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Written by Rachel Eagle Reiter
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We no longer live in the age where men will give up their very
lives for gold, god and glory; instead we live in the age when men
will give up their blood for OIL in the name of god. Religion is
the most disgusting force when it used for evil. There are times
when I am almost tempted to wash my hands of it, forever. The more
that men wage wars in the name of god and exploit weaker individual
or nations for their natural resources, the more distant I become
from claiming any one true religion. That concept--in itself--is a
lot of nonsense. There can never be one true religion. We are
creatures of faith. We are all fueled by love. Religion is not half
as important as having humanitarian principles. Those who claim
that their religion is the one, true religion are religious
supremacists. It is just as bad to exalt one religion above the
rest as it is to exalt one nationality above the rest.
A tremendous amount of evil works can be done in the name of god.
All we need to do is consider the history of the cross to be made
aware of the power behind that name: god. Even if there was a
higher deity, I imagine that he would object to the way his name is
widely misused for the personal gain of imperialists. Many
conquests and exploitations of an imperialistic nature were carried
out with a cross. I do not feel that the imperialists would have
been half as successful if it weren't for the cross that they held
high on their voyages. The cross was used as a manipulative tool to
intimidate, force conversions, steal goods and to murder. Honestly,
I wouldn't mind if it were broken in two, exactly in the middle.
Then I would like to see the two pieces placed side by side as one
positive sign adjacent to one negative sign. Afterwards, I would
like to perform some arithmetic; adding a positive and a negative
[of equal values] will amount to nothing.
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