Any healthy, reasonably intelligent person who has reached an age at least five years beyond adolescence and spends even a little time thinking about issues beyond meeting basic personal needs for food and shelter can figure out the difference between what is real and what doesn’t make even a little bit of sense. Implications (or intimations) of immortality strewn throughout every issue of every daily newspaper are seldom questioned or challenged.  Religion as motivation and reason for action is routinely accepted as logical therefore reasonable explanation. Where’s the logic in an explanation without objection for mass murder committed because a religious group declares their belief that God has commanded that it be done.  According to John Brennan, CIA director, we can expect more frequent and more sophisticated terrorism attacks against Europe the United States because Qaida operatives based in Syria have brought to that troubled country “a wide range of skills to the battlefield, such as bomb-building, small-arms tactics, logistics, religious indoctrination and planning.”  It’s the “religious indoctrination” bit as explanation for why bomb-building, small-arms tactics, and logistics are designed to destroy people that should move to the center of the thinking of every individual in the every civilized community.  

Perhaps disarmament could begin at the most basic level... with what we refuse to encourage our children to believe... with religion... with indoctrination... with confirmation. What a different world ours would be if all religions could manage to expunge from their basic doctrines every idea that encourages hurting any person... not just physical hurting but emotional hurting any person.  It’s bad enough for adults to communicate to children their personal bigotry, their biases; but when adults systematically use religion to encourage children to worship a god who, they are told, despises and rejects people... and plans their destruction...  Wow!   Think about it.

Christians who believe it’s a problem with other religions but not theirs may want to go see the anticipated blockbuster NOAH before they take their children to see the movie.