Current stance, after a few weeks of contemplation

[Russell Turpin]

Tom Whore writes:
>We have never , ever, not since it started, seen a real and definitive end 
>of the Crusades.

French Revolution. For the western nations, fighting over
religion gasped its last with the ancien regime.

>We are still fighting over the holy lands ..

Who is "we"? Israel and the Arab nations are fighting
over this. I think the average American would side with
Jeff Bone on this. IF -- that is a big IF -- all this
fighting really is over a few square miles of earth,
imbued with mumbo-jumbo sentiment, and IF the fighting
could be resolved forever by dropping a large thermonuclear
bomb on Jerasulem, let's set the date, give everyone time
to move out, and then turn the Holy Mount, Holy Sepulchre,
Holy Rock, Holy Site, Holy Temple, Holy Mosque, and Holy
all if it into holy smithereens, leaving behind only a
glow-in-the-dark crater, using a little cobalt to make sure
it remains uninhabitable for a century or two. This
counterfactual is true by virtue of the antecedent being
false. Doing this would NOT solve the problem. I don't
believe the IF. But IF it would. IF it would ..

>We are still fighting over whose view of god is the
>correct one.

The western nations no longer have a view of god.

>On TOP of that we can add cultural differences, but those resolve down to 
>the correctness of god issue.

Your analysis was good pre-Enlightenment. Today, it is a
couple of centuries out of date. Much of the Islamic world
still thinks this way. But if they think this is a battle
of Christendom vs. Islam, they are sadly mistaken.

Russell


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