my thoughts: This question or something similar is asked every single day.

It's how progress is made. Makes you wonder about progress, huh?

I think these consequences were more or less inevitable anyway. I think the real dynamic which drives group identity and survival is more subtle than "religion makes people cluster and kill". There's biological evolution, and there's cultural evolution -- they're similar in many respects. Biological evolution tends to produce organisms and groups who will kill to survive or advance their interests. Cultural evolution tends to produce 'memes' which will kill to survive or advance their interests. A group clumping around an ideology, demonizing other groups, and killing them... that's cultural evolution at work -- the tyranny of the memes, as Dawkins says. Even if one was able to push a red button and disprove the idea that people are fighting for, I don't think it would make much difference to the overall systemic behavior. To actually get some new outcome requires the emergence of a new basic causal condition... something powerful enough to override the divide-and-conquer mechanism. I think cultural evolution itself is capable of generating that new condition, and I think it's already in progress. The explosion of communication technology is the key enabler, I think, for the development of 'world identity' -- the notion that each of us is a member of the extended group called 'humanity'. Communication technology increasingly puts the world in our face, and over time it does not take a genius to conclude that we are all interconnected. As that simple and seemingly obvious idea becomes more widely accepted, it should act as an immunizing agent which protects the population from ideas which only want to divide and kill. That's the hope, anyway.

And, he did all that with a severe speech impediment.

I think it displays the ignorance and gullibility of people in general. Bush succeeded in uniting Americans to fight this war without citing any evidence that Osama bin Laden was behind it, with the only exception a video that has been WIDELY criticized for possibly not being legitimate. Yet, Americans generally accept he was behind the attacks. My only question to this is, who benefitted the most? Was it bin Laden? Or was it the military industry contractors such as Halliburton and Xe (formerly Blackwater)? . The only answer is education. But that doesn't mean telling people how things are, but how to think for themselves. Get them to be able to consider both sides of every argument. To find the person who benefits the most from every situation, is to find motive for the original cause. Secrecy within gov't does nothing beneficial for the country as a whole, but keeps benefitting the wealthy.

My opinion? Moses was either delusional or a liar. We are told that God speaks to many people and they use that justification to go to war, become racists/bigots, tell lies just so their side will "win". Many today would have us believe they do as they do because "God told me to"...you have the famous evangelical preachers tell us that God talks to them daily. My opinion? I don't believe a word of it. I talk to God daily and he has never spoken to me. Are they are better than I am in God's eyes? I don't think so. That's my opinion! :) Happy Wednesday! :)

I think that burning bush was just some pot or some poppy and he went a little crazy from too much drugs. The part that interests me about that story is how they stayed in the desert until the next generation was born and "ready", and only entered the land they claim to be theirs after. The whole thing about how/what happened in Egypt could have been something made up by the parents and anyone who didn't go along wit he story would be stoned as well. Similar to that movie The Village. If any of this myth are true he was a fit ruler for the times in my book... its not like things have changed much in some countries around there.

Leaving aside for a moment the false calumny that he ordered anyone who disagreed with him to be killed, and the other on false charge (that "He speaks only through me": Moses certainly acknowledged others to have the gift of prophecy, and indeed all of Israel heard God Himself decree the commandments from Sinai; furthermore Moses never said God spoke through him but TO him AND (in the Tabernacle) in the presence of others who were listening to the conversation) ... Suffer? I'd say blessed by them. So would about two billion other people on the planet, even many who aren't Jewish, Christian, or Moslem. Also, your objections become worse than baseless if Moses was telling the truth. And in point of fact, Moses acquired his authority from God, and convinced the Israelites of it through the 10 plagues, the parting of the Red Sea, the Mana from heaven, and many other signs ... and yet the Israelites were ALWAYS questioning his authority. Have you ever even read Exodus and Numbers?