Fights over competing allegorical and symbolic concepts have been going on for hundreds of thousands of years, and still are. ;-) People's problem is, they take their chosen symbols of tribe, nation, religion, culture, and identity WAY too seriously...and fail to respect other people's symbols of the same things.

The same is true in sports events, actually. You take 50,000 fairly normal people, get them all hyped up over some nonsense like two hockey teams named "The Flames" and "The Broncos" (or whatever the hell name someone chose for them)...and those fairly normal people will paint the team symbols on their faces, yell obscenities at the Ref and each other, get into fights with the players, riot, destroy property, and generally make complete asses of themselves over something that, frankly, is arbitrary, was made-up by someone, and doesn't matter anyway. Heh!

How is that much different in sentiment from wars based on ideology or religion? It's different in degree, but not in sentiment.

You're dead right about the nutbars at the Jesus Camp, Clinton. What I do with people like that is...I avoid them if at all possible. Likewise, I avoid little mobs of drunken, hell-raising idiot sports fans who are mad because their team just lost the big game...

I do my best to avoid all literal-minded zealots, whatever the heck their zealotry is based on.

Buck - The religious figure or icon (as shown in a statue, a painting, a representation of a god, a goddess, a saint, or any form of holy symbol) can represent just about anything. As to what it does represent in any one case, you'd have to ask the person who reveres it, I suppose...if they're given thought to the matter.

Statues of Buddhas normally represent the original teacher of Buddhism, Guatama Buddha...or they may represent various other Buddhas (enlightened people) who came after him in that tradition, and they can also represent qualities of the conscious mind, such as serenity, peace, compassion, wisdom, etc. As such, they serve as a focal point for other people to pay respect to the tradition or to focus upon while trying to meditate and reach enlightenment themselves, I would think. They are meant to inspire what they represent.

Really, the use of such symbols is endless in its variety.

Look at all the political symbols in use by America: the flag, the American Eagle (shown on crests and coins), the bald eagle, the "All-Seeing Eye" (a masonic symbol), the Pyramid, the scroll, the Greek columns on public buildings, the Fasces (a sheaf of arrows tied together, symbolizing the strength of many joined together as one), the white star (there are many meanings ascribed to it), the red and white stripes and blue field (blood, spirit, and emotion...or land, sky, and water), the "Uncle Sam" figure, the dollar symbol, and so on and so on. All that is very mystical stuff, much of it going straight back to the Roman Empire and before that to Egypt! What it amounts to is this: they are magical symbols of a state and national religion...one that was formed by a group of Masons and based upon Masonic knowledge going back thousands of years to ancient Egypt and maybe even before that.

That's a religion, and a very potent one. A political religion. America is presently involved in a huge religious war, a world crusade...one which goes far beyond conventional Christianity into some very mysterious esoteric stuff that most Christians know little or nothing about...but the people in command of the $ySStem DO know about it and they are using it very seriously.

So America is doing the same thing that they accuse the Muslim zealots of doing...they're trying to conquer the entire World for the sake of their crazy religion (in which $$$ money $$$ is the holy of holies...the sacred key of power). And they're far more dangerous, because they have ten thousand times as much firepower at their disposal as the Muslims and they are not reluctant in the least to use it.

I'm not in favour of religions being used to conquer and kill people, regardless of which religion it is.