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Let's address the 'major' religions (none of which I claim membership in, though some ideology overlap occurs).

Christianity - This one is somewhat interesting, because we might be discussing the Ten Commandments or we might be discussing the philosophies of Jesus. Let's stick with Jesus. He made it pretty clear that killing (possibly even in self-defense?) was verboten. Turn the other cheek, and all that.

Islam - I found this interesting, because I didn't know it until I looked it up. Apparently the verses in the Quran that 'condone' murder against pagans and such are actually referring to a very specific period of Muslim history where peace treaties had been violated by neighboring pagan tribes. The Quran apparently directs Muslims to maintain peaceful relations with neighbors (regardless of religion) but not to fall victim to 'oppression', which is worse than death, because we should be like (the Muslim interpretation of) God, who is 'Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful...'.

Buddhism - This one is pretty obvious. Buddhism condemns the killing of all living beings.

Judaism - Let's now go with the Ten Commandments version. So some interpretations say that the commandment is 'Thou Shalt Not Kill', while others say it is 'Thou Shalt Not Murder', and the distinction between those two is apparently 'self-defense'.

So, no, try again. 'Typically', it appears, the source material of the major religions does not condone killing 'nonbelievers', as much as you would apparently like it to. Many seem to actually try promoting peaceful relations and forgiveness of transgressions, even when that might be costly to the members of that religion.

Now what the religion says and what we get are often different, but that's not really surprising, now is it?



Quite correct - religion isn't a problem, it's only those that believe in them that cause any sort of difficulty.

If God wants to stop gay marriage or contraception or abortion then that's fine - all he has to do is appear in the clouds and say so.


it's only those that believe in them that cause any sort of difficulty.

And the golf course would be a beautiful place if it wasn't for the damned golfers.

You can't abstract God away from the church, the religion, man. Any one is meaningless without the other.

You're just going to have to put up with the religious and our noisy, imperfect, interpretations of the Truth.


You know, when I posted the comment about Children of Men, I was worried the topic might veer off into film critique.




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