Thanks for your reply.

Didn’t mean to imply that maternal love is like what we’re after (though now that I’m thinking about it…:-):-)

There are UN Peacekeepers in uniform carrying weapons and occasionally engaging in very bad behavior.

I think the chances of a totally clean track record in any group recruited from humans is pretty much non-existent. Bad behavior among Buddhists, sure. There’s a recent telling example. But Buddhism doesn’t put God on your side like Christianity and there’s weren’t centuries of Buddhist Crusades. I think it’s probably because it’s harder to distort Buddha’s teaching into a justification for genocidal warfare than Christ’s & Paul’s.

Would we both agree that religion is double-edged sword in this particular fight? It’s been the historical carrier of a sense of the universality of humanity and, in fact, a connectedness to the full natural world…and the justification of great evil.

Kill them all. God will recognize his own.