.<\/p>\n It is, however, too simple to blame the easy availability of guns<\/strong> in the United States for the bloodshed\u00a0in Orlando (although we can hold gun access responsible for unending string of shootings on high school and university campuses).<\/p>\n The true culprit is religion<\/strong>, primarily Christianity and Islam (although other\u00a0modern religions as well as more ancient ones \u2013 the Aztecs come to mind \u2013 have shown themselves to be just as bloody in the enforcement of their beliefs.<\/p>\n There\u2019s more \u2013 so much more.<\/strong> Muslim women stoned to death for being raped. Marathon runners bombed to death for being Christian. Thousands of Christians killed by other Christians during the Inquisition for not being Christian enough. Millions of indigenous peoples in North America either murdered to driven to their deaths for being \u201cpagan\u201d by Christian conquerors from England, France, Spain and Portugal.<\/p>\n The deliverance of death as a means of interpreting the mandates of god is not religion\u2019s only crime<\/strong>. It is also guilty of forcing Muslim girls to live in ignorance and fear for their lives should they dare to be educated. It is guilty of condemning poor young Catholic women in Latin American countries to continued poverty by preaching against birth control and thereby enabling teen-age pregnancy. It subjugates Jewish and Muslim women to the will of men, denying them full participation in their lives. It spreads hate \u2013 against gays, against foreigners, against non-believers \u2013 and in doing so encourages group-think and herd mentality: Us against Them (with the Us always being morally superior and adhering to the true god).<\/p>\n I must be na\u00efve, I realize, to wonder how these ancient beliefs<\/strong>\u00a0persist<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 beliefs inscribed by men who knew nothing of science, little of geography and not much more of any life other than that in their own tribe. Not only do they persist, but they shape cultural norms, infiltrate public policy and far too often lead directly to violence, either by some lonely, disconnected guy with a gun or by an entire nation with modern weaponry at its disposal.<\/p>\n If there is a god, it\u00a0has cursed us with these religions<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ever since Man invented the concept of \u201cGod\u201d as a means to provide answers to the baffling origins of life and to soothe the inevitable and irreversible arrival of death, he has been killing other men, women and children in … Continue reading \n
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