Tuesday:

> If everyone followed the teachings there would be no war but not everyone is going to follow so what do we do to protect ourselves.

There is no solution because religion is a tool in the hands of the wealthy and the powerful. As long as there is religion there will be those who abuse it and exploit it for their own ends.

Communists tried to solve it by getting rid of religion completely. When the Soviet Union came into Afghanistan they tried to change that place, but between the CIA and Mujahideen the Soviet Union failed and now we have the Taliban and Al Qaida (both the Mujahideen's bastard children). Interestingly, at the time the US saw it as its duty to stop the Godless communists (obviously out of some sense of Christian duty).

The Communist solution (elimination of religion) was bound to fail because without religion people feel lost. People need to believe in something other than the physical world. Without God there is no salvation, and people fear death and non-existence more than anything else. It is that fear that is used by the powerful to manipulate the masses. "If you do what I, your religious leader, say, you will go to Heaven. If you don't, you will be damned in the fires of hell."

Christianity is not immune. And these days we replace religion with ideology. "If you don't go to war, your freedom and democracy will end and you will be condemned to anarchy and dictatorship." "If you don't go to war, socialism and the revolution will end and you will be condemned to capitalist exploitation and the abuses of the bourgeosie." It is all the same thing, fear packaged under different wording.