Day: March 24, 2007

Hopeless ignorant masses need some sort of refuge. In many materially and culturally impoverished parts of that world, religious fanaticism affords that refuge. Monotheistic intolerant faiths such as Christianity and Islam are a necessary but not a sufficient condition for evoking the fanatical response. Combine a dangerous belief in a homicidal cruel monomaniacal god with general cultural and material poverty, and you have the perfect recipe for generalized murderous violence. Although the advanced industrialized countries are nominally Christian, their general prosperity moderates their belief in the monotheistic Christian god. But in many parts of the globe, a combination of Islam and material deprivation invariably results in headline grabbing violence.
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