that is unfortunately true, which is why it makes it so easy to start a war about religion. for some reason, it's harder to start a war over things like which side you part your hair on or what kind of jam is best, although to be fair there have been some silly reasons for war over the years. all i'm saying is that people will have a war if they want whatever the circumstances, but religion is a nice easy scapegoat to use since everybody gets all angry about it very quickly (for some reason)
i tend to agree with obrien actually, although i think it's interesting that others have picked out the parts of what he said that could be misunderstood, and then deliberately misunderstood them! i apologise if it was genuine accidental misunderstanding, but it doesn't look like it to me. it seems to me as though it is taken to be fair play to misunderstand somebody just because we're talking about religion! bizarre!
edit/ps: now i don't want this to be some accusation but i just noticed that obrien's icon is hal jordan. you know about him? for thirty years he was earth's green lantern, the most revered member of the green lantern corps throughout the entire universe, but then in the nineties he decided that the world was fucked and that he would destroy everything with his power ring, then travel back to the big bang and take a hand in recreating the universe in his image (ie: no wars, no death, no suffering etc). All the other superheroes stopped him, but not before he had murdered many (including most of the original justice society). i just thought it was ironic that hal jordan is the icon for mobrien, when we're talking about what we're talking about, that's all!