Is that preferable to a secular totalitarian regime?
Mr. Carl makes excellent points. Religion has been a medium of extremism historically – that’s indisputable. But Western imperialism and its attendant rapacious extraction of resources from under- and undeveloped nations has contributed enormously to centuries of human misery and suffering as well. The utterly amoral quest for personal and corporate riches, for power, and for global dominance – a quest quite without theology – has engendered much of the world’s reaction whether that reaction is couched in religious or secular terms. Much of the American extremist community purports to be ‘Christian’ – much of it could not care less about religion. The White Aryan Resistance (WAR) is atheistic while other groups such as the Army of God promulgate terror in the name of religion. Extremism and terror don’t need religion to operate, and when they do embrace a religious motivation, it is too often a massive corruption of the very principles behind which they hide. Extremists are a poor test
