Prolly not, but some of the most hostile people I know are either deeply religious, or claim to be so.

I do however know some people who are antagonistic without religion in their lives and some who are religious and have no evil bones in them at all.

On the whole however, I honestly truly believe that religion as a concept does not create evil actions, its the doubtful among them that does.

Talk about a dog chasing its own tail.. Religion may or may not cause hatred but I think of the two.. "World peace" and "removing religion"... that achieving world peace would be easier to obtain.

Thats a new twist on the immovable object striking the unstoppable force.

i saw footage of a man being arrested at gun point on the news i guess there taking no chances.

I somehow doubt they just woke up one day read their Qu'ran and said. You know I should go blow up people. More likely an influencial human being 'inspired' them to do this. These people aren't crazies, they aren't uneducated, they usually come from well respected backgrounds with good families. They're murdering because of an idea, not "Let's make people hurt". With the exception of psychopaths, who take pleasure in pain and hurt, people tend to avoid killing one another. They're murderers but they're not psychopaths.

What do jihadists want? What everyone wants, what everyone is willing to die for, they want a Eutopia. Problem is they think a Eutopia (No crime, immorality, or pain) can only be attained on this earth through stringent rules, imposed social order. What does wester culture offer? We put mostly naked women on magazine covers, We turn a "blind eye" to all manner of self deprication. To a muslim eye, we are sin, we are unjust, we are might I say.... evil? But Aren't we? We definetely aren't a Eutopia.

Every rational human being has the same goal... a better world. We all: Democrats, Republicans, atheists, Christians, Muslims, Americans and Chinese are striving to make the world better. The problem is when our methodology conflicts. Western Culture: Personal Freedom (but to what extent?) Theocracy: Stringent moral guidelines (but how lenient?) Capitalism: Survival of the fittest. Communism: Equality regardless of quality. Capitalism, and Communism are mostly mutually exclusive, Conflict arises.

Conflict isn't over "my god's name is Bob yours is Jim prepare to die". There is no conflict in that situation. There is a conflict over. "My beliefs say that a bikini leads me to impure relationships, you're blatantly trying to destroy my way of life, I must defend it." Fanaticism is when the result justifies the means. Fanticism knows know religion, ideology or philosophy, all it knows, is that "I am right, and I know this for a fact."

Wester Culture has succeeded for a large part when we are willing to allow damage to our society, because we allow open dialogue about problems. Only when we close our minds does our ideology break down. But that's just a world view that the western mind has developed, is it absolutely true? At what point do we have to say "no, that is absolutely wrong." We do say this, we decide suicide bombings are absolutely wrong, they threaten our way of life, and so we exact "justice". "Well they hit us first." Just be aware, every suicide bomber, is murdering for the exact same reason we drop a bomb: To protect our way of life. Almost every great war is a mutual act of self defense. Someone is going to die at the end of this one. Either western relativism in it's socioeconomic form, or radical Conservative structure and absolutes. Which one is right? At this point it doesn't matter, the fight will come to an end with a victor.

Don't call them psychopaths, don't call them crazies, they know what they're doing, and they're doing it not for a Religion, God or Country. They're doing for the Future. They're fighting for Heaven. To quote Morpheus "Isn't that worth fighting for, isn't that worth dieing for."

We are all Combatants, I believe Bush and Osama are right, each of our lives fight for a world view, and a culture which inherently disrupts and threatens the opposing world view.

When the terrorists are all dead, or when "Freedom" has been squashed, there'll just be another batch of death, another round of war, over the same conflicts, the same reasons, in a different place and a different time. 50 odd Londoners died early, another 50 will step up into their place on both sides soon enough. And so the world goes round.....

the answer to all problems would be just to accept each others way of life. if what im.thatoneguy says is true, that we are all trying to protect our own way of life, then would it not be sensible to just accept how each other live? those few islamic and other fundamentalists have blantantly stated in many ways 'we hate the west'. if they accepted our way of life and went about their own they would have no reason to cause death and destruction. the same goes for us west countries as well. though i dont think that the war on iraq was a protection of our way of life. sure it helped out the people in iraq, and that is still debateable, but there was no real danger to our way of life. this time i believe it was an act to get ahead. but i fully support that. we need to do what we need to do to get ahead in life. it is the basic instinct, survival and prospering. what better way then making ones country rich by invading another and taking its oil? fundamentalists are just the same. they have a set of beliefs that say: these people are infidels we cannot achieve paradise unless we get rid of them. there it is. paradise for death of others or hell for peace. they are just trying to get ahead like the rest of us. its a protection of a way of life that will succeed them to eternal happiness. but if they learned an ideology that accepted each other but still got them ahead then we would all be happy. they should just be content that they are going to heaven and were going straight to hell without eradicating innocent people.

I agree with pretty much everything you said. I just would like to further clarify a few things. I am sudgesting that the reason that terrorists carry out these attacks is out of a percieved self threat.

We can barely understand just how much our culture has changed theirs. It's not a matter of just closing your eyes and letting "American be america" America inevitably infects everyone around them. America is "Cool". Essentially the wester way of life is invading every single TV connected nation in the world, it was inevitable, but dont' believe for a second, that people are just going to sit by and watch everything they came to know and trust be upset and disorganized by some unstoppable, undetectable social infection.

People aren't blowing up buildings simply because of a dispute about which God is better. Capitalism or Islam. They're blowing up buildings because we're destroying their way of life... I'm not going to make a morality call on whether the dismantling of a centuries old society is positive or negative, but it is happening. If the american social structure became outclassed by a new progressive philosphy that tended to have more sucess and said new hypothetical super culture began to radically change America... A good number of NRA card toting Americans would be infiltrating the alien culture in an attempt to fight back, to defend the sunday BBQ.

I think batman had a great line about the concept of what you're saying about religion. You can kill a man, but you can't stop an ideology. It's true, you can't kill an idea nearly as easily as one persuasive man, but just listen to AM Talk Radio to hear very pursuasive radical viewports every morning. There isn't one centre to a well established ideology, the only reason the Nazi Regime fell with hitler is because he only had time to pursuade one generation, if the regime had lasted another 40 years, the P2P ideology would have been unstoppable. Call it a religion, I just call it an idea. Religions just being one small subset of the ideas that start conflict.