On Boston suspects: Maher To Defender Of Islam: Equating Christianity And Islam "Liberal Bullshit"

[RVN VET]

36. Religion is at the bottom of all terrorist acts

except when it isn't.

Most religions have, at center, an ethos of compassion and brotherhood. All religions have, on their fringes and sometimes boring a little close to center, men and women devoid of conscience who will cold bloodedly kill people in the name of their religion.

Maher was correct about Islam providing a seed bed for hatred and slaughter. He was incorrect in his tacit assumption that Christianity does not provide its own seedbed.

But the genocides in the USSR were motivated by a non-theist belief -- Communism -- and so were the depredations upon the Chinese and Tibetans. Stalin and Mao were not religious men nor did they tolerate or permit the toleration of religion. (Stalin, of course, successfully undermined the State Religion in Russia, co-opting it to his own ends.) But, interestingly, if you look to the core ethos of Communism, you'll find brotherhood and compassion.

It's not religion. It's not philosophy. In Vietnam years ago a friend of mine summed it up perfectly in conversation with an Army chaplain: "People suck. Maybe not every person, but enough to make a difference, enough to piss on everyone's party." And Voltaire -- who should be the intellectual friend of every thinking person -- said, centuries ago, "Il faut cultiver nos jardins." He didn't mean for us to turn our backs on the world's suffering, but to do what we can to bring about whatever good we can without getting sucked under by despair or, on the other hand, pretending everything is going to get wonderfully better.