Idolatry and religion

It strikes me as odd that all the religions of the 'Book', i.e. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, all condemn idolatry, yet they also talk of the 'Book' itself, the Tanahk and other vesions, and its offshoots, the New Testament, the Koran, the Book of Mormon, etc. as the written Word of God, which is by definition idolatry.

Beyond that, we know that the Tanahk (the Old Testament as used by the people that wrote it) was written using only consonants with no spaces to separate the words or sentences. It has been translated differently by each non-Jewish sect that has used it, and in translating it, the individual books have been put in different orders, and some books have been left out, while other books that weren't originally included have been added.

If you read the English translation of the Tanahk used by English-speaking Jews, you find that not only do the individual books tell a decidedly different story than the translations used by the Catholics, Protestants, etc, but that the original order of the books tell a different meta-story than the order used by the others.

I have no problem with the idea that a book is inspired by God as far as individual spritual purposes go (I've always felt that way about Stranger in a Strange Land by Heinlein), but when you start thinking in terms of putting people to the sword because they interpret the book differently or simply don't buy it at all, I don't think that any book can legitimately say that that outcome is either condoned by, or inspired by, God. It is merely allowed within the confines of His Laws.

Throughout history, every death that was suposedly inspired by God or commanded by God was, in fact, nothing more than a murder committed by someone who longed for the 'happiness of the knife', and was committed in a milieu that accepted the claim of piety as a justification for murder.

Self-defense is valid based of the face-value assessment of God's creation, but self-defense is always counter-violence (violence in response to violence or the credible threat of violence), but violence against those who only think or believe differently than you do is merely violence to satisfy ones own desire to commit acts of violence.

'Thou shalt not kill.' (∞© God)