CJ Werleman is a guest contributor to DailyAtheist.net

With the after effects in Haiti still being calculated, in terms of human life and property, in the wake of one of the most devastating natural disasters ever recorded, media attention has all but turned a blind eye to the man made events unfolding in Nigeria at this very moment. While Pat Robertson waxes lyrical with his claims that the Haitian earthquake is the by-product of a pact between that nation’s former Christian leaders and the Devil, another estimated four hundred have been slain, on the other side of the world, because of what another person believes about God.

Reuters, yesterday, placed the estimate of slaughtered Muslims to total 364 during the past week alone, with the death toll on the Christian side yet to be officially determined. Whatever the numbers are, on both sides, we can be sure they will rise steadily over the course of the coming days.

Nigeria is a nation with a population of more than 140 million people, with the country’s religiosity fairly much divided between the Christian south, and a predominantly Muslim north. The epicenter of this conflict is approximately 124 miles from the Nigerian capital, Abuja, in the city of Jos. At the heart of the dispute is a mosque being built on Christian turf, and the memory of a Catholic church razed to the ground last year. The dispute has displace more than 16,000 people in the last week alone, and threatens to escalate. Have we already forgotten Rwanda?

(Preemptive strike) Theists and religious apologists can play the nuance game of attaching Hitler and Stalin to the face of atheism all they wish – but we know this to be a historically flawed argument. Without going too far down this ‘rabbit hole’, Hitler was raised a Catholic and never denounced his faith, while Stalin was a dictator, and one can’t be in the dictator business without cultivating a God like cult of personality. The point is that history, and current times, lay the footprints of human t0 human slaughter at the doorstep of religious belief.

Moreover, why should we mournfully shake our heads in disbelief at the violence taking place there when a read of their respective texts makes it clear how God feels about religious tolerance and freedom:

“If you hear it said about one of the towns the LORD your God is giving you to live in that wicked men have arisen among you and have led the people of their town astray, saying, “Let us go and worship other gods” (gods you have not known), then you must inquire, probe and investigate it thoroughly. And if it is true and it has been proved that this detestable thing has been done among you,  you must certainly put to the sword all who live in that town. Destroy it completely, both its people and its livestock. Gather all the plunder of the town into the middle of the public square and completely burn the town and all its plunder as a whole burnt offering to the LORD your God. It is to remain a ruin forever, never to be rebuilt.” (Deuteronomy 13:12-16)

“Slay them wherever you find them. Drive them out of the places from which they drove you. Idolatry is worse than carnage. If they attack you put them to the sword. Thus shall the unbelievers be rewarded: but if they desist, God is forgiving and merciful. Fight against them until idolatry is no more and God’s religion reigns supreme. But if they desist, fight none except the evildoers.” (Koran: 2:190-93)

We need a collective mind-shift. We need to stop viewing these kinds of religiously motivated atrocities as acts of mindless, pathological violence. It is not! It is a truism that men and women turn to religion in times of great stress and social anxiety, for these men and women they turn to the Koran and the Bible as a means of solace and moral advice. What they find in these texts are only reasons to exterminate their neighbors, and absolutely nothing that can help mend their fences.

Isn’t it time we finally grew up and called a spade a spade? That being that an additional 400 lives have been laid to waste for what, based on scripture, pleases the God of Abraham.

Inevitably mankind will be faced with choosing from one of two options – either we grow up or we die.

CJ Werleman

Author ‘God Hates You. Hate Him Back’ (Making Sense of the Bible)

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