This puts my faith back into humanity. I've heard people say "we should have nuked Afghanistan, to show that we are not to be messed with... you punch a bully in the face, you don't talk to him trying to work out your differences."
I've always felt that taking people out of ignorance will always make them less inclined to kill. The more logical justification people have for doing good and not doing bad vs purely faith-based, the harder it is for some religious nut-job to come in and say "kill the infidels in the name of god".
"I've always felt that taking people out of ignorance will always make them less inclined to kill."
Actually, taking people out of ignorance always results in warding off some error. The thing to be doing with the great bounty of western prosperity is reducing ignorance in ourselves and in others, not entertaining ourselves to imbecility.
People figured out at least 2,500 years ago that knowledge is the antidote for ignorance and even laid out the specific conditions for its acquisition. Unfortunately, designating that the economy is full of "knowledge workers" doesn't cut it.
Except in reality, it doesn't. In reality, an eye for an eye is a very good strategy, with examples ranging from biology to military history to the results of iterated prisoner's dilemma tournaments played by computer programs.
I've always felt that taking people out of ignorance will always make them less inclined to kill. The more logical justification people have for doing good and not doing bad vs purely faith-based, the harder it is for some religious nut-job to come in and say "kill the infidels in the name of god".