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If it is a social activity then people need to learn to get along and overcome their differences instead of pretending one God is better and the very presence of followers of another God is intolerable.  While that sounds paranoid, that is exactly where new young recruits of ISIS are coming from, to give just one example.  Just the other day, a cleric here in India was saying it is inconceivable to give women same status as men (as in, getting educated and going to work) in Islam.  Either these guys don't want to learn or they are too paranoid about losing their core constituency.  At any rate, this nonsense of preaching hate and discrimination in the name of God has gone on for too long and has to stop.  We can no longer look askance from the elephant in the room that is organised religion.  Colour me cynical but I no longer believe religious heads mean well.  Whenever there are hate killings, say even small domestic riots, they stay silent for far too long which tantamounts to condoning such acts.  They  never speak up until the temperature has gone up too much.  If they cannot stop seeing themselves as competitors in the marketplace of believers, the rest of the world needs to come together and put paid to their nonsense.  Sorry if this sounds caustic but between hardline Hindus at home and ISIS in the world at large, I am really getting fed up of all this religion nonsense being tolerated as being something 'deeply personal'.  Yeah, so that's exactly right, if it is so personal, keep it within the four walls of your home.

The rational debate has been flawed since the days of Plato. I agree that we should be rational about solving our issues, and avoid letting emotions rule our actions (which leads to impulsiveness at times where that is not a good idea). However the rational approach has long ago been brought to the point where people become numbers, on papyrus, on paper or in spreadsheets. That's how we run companies, and countries. It's also why no distinction is made between the individuals behind the numbers. That makes all muslims bad, all catholic priests pedophiles, all South Americans corrupt and all Spaniards lazy and all refugees fortune-hunters.

In other contexts, it makes half of our children dumb or stupid, because they don't fit an educational system that is rationally set up to be efficient and cheap for the educational institutions, not the ones being educated.

We can't have a rational debate without taking into account the emotional side, and from my point of view, the photos that you dismiss here as being a vehicle to make people feel good about themselves also serve the purpose of making our managers and policymakers realise again that it's not always, and not only about the numbers.

Glad you nuanced your statement a bit by what you added later. Goodnight.

I know and understand what you are saying and mean too, I agree with what you say and I too had a hard difficult time to look that pic up and post it too. I did not want to do that and it still affects me.

Thank you for understanding, Timothy xxxx

It has always been up to you, also Timothy, I never meant to offend you when all this started, I swear, let's leave it in peace please?

it brings compassion just like that baby in Africa starving to death while a vulture was waiting for him to die and like that little girl running naked on the street after the Hiroshima atom bomb, this all affected the world those images.