tai gok nang,
in thailand the diff groups of the two burnt temples and mosques
down.....
I dun know where you got this idea from, but according to CNN
and FOX News, they classified them under that category....
religion
Actually religion and race is closely related....
below is a more scientific look at race vs religion at a
psychology level......
obviously we could look at this issue many ways.... this is just
one of them
The roots of the relationship between racism and religion run
far back into the evolutionary past. Racism is merely a special
form of xenophobia. (3) If xenophobia involves fear of persons who are
merely "foreign," a fortiori it will involve fear of persons of
other races, who -- quite literally -- wear their foreignness upon
their faces. In the present day, when it is desperately necessary
that people of all sorts learn to live together on the delicate
spacecraft that supports their odyssey through space and time,
xenophobia is a trait they well can do without. In the remote past,
however, xenophobia appears to have served an important
evolutionary function. If the theorizing of sociobiologists be
correct -- and an increasing amount of evidence appears to indicate
it is largely so -- xenophobia helped to accelerate the course of
evolution when our ancestors were still at the evolutionary stage
where the largest social groups were clans and tribes.
To oversimplify only a bit, xenophobia helped to keep the gene
pools of various small groups fairly isolated from each other. This
allowed for "group selection" to occur. Instead of individuals
surviving or perishing in the struggle for existence, groups of
individuals survived or perished. This presumably accelerated the
rate of genetic change in the species as a whole. It is not
unreasonable to suppose, therefore, that there may be a genetic
factor biasing us towards xenophobic behavior. (4) The function of xenophobia, basically, is to
sharpen the distinction between in-group and out-groups ("us" and
"them") and to intensify competition, motivating the elimination of
out-group gene pools.
For success in the struggle for group survival, however, more than
clear definition of group boundaries is necessary. In-group
cohesion and cooperation also are essential, and that is where
religion has come into the picture of human evolution. Religion,
harnessing the forces of hypnosis and suggestion via the medium of
rhythmic chanting and dancing, was just what was needed to fuse the
individuals of a tribe into a kind of super-organism, a collective
entity that could combine the singleness of purpose and efficiency
of an individual with the power of a mob. The all-night war dances
of certain Amerindian tribes are suggestive of the original
function played by religion at the pre-civilized stage of human
evolution. Once the religious shamans had gotten the warriors into
a trance, they could be sent off to war as anxiety-free machines
that could be counted on to do their utmost to wipe out the genetic
competition. Thus, there is the possibility that there may be a
genetic bias favoring religiosity (i.e., the ability to be
hypnotized, brain-washed, and sent off to fight for the survival of
the in-group) as well as a bias favoring xenophobia. While it is
not yet certain that genes for xenophobia and religiosity exist, it
is quite clear that religion and xenophobia have been partners
since long before the appearance of written records.
It is a fact that the racial features of the gods and goddesses
that people have invented (ignoring, of course, the deities modeled
after animals) almost always have coincided with those of their
creators. The African gods are black, often with their
race-defining features being exaggerated. The deities of the Asians
look oriental. It comes as no surprise that the gods of the
Caucasoids are depicted as white: Jesus, Thor, Zeus, Mithra -- none
of them could be confused with a resident of the Congo or Rangoon.
In keeping with the notion that each religion is responsible for
enhancing the social cohesion of a particular group of people, it
is not surprising to learn that nearly every religion considers its
own little group to be "god's chosen people."
If it be true that the original function of religion in the
course of evolution was to enhance the selective advantage of the
in-group at the expense of out-groups, we should expect that
religions which have managed to survive from ancient tribal times
up to the present would still show traces of their racist
beginnings and would exhibit at least some degree of
self-definition along racial lines. Unfortunately, almost all such
religions went extinct long ago -- at least in the Near East, where
written records survive in quantities great enough to allow some
understanding of their nature. To my knowledge, the only modern
Near-Eastern religions surviving from ancient tribal times are
Judaism and Samaritanism. (5) Since Samaritanism is nearly extinct -- and thus
not a very good example if one is studying religious strategies
conferring a survival advantage upon a group! -- we are left with
Judaism as the only suitable religion with which to test the
hypothesis that religion promotes racism and xenophobia in general,
and that racism and xenophobia in turn have been associated with
increased survival rates. (6)
![[ image: width=150]](http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/190000/images/_190632_Copy_of_protest_150.jpg)