Do people today not know what a war is?

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Which had more casualties, the entire war in Iraq and Afghanistan, or June 6th 1944 on the shores of France?

well as of now the wars

Thousands died in one hour on the Normandy beaches.

Marines were killed at a rate of one every few seconds on Iwo Jima.

Making the war more palatable with laser guided bombs and unmanned drones resulted in fewer casualties on the military side. But it lead to more frequent use of force and higher civilian casualties.

War is hell regardless of who's fighting it, or why, or how many casualties.

Perhaps someday we'll find a peaceful solution to our differences. Or not. I really don't know.

But if war continues into a distant future, it will eventually result in complete annihilation of this entire planet.

Wait until some future terrorist group obtains an anti-matter bomb. :-/

I would agree that the definition of a war has changed, partly because figures and information is distributed so quickly. The other part... and this is disturbing to me, because I don't like the implication but cannot find historical argument... is that there are only two possible successful solutions in warfare between social or cultural groups - assimilation or extermination. Occupation is at best a temporary solution that most often predisposes both sides to further conflict. Nasty aspect of human nature.


M.

Only way to achieve this, is to give everybody equal rights to the same education, eradicate all religion and any other baseless superstition and evenly distribute all available resources.

By that time, my grand children are living on Mars. No wait! I will never have children.

Not necessarily. For the kingdom of Judah, they were conquered by the Babylonians in 586BC when Jerusalem fell and they were shipped off to Babylon where they were intended to be assimilated while in Exile. However, they came out of that about 70 years later due to Darius of the Medio-Persian empire. The Greeks and Selucids also tried assimilating them, and failed. The Romans were primarily a policing force in the areas under their control, but due to Emperor Titus in 70AD the Jewish people were dispersed again. Then there was Hitler with the craptastic final solution, which thankfully failed. And now Israel exists again. The Jewish people are at least an anomaly to this notion based on history.

Okay Comrade, but this sounds like a plan from Joseph Stalin to me.

Assimilation only counts when successful, otherwise it leads to the other option. The early Roman conquests were some of the rare examples of where that strategy worked. Overwhelmingly, peoples have resorted to obliteration to remove the "threat" perceived in another people or group. Your point with Israel is pretty much the epitome of what I see; if between to warring groups, one of those two approaches is not successfully implemented, then resurgence and renewal will ultimately occur. Just my personal perspective.


M.

I never said it was doable. Note that I'm not a communist and prefer not to be thought of as one either. Though I'm very much against capitalism too.

Ah, then economically you and I would have similar views as I hate the examples of capitalism I've worked for, ok primarily Wal-Fart, and communism gives the government too much control of each individual. However, eliminating religion involves eliminating the proponents of the religions or at least a very efficient form of secular indoctrination, neither of which I would be fond of seeing implemented as one would be brain-removal and the other brain-washing.

I know a lot of wars have been fought over differences in religion. I know in many places, there is still strife that at least uses religion as it's excuse, even if that is not the real reason. However, I seriously doubt that eradicating religion is a good solution; in fact, I doubt it's even viable. Many people in the Soviet Union continued to practice their religion in secret; the same is probably true in some parts of China and other modern Communist nations. You see, to many, many people, religion is not baseless superstition.

I'm not going to castigate anyone who hates religion. My own husband despises and mocks organized religion every chance he gets, whereas I am a Protestant Christian. However, having had personal experience of G-d, I do not feel that my faith is baseless, nor do I feel it is a superstition like tossing salt over one's shoulder or a black cat crossing one's path. (No offense to anyone who does believe in those superstitions.)

I think your suggestion about education is an excellent one, but could that education not include understanding other religions? Not teaching any one religion as the "one, true way," but a bit like the World Religion course I took in college that helped me decide my major would be Religion (rather than English). I think if we were all better educated about religion and religious practice and the tenets of other religions, we would be more accepting. Humanity doesn't like what we doesn't understand, because things we don't understand scare us -- I believe the opposite is true as well. When we understand, we are no longer scared, and no longer have that knee-jerk dislike. What we need is broad-minded education that values thinking over response...that, IMHO, would be a big step towards peace.

No, I honestly think religion can be eliminated by educating everybody.

~

You should watch Scooby-Doo, That show was so cool -
Because every time there was a church with a ghoul,
or a ghost in a school,
they looked beneath the mask. And what was inside?
The f*****g janitor, or the dude who ran the water slide.

Because throughout history,
every mystery, ever solved,
has turned out to be -
NOT MAGIC.

Excerpt from "Storm" by Tim Minchin

~

Yes, we don't know all the answers, and we probably never will if we would be realistic about it. But in a hypothetical thought experiment, using logic and given infinite time, nothing is really a mystery. Every time we pass a knowledge boundary, we purge that position void of God and superstition - because there is no question, we will acquire empirical proof about anything - even if there is a close to infinite amount of something. Given infinite time, it's 100% logical to assume that God and superstition will be moved to an infinitesimally insignificant position - if not a perfect nil. Therefore, I can already be bold enough to say that God is logically impossible.

Edit: But this is not the religion forum... See? Now you've got me going. I'll stop now.

Last edited by Kenjuudo on 05 May 2010, 5:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I think that what happened on the shores of Normandy constitutes of a war.

Starship Troopers puts it well:

It doesn't really matter if you buy the farm during peacekeeping or limited offensive operations compared to total war. Same thing to the person there.

You can buy the farm just sitting at home, or while napping too, we all eventually do. Death comes to meet us all, the question is how, not if.

Yeah, but war is war; the two way range.

Whether it's arrows whooshing or bullets cracking without abandon, and felt justification by a group of people; this is different to dying at "home".