by Bell » Tue Nov 09, 2004 10:24 pm

I would be careful about generalising an entire religion. It would appear Western and middle eastern religions have been fighting for a long time. I'd say there are extremists on both sides of the fence. There are probably many groups in the west that follow a very skewed version of the mainstream faith and use their beliefs to justify killings. The same as exist in the east. There is a bit of a propaganda war going on at the moment and it's important not to get caught up in it. If 7 fanatical Christians bombed a major building in the middle east would we say those 7 are representative of all Christians? Also another thing to remember. Religion ultimately is a mechanism for dealing with death. We live in extremely high luxury compared to the rest of the world and can generally expect long lives. As such religion is not so important to us. In poorer countries where your surrounded by death, religion is the only way you can get by and function. It's the only way you can deal with the fact that you or someone you care about can die at any time. It isn't madness, it's probably the only thing they have to prevent it. Believing in things that can't be proved is not madness, because nothing can be proved beyond all doubt. Madness is an instability of the mind where your thought patterns are inconsistent. Where your belief structure contains paradoxes. The best way to remove paradoxes is to except life as it comes and not to have too many preconceived ideas. Try not to think things must be a certain way. The more preconceived ideas you have the more you open yourself up to paradoxes. If you believe in god because it makes you feel good and not because you think god must exist then there is no paradox, no contradiction, no madness. I'd say the only madness of religion is it's attempts to explain and define god. Those who believe in god through choice rather than logic are probably the most sane. I'd say the most sane people in the world are those who merly accept life and enjoy the time they have without need of explanation. If you can achive such a state the existence of god is essentially irrelivant.