On your second post, what can I possibly say? Obviously we disagree about this, but I think it’s too big a subject to be handled in the comments area following a blog post. I think this is a subject I’m going to be covering a lot here in the future.

Apologists for religion are wrong on several fronts. They will argue that it is a civilizing force in a chaotic environment. Wrong - nature is not chaotic; it is unsympathetic to human dominance, but it is not chaotic. Quite the opposite, nature (absent humanity) is in itself entirely harmonious.

Religion is responsible for the genocide, eradication, or destruction of natural civilizations in north and south America, Australia, and Africa. (Have you seen the movie “Rabbit Proof Fence”?) European Kings and Popes sent armies to kill and conquer everything in the name of Christ. The Iquisition is a direct precursor to Hitler.

History (as we are taught it) largely ignores the Iquisition; and considers European global conquest as “the advancement of civilization.” But there is no intrinsic superiority of the modern civilized religionized man, over the natural hunter-gatherer of which examples still exist in tiny remote regions. We wouldn’t survive a week in the Amazon jungle where naked native children play (in harmony with nature).

Even the upside to religion’s effort to “tame the savage beast” is inheirently false. As a moral force, religion purports to distinguish right from wrong. But in failing to achieve this through reason or logic, religion jumps at the irrefutable proof that their moral authority is based on God’s law. Thus it doesn’t have to be proven or reasonable, it only has to be adamantly adhered to in fear of social castigation or isolation. That is - you’ll be kicked out of society if you don’t believe what we tell you to.

Religion deliberately blurs the obvious distinction between spirituality and heirarchal organization. Everyone enjoys the feeling of “holiness” of being all alone in a dark quiet church, of being together in a crowded church singing Christmas-Nativity songs, of being part of a Hassidic community where everything is ordered, peaceful, and traditional; or of being alone with nature and feeling a connectedness to everything. This holy feeling, or spirituality has nothing to do with organized religion, nothing whatsoever, but religions steal this spiritual feeling from us and claim it as their own.

It is the “being in tune with innate” as David Palmer called it, or the “oneness with the universe” that hippies and others throughout history have described. It is a natural existential sense (a sixth sense, if you will) that is in all things - re-Spinoza, the Bhagavad Gita, L. Ron Hubbard, Tony Roberts, et. al. Religions should never be allowed to steal this feeling and use it to their own subterfuge.

Finally, the essential evil that is religion, is the God-given authority to deny people the right to think for themselves. The first commandment of every religion is - don’t think, believe. Or as every con-man begins his spiel -”trust me.” Reasoning is the essential human talent. Religion, to exist, has to negate that; has to assert that it can think for you. That is a very comforting denial of our own responsibility. But look around, see where it has brought us. Think for yourself, as John Lennon said.

The media (which shapes public opinion) presented this as - Palestinians reject peaceful settlement, so Israelis elect a hardliner who will teach them a lesson. The Palestinian response was to elect Hamas - thus we meet fire with fire - war with war.

Bush’s position has always been - the region isn’t ready for “Clintonian peace” i.e., the US won’t broker an even-handed settlement that is fair to all sides - we’ll just sit back and watch more people die.

Those are the historical facts as I know them. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

You said, “I have no patience for the idea that compromise is impossible; it is possible because it must be possible.”

Of course, this has to be true, but what if some powers don’t want the conflict to end for some reason. It seems like something is going on that we can’t grasp. Let me illustrate. In the movie, The Grapes of Wrath, speaking of the depression and the dust bowl and everyone losing their homes, Tom Joad says, and I paraphrase, “I don’t know what it is, but something’s going on. I’ve got to keep searching until I find out what it is.”

What was going on was simply this (someone please correct me if I get any of this wrong): Rich people from other parts of the country were waiting for the draught to ruin everybody’s crops so they could go in and buy the land cheap. A big corporation could afford irrigation. The government could have helped the farmers irrigate, but they didn’t. FDR’s programs finally helped a lot of people, but only after many farmers were ruined. Then, the government finally started helping farmers, but that included the big, fat-cat farmers as well.

So I think some big fat-cat world leaders are propagatin’ this here war, too, brother.

You’ve said there was nothing sinister about the Nixon administration, but I firmly believe that people like Karl Rove figure that continuous war is the only thing this moron president has going for him. When you give a stupid little dweeb like Bush, the title “Commander in Chief” it’s the same as Goebbels saying “Germany is Hitler, Hitler is Germany.”

Orwell predicted continuous warfare as an essential element of a fascist state, e.g., GOP America. The wars may be disasterous for the people, but they are big business for the corporations, and that’s not a mistake. The Carlyle Group has a website - you can check it out. And they’ve a job waiting for Tony Blair once he leaves politics.