the crusades - *new and improved*

So here we go again, it seems as though just when you thought that the role of religion couldn't be used any more for non-sense, the latest bout of Islam vs. Christianity features the Pope's recent comments being used as fuel for the fire. Coming soon to a mixed neighborhood near you - the Crusades *new and improved*...

Once again, people are inciting the belief in their god as the reason why they should go forth and kill everyone else who has different beliefs. I think that historians will look back at this time in history as the time when over-population was controlled through the culling of humans through the process of war. Look back at the last hundred years and think of the hundreds of millions of people who have been killed for a set of beliefs. Nowadays it seems as though if any person wants to go kill someone else for whatever reason, they just claim 1) their god told them to do it or 2) their god is offended by the existance of infidels.

I'm going to go out and say it - organized religion is a bunch of crap and people need to stop listening to their leaders who base their decisions on what they interpret as what god wants. George Bush said that god told him to invade Iraq, Islamist fundamentalists say that Zionists are to be wiped off the face of the Earth because they are... Jewish? Ya know, in the past when people said they heard voices telling them what to do, we medicated the shit out of them, put them in "hug-me" jackets, and watched them roll around rooms with padded wallpaper through a slot in the door.

Now it seems like we are following the crazies to their own personal insanity. Since when did people lose sight of the fact that any creator, regardless of religion, gave us the ability to reason and determine who the crazies were? As far as organized religion is concerned, aren't the level-headed, god-fearing people of the community supposed to take care of those who can't seem to grasp reality?

Its no shock that I am agnostic, religion in its current form has just totally turned me off of a certain belief system. I believe that there is a creator (the universe didn't come from nowhere) but I am tired of the dogma that religious people subscribe to without even critically thinking about where that idea originated. Christ wasn't born in December and Mohammed probably didn't mind his picture being drawn (as long as it wasn't a caricature). To all the leaders in organized religion - GET OVER YOURSELF AND YOUR SUPREMACY ISSUES! No religion is the only way to "heaven" and stop killing people in the name of your beliefs. You don't see me running around and cutting off all your penises (or is it peni?) because I don't think you should be allowed to reproduce and spread your ideas, do ya? Its called tolerance folks and EVERY RELIGION PREACHES IT. Pay attention to your own beliefs and don't worry so much about the other guy, he's got his own godly problems to deal with.