Afghan Troops Killed in Bus Bomb – Truth Annihilated in Government Response:

At least 31 people have now died after a bomb tore through a bus carrying Afghan soldiers in the country's capital, Kabul. The Taliban said it carried out the attack, and told Al Jazeera it was carried out by a 28-year-old suicide bomber. Hamid Karzai, the president, said: "It was an act of extreme cowardice on the part of those that committed it. The person who did this was against humanity, and against Islam."

We will have to re-write the dictionaries, specifically the definition of “coward” when a 28 year old man is designated a coward because he is so sincere in his religious beliefs that he gives his life, uses himself as a weapon, blows himself up as a suicide bomber in his fight against what he perceives to be the enemy of his God.

Will those fighting the War Against Terror never have courage to admit and accept that people can be, and are, inspired to total sincerity and stupendous acts of courage by philosophy based entirely upon a lie; and that lie is ... that we know God / Allah / Jehovah exists.

Ironically, suicide bombers show themselves to be more sincere and more physically courageous in their misguided beliefs, in this war of religion, than the religious George Bush and Tony Blair and their equally religious followers (at least half of “secular” America and probably the same percentage in “secular” Britain).

The likes of Bush and Blair, and now President Karzai of Afghanistan, do not even have the courage to admit that this is a religious war, a war of religion. They farcically, and conveniently, insist that no suicide bomber, no “terrorist”, could be Islamic, nor even religious, because Islamic people are peaceful. History is indeed, and oh so conveniently, dead.

Apart from America’s understandable but misguided determination to be the behind the scenes controller of the oil rich middle east, this war continues, not because of what divides both sides, but because of what both sides have so much in common: an equally cowardly denial of the dishonesty that lies at the heart of their religious “beliefs”.

Comments

[Andrew]

What do you think of Richard Dawkins as a purveyor of common sense? Maybe that's a leading question...

[LS]

I haven't read any of his stuff though I've seen a couple of interviews and, in those interviews, Dawkins seems to be on the side of intellectual and spiritual courage and honesty as opposed to the intellectual and spiritual cowardice and dishonesty of theism. Naturally I applaud that.

As for “common sense”, the term is sadly discredited. It's the kind of cynical, generality politicians (both secular and religious) use to label, thus flatter, the audience, who are meant to believe it implies there is excellence in their absurd, self-serving, beliefs.

If it is common sense that convinces people God / Allah / Jehovah etc exists __ then we need more un-common sense.

If it is common sense that tells people they should vote for the candidate who flatters them most and is qualified to lead because he or she loops the mantra, “I’m a family woman (or man), I believe in God, I love my country, I won’t raise taxes and you, we and our country are the greatest in the world __ then we need more un-common sense, urgently.

[Andrew]

I agree. I accept your point about common sense. I was using the term 'common sense' in its most naive form; water is wet, fire is hot etc...

Dawkins makes many points that I consider valid, but I see many 'devout' atheists that seem to deify him! A little odd, I suppose. (Speaking as a non-practicing atheist)
;-)