I must add, your assertion that people 'choose' to follow a particular religion is false. A child who grows up knowing only one religion and has literally the fear of God put into them to follow it every step of the way does not have a 'choice'.

I agree with that which is why I was talking about people who choose to follow a faith as opposed to those who have it hammered into them from birth.

I'm off for the night, not well at the minute and my brains got the hump and doesn't want to come out to play. Catch you all anon!  xx

 night night Karms take good care 

Night Karma, off meself now. Night all

He's either dead or incapable of doing anything anymore. When is the world going to wake up that the thread has gone? Osama Bin Laden has been the nightmare for the last decade, he is no more. Can we move on and concentrate on other things rather than being bombed out of oblivion?

Curious thing to say.

If you mean my comment, consider this: We've had some incredible terrorist action, which we all find difficult to believe and take in, nothing other than some feeble attempts have happened since then. They know that they have us under their thumb because we have changed our way of life to avoid them. That surely is the ultimate victory. If he's still around (I doubt it very much), he'll be sitting there rubbing his hands at the distruction he is causing in people's daily lives without even doing anything.

I don't disagree with that.  I meant the conviction that the threat is gone.  That I find a curious thing to be so sure about.  Particularly considering Al Qaeda is/was as much an idea as an actual hierarchical entity.  And the concepts underpinning Al Qaeda are clearly still in existence.

The threat will come from somewhere else if not from them. Where religion exists, lunatics exist. I'm not trying to offend anyone with religious leanings but ultimately apart from two world wars most of the evil done in the world is in the name of religion.

I am.  If you believe in God you're either insane, stupid or a coward.

Well, there's that...

I probably worded that wrong. Terrorist threats are never gone. I remember all the stuff going on in Cologne with Baader Meinhoff kidnapping well known people and not really being interested in the money, hence they killed them. What I'm saying is that we have all bowed down to some religious freak when really the thread will be ongoing from somewhere at any given time, if it's not al quaida it's some other purile group of idiots. Anybody can construct a bomb nowadays, do we really have to capitulate?

I believed, until my early thirties!  

Quite.

Not quite true that, of course.  Stalins 20 million and Maos god knows how many (<---ahhh, the irony) might have a word to say about that.

It's easy enough to change religion for idealogy. Same thing in many ways.

I get your point but it's still all done proudly in the name of brainwashing and indoctrination and ruling and setting the rules through fear.