Prescription for peace

Atanu Dey has a post on the incident involving the recent destruction of a Buddha statue in Swat, Pakistan and recalls an earlier instance in 2001, when the Taliban destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanisthan.

“Nothing new here, That Islam mandated destruction of cultural and religious artifacts is really old hat” he says, painting all its followers with one broad sweep of his brush.

Elsewhere, in the blogosphere, Scott Adams of Dilbert fame, provokes his readers with this argument :

"America lives in fear of terrorist attacks. Most terrorists are Islamic who cannot co-exist with other belief systems. It really doesn’t matter to Americans what religion they belong to. There is no connection between religion and happiness, as there is clear evidence that happy people are found in every religion. So, if Americans are rational, they should all become moderate, peace-loving Muslims. Their happiness would stay the same, and Osama wouldn’t have as much reason to nuke them". QED.

But, as Richard Dawkins and others have argued, religion in any form is inherently divisive. At the level and size of a tribal society, religion may have been a unifiying force, but in a world that seeks globalisation, religion tends to split people and foster tribal behaviour, rather than bringing them together. Even in a world where there is only one religion, there would be intra-religious disputes among different sects.

So, religion must go. Atheism is the answer . Atheism, as in "no religion". Belief in God can be independent of religion.

But, even in an atheistic world, people will still fight over territories and turfs. Too bad. Nationalism must go. There should be one boundary-less world as visible from Space.

Alas, in an atheistic, geographically united world, the Karunanidhis would raise their shrill voices over language. Tamil vs Hindi; English vs French, etc.

Too bad. Language must go too. Won't make much difference, let me tell you. As the Brittanica blogger told us, all the text created in human history is good enough only in a closed system; outside that system it doesn't make any sense.

So, here's my simple formula for a peaceful world. No religion, no nationality, no language.