Most of us on the left have grown up and are past the believing in fairytales stage, in our lives.
Religion is behind every major conflict in the world - past, present and future.
This is the statement of a typical North American who is America-centric. The person who made this claim, I would assume, knows very little about European, Asian, African, or South American history. I can think of a number of wars that had nothing to do with religion. The two most bloody wars in history (WWI and WWII) had nothing to do with religion. They had to do with European colonialism. Why did much of the world go to war? In my opinion, because Europeans were imposing their colonialism on places like Africa, the East Indies and Oceania, and various places in the Middle East and China.
World War II, alone, is estimated to have killed directly or indirectly about 50-60 million people (or 3 per cent of the world's population). It is estimated to have cost more money and resources than all other wars in history combined (approx. $1 trillion [$10.5 trillion in 2005 terms]). Your argument, my friend, falls apart and I only have to use one example.
I find the statement that I quoted above extremely offensive and an attack on the multicultural agenda of our nation. If we are multi-cultural then we need to be celebrating our diversity and our cultures-not advancing the non-religious agenda over the religious agenda. The non-religion expression is an expression as much as a religious expression. The religious expression integrates doctrines of religion, the non-religious expression does not. The theist expresses the existence of God, the atheist does not. There are many in-betweens, variations, and even additions to what I am saying here. But we don't celebrate diversity in this country. What we do is we create an enmity between Christians and those who hate Christianity. We create a hatred between Christians and Muslims. It seems that the Christians are losing right now. I don't know why anybody is losing though if this is an OFFICIALLY multi-cultural country. Everybody should be winning!!!
If this is a multi-cultural country I would expect religion and faith to be a large part of that (and this is not limited to one religion-it is only limited by the diversity of cultural backgrounds that people come from). I would expect religion and faith to be a large part of that because religion, to some extent (it varies from culture to culture), is an expression of culture and, in some cases, defines a culture. Because of our official multi-cultural stance in this country, I would expect there to be more interaction within religions, more interaction and dialogue between different religions and expressions for and against religion, and government involvement in those conversations. I wouldn't expect government suppression of religion or government preference for the non-religious and atheistic ideologies over expressions of faith. I would expect that the government would encourage each group to grow and develop more harmonious relationships with each other.
We have so much fighting in this country over religion because we truly are close-minded people who don't really care about each other. This extends to skin colour. I noted that article in the Globe and Mail a few weeks ago where only a third of visible minority Canadians "feel Canadian". That means we aren't comfortable talking about our differences. What we care about is trying to manipulate people to our own agendas; most of us don't want to take time to listen to others when we don't agree with others.
Personally, I love to listen to people tell me their story or their take on religion, politics, race relations and ethnicity, struggle (all that nitty-gritty stuff that helps us realise our humanity and how hungry we are to discover our own humanity)-whether a person of faith or not. I love these stories because it is here that we truly tread on shaky ground. This is ground that we don't talk about because people get offended easily. I think we have to talk about it though in order to fully realise the humanity of our fellow Canadians.
What are your thoughts on this?
I just want to identify that my intention is to speak constructively. Make sure you identify that you are uncomfortable with my words if, in fact, you are-I would love to have a conversation about those words you find offensive-if you do. What I am trying to do is fully understand where I am coming from-I cannot do that, however, without feedback. I would be pleased to hear your response.
Peace,
Adam
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