I'm sorry, restin, for comming off in such an inflammatory way. Such is the nature of posting on the Internet. I'm a very shy person, but when on the net, well... not so much.
When I was younger, my parents took me to church with them every Sunday. I would sing, go to bible study class, read it and the stories. This went on for quite a number of years. I'm not saying I'm an expert and I'm not saying I know everything about Christianity. Quite the opposite. It's a long and old book, and a proper study of it would take much more time than I care to give. I just want to say that I'm not totally ignorant of some of the ideals.
There are some great things associated with Christianity that I remember.
I noticed how many people found a community that loved and cared for them. Some people in our church previously had no friends, were all alone with no family and no support. They came to the church to find an entire group of people to call friends. It some ways, it really brought people together.
I remember the way the church would use money from collections to buy food to feed the homeless and the poor. There was a large kitchen staffed by church volunteers that would cook and distribute food to anyone who came in on that needed a meal.
There actually are some great consequences of religion, but most of these seem to happen on a small scale. A few little groups spread out over the world trying to be kind to others, and note, mostly seem to be kind to others in their local communities.
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However, there are just so many other terrible consequences as well. The wars have been mentioned. Oh, sooo many wars. The crusades, the inquisition in the Americas and all the other holy wars. The Palestinians and Israelis are still killing each other. Jews and Arabs fighting it out to the death.
I know many will claim otherwise, but I just don't think Bush would have invaded and killed hundreds of thousands of Christian people in a Christian nation. Bush had is own war against the Israli people, and managed to get his mostly Christian nation to go along with it. I don't think most Americans would have supported killing other Christians.
And Iraq can't even come together and reunite to rebuild itself because of religion. The main groups of people there practising Sunni Islam and Shia Islam can't even come together, and they all practice a form of the same basic Islamic religion! I mean, wow.
Religions seem to unite people into a community where people love and care for the other members. But it also creates two groups. Members and non-members. And guess what tends to happen between the two groups? Fighting and war.
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On the small scale it seems like religions create nice communities, and on the larger scale, it seems like just another form of nationalism, with the nation being the religion.
Nation against nation, religion against religion. Everyone thinks their country is the best country in the world and will defend it to the death, and everyone thinks that their religion is the best and the only "one true religion" and will fight to defend it to the death.
I think the Christians in the US think they are right, their religion is the best, and forcing it and it's ideals on everyone through the enacting of new laws will make the world a better place. They don't care about my desire to drink beer on Sunday, because it's their holy day, it's wrong in their eyes, and they think it's a sin. I mean, they know the one true way, right? Same with the porn, the drugs, the extra "fuck you" zone around the churches that punish the sinners extra harsh because they sinned within a certain radius of their "holy building". Just so many of these laws seem based on the "me and my group are right and you are wrong" mentality.
What's so wrong with, we will do what we do on our own time and own property as long as it doesn't harm you, and you can do what you want on your property as long as it doesn't harm me? It's not there, because most Christians know they have "the one true way" and to allow anything else is allowing evil.
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I'm just so sick of it all. I want it all to end. I want all the little cliques that think they're the best to go away. I want all the countries who's only existence serves to war with other countries (sometimes I even look at you, USA) to go away.
I know ranting about it does nothing. I know it will never change. It's human nature to form groups and cliques. Though, in the first tribes in early society, I bet the cliques were small. Family groups. Later that probably grew to tribes of closely related families. Then tribes merged into towns, cities, states, even countries. It seems that over time, the group size of humans seems to grow. I only hope that one day, our ability to form ever larger groups will put us all in the same group, so we can stop killing and oppressing those in other groups. There will hopefully be no other groups. Just the one group, "humanity".
One can dream anyway.
Cyber hugs are a little to complex 
