Comments on: Religion Is Just Morality Tales for Grown-Ups

By: Michael Delf

Michael Delf — Sat, 17 Jan 2015 10:59:40 +0000

The guy with MBA in finance who is very likely neither Christian, Muslim or Jewish is teaching a lesson in religion! Despite overabundance of historic facts, analysis of most of them does not lend to the pre-hatched conclusions reached. Im surprized how someone with graduate degree (did I say in 21st century?) can divide the world into Muslim world and Christian world and analyze the merits… Im sorry but it is worth no more than a high school paper. Better do smth else!

P.S. This post has been removed earlier, Im reposting. Hopefully, it was done by mistake and editor is not trying to stifle freedom of speech that he is vouching for.

By: Jem Keen

Jem Keen — Sat, 17 Jan 2015 01:09:59 +0000

At last, an article which mentions the unmentionable truth – that the activation of extremist, violent terrorism in the name of Islam is direct payback on the West for our massacre of innocent people on a vast scale in our Middle Eastern ‘resource wars’. Not forgetting our failure to stop (or even properly to condemn) the hideous Israeli actions in Gaza; ruthless terrorism on a far larger scale than what has just happened in Paris. Philosophical musings aside, we all know that religion can easily become a powerful rallying cry to violence, especially in the Middle East. Yet we allowed our elected leaders to get away with a cooked-up war against the Muslim world and have never brought them to book for it, even after their extraordinary mendacity had been revealed. Literally millions of innocents died in Iraq as a direct result of western aggression. This ‘inconvenient truth’ has barely been remarked on by western media or politicians – but is all too well known to the radicalised young Muslim men leaving the UK and other countries to fight for Isis, or getting involved in terrorist cells in Europe like the one that hit Charlie Hebdo. I doubt that anyone reading this will be aware, for instance, that at the time of the Iraqi conflict videos were shown in Mosques up and down the UK of young children being literally blown to pieces in front of their agonised and terrified parents by US or British bombs (does it matter which?). We have never been allowed to see this kind of thing in our ‘oh-so-free’ media because of war-censorship rules. I know for a fact that eye-witness video like this of western ‘collateral damage’ atrocities was submitted to the BBC and that they declined to air it on the grounds that its source could not be ‘validated’. How convenient for the government, whose own spokesmen could of courts be instantly ‘validated’.

This conflict has now been framed in our media as ‘Islamic darkness and suppression versus Western enlightenment and freedom’, which is a great narrative if you are prepared to overlook the violence that we ourselves have done to Muslim peoples in their own lands. Until we ‘walk the talk’ of our much celebrated free, democratic and open society by bringing war criminals like Blair, Bush and Cheney to trial we are living a great lie and kind of deserve what we get. Islamic terrorism is a monster created by western foreign policy aggression, not spawned spontaneously out of a dark religious tradition. This is a political issue first, a religious one second. Jeremy Keen

By: Michael Delf

Michael Delf — Fri, 16 Jan 2015 21:41:56 +0000

By: Zufi Deo

Zufi Deo — Fri, 16 Jan 2015 13:42:20 +0000

Interesting article. However, feel the approach doesn’t do justice to the title. Religion is just a tale of morality for grown ups and the content of the article seem not to match very well.

One of the things that does stand out is the article doesn’t touch on how the use of moral high ground is used by most across the ages to justify their behaviour. This is regardless of the whether they actually have moral high ground or not.

For instance, one of the reasons why Buddhism was exported to Indo China was because there was lot of local resistance to it from.other local faiths. If we look at how things are today, there are more Buddhists who live out side Northern India – its birth place. This isn’t touched on.

Be nice to see more balance and depth.

Look forward to other thoughts.