Nasir Khan, January 23, 2015
Some people like George W Bush, for instance, also believe in a Loving God. But he invaded Iraq and killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and destroyed a great country. Now he continues to assert not only what did was right but also that God had asked him to invade Iraq. It is obvious that warmongers and powerful rulers exploit and misuse the name of God that has different names in different languages or religions for their political and military objectives. Unfortunately, God does not stop them from doing so. So, there is no point in complaining about some attributes of God when in reality we should be more concerned with those who commit the crimes against others and our struggle to stop them. The faults lies with us, not God. (Here I am using the term ‘God’ that is commonly understood by the vast majority of people in the world. Whether there is any such entity or not is a different question that people may discuss at length in some other place.)
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1 Comment
Gods and religions have been easy and flexible instruments to use. In the hands of the rulers and powerful clergy for the last few thousand years they have been malleable to the extant that one could use them for contradictory objectives at the same time! For example, on the one hand you can find divine exhortations to kill your enemy remorselessly, but on the other hand there is also moral advice that you should show mercy to a suffering person ‘because god likes merciful people’! Both gods and religions have also justificatory roles. People can justify any barbarity, any massacre of the innocent or any major crime in the name of a god or a religion. No problem for many in this. Most people are quite happy with such explanations.