Humanity’s three deadliest inventions

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What are humanity’s three deadliest inventions?

Dynamite? Guns? The atomic bomb?

How about religion, race, and nationality?

The first three are tools. The second three are ideas.

Ideas that have no concrete base in reality.

It is deadly ideas that influence people to pick up deadly tools. If you don’t believe me, read a history book or two. Or just turn on the news.

Some believe that religion, race, and nationality unite people. They don’t. They divide.

When you feel that you belong to a religion, race, or nationality, it is hard not to believe that your group is better than all others. In order for your group to be better, other groups have to be worse.

At best, this is an attitude of prejudice. At worst, it leads to war and the loss of millions of lives, the destruction of communities, and anger that, of course, leads to more war.

Some of you out there don't think you can live without these things.

Without my religion, I would not know how to be a good person.

Without my race, I wouldn’t have a place to belong.

Without my nationality, I wouldn’t have something bigger than myself to believe in.

You can have all of those things without religion, race, and/or nationality.

Good without a god. Belonging without discriminating by skin color. A cause without a nation.

It's about damn time we start.