Whilst touring Jordan over the last few days my thoughts have regularly drifted to religion which I suppose isn’t surprising since a large proportion of the Holy Land is situated here.

It struck me that whatever your views on God’s existence, religion has hardly been an unqualified success in the history of the world. Not only do believers in God kill other believers in God because they have given their God a different name but believers in the same God kill one another because they worship that same God in different ways! Thus, not only have Christians, Jews and Muslims been killing one another for millennia but Christians (Catholics and Protestants) and Muslims (Sunnis and Shias) have been doing the same thing and continue to do so on a regular basis.

If an alien were to look down on this planet and see what we are doing to one another he would scratch his head in amazement, conclude that we are all nutters, forget about invasion, put his spaceship into overdrive and hot tail it as fast as he could into the next solar system! And who could blame him?

Religion should be and often is, of course, a force for good but organised religion often seems to be about power, fear and control. On balance, maybe the world would be a better (and safer) place without it. If you believe in God, fine; go ahead and worship your God in whatever manner you wish but don’t try and impose it on others and we’ll all get along just fine.