Summary Of Is Religion Killing Us By Jack Nelson-Palsmeyer

Normally, people look at religion as a tool for peace and rarely associate it with violence. In reality, religion has been used as a tool to justify violence for centuries. In the book called ‘Is Religion Killing Us?’, the author, Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, critically examines the sacred scriptures of the major religions including Christianity, Islam, and Judaism to unveil despicable portraits of a violent God. According to Pallmeyer, each sacred text is dominated by what he calls ‘violence-of-God-tradition’. He does not believe that the texts directly instigate the human violence, but they justify the use of violence amid the conflicts in which antagonistic parties see religious differences as divisions. Importantly, Pallmeyer considers religion

For instance, the main message of the Quran is to believe that there is no God but God and Muhammad is God's prophet. In other words, Allah is the only god and Quran is the final revelation of God and everyone should abide by what the book and the prophet says. This monotheistic view is dangerous as it provides justification for violence against other religious groups that do not share the same beliefs. In addition, due to these violent images of God and the strict rules, it is difficult to argue that Osama bin Laden is distorting the text to justify his actions. His theology and his actions are reasonable based on the sacred texts that he

These conflicts are not just based on class, religion is also a big contributor. Karl Marx’s conflict theory can be applied to violence associated with religion to better understand it. According to the theory, the society is divided into the hierarchy of classes and prevents the lower classes from rising above and eventually people will fight and overthrow the oppressors or the upper-class. In terms of religion, people accept the suffering in hope for a better next life promised by the religious scriptures. However, eventually people will revolt and try to rise eradicate the sufferings which will lead to a cycle similar to Pallmeyer’s concept of the spiral of violence. One of the most recent evidence of the spiral of violence can be seen in the events that followed the terrorist attack of September 11. There has been an ongoing cycle of violence between the Islamic extremists and Western