As I'm sure everyone is well aware, God's name has been used as a justification for war for a very long time. However I hadn't considered the implications of this until I read an article entitled "The Gospel according to Dubya" on a site called Killing the Buddha.

Ok, so it's a weird name for a website ( I swear I didn't know about it when I came up for the title of my site). It's sort of an anti-religion site but basically it just has a lot of editorials to peruse. I kind of stumbled upon it yesterday and thought with a name like Killing the Buddha, there's gotta be some pretty good stuff to blog about. But anyways, back to the article.

The main point of the column was to give examples of the duplicitous nature of Jesus from the bible and how George Bush used these examples in his 2000 campaign. A lot of Christians quote the peacenik side of Jesus and while does this, he also quotes a fiercer, war-mongering Jesus.

While the article fails at being objective, it still made me intrigued about how humans can use religion as a cause for violence. It's clear that it is used when another person/people violate the beliefs the other holds. Terrorists certainly violate morals that the majority of Americans hold. Then why would Bush feel the need to use Jesus as a means for justification? If by saying it's what Jesus would have wanted, Bush can gain backing by the christian right, but are all the other religions and beliefs supposed to follow along? Perhaps it relates to the elements of Religion we discussed in class. I think Bush was trying to make a tighter-knit community, but in reality, made most secular citizens wary. Whatever the reason, it is hard to say whether religion should be used as a means for war, I say no, but the world thus far is disagreeing.