How about Quasimodo?
(Since no one jumped in with the obvious response. You’re slipping, Dopers.)
There used to be religious strife in Sudan, between Catholics and Muslims. So they split the country into Sudan, with most of the Muslims, and South Sudan, with most of the Catholics. With the result that there’s still fighting in South Sudan, between Catholics and other Catholics.
The violence was never actually about religion. That was just a pretext.
well of course not, that would just spread the problem around. Crispy, hot bacon bits raining all over town.
Mmmm, bacon…
If people are the problem and extinction is the answer then religion will provide the way. At least according to Evangelical Christians.
I might be overly optimistic; but it seems to me like admitting that religion was only a pretext would serve to weaken the cause for violence on either side or both, and could be a step towards reconciliation.
Replace the word ‘religion’ with the word ‘people’ and stop scapegoating people twisting any cause to find a reason to do bad things.
Actually it’s a pretty lame and uninspired statement. And mostly incorrect, yes religious strife will end but the struggles will continue under different names.
So I’d say have another cup of coffee. 
If religion was criminalized, only criminals would be religious.
It’s not claim to exclusive truth that’s the problem; it’s claim to exclusive power. It’s when they want to be in control of everything that religions become dangerous (and that’s not only true of religions).
Religions wanting to be in control of something - anything - is actually what makes them dangerous. It’s only the craziest of the crazy religions that claim to want to control everything, but they’re by no means the most dangerous.
That argument just demonstrates how destructive religion is. It is taboo to admit that religion is bad thing, so humans turn on their own and demonize humanity to shield religion.
And you don’t need to twist religion to do bad; you need to twist it to do good.
Therefore we should go to war against religion.
Regards,
Shodan
Even if they just want to control the thermostat in the sanctuary?
Haven’t you ever dealt with the Property Committee? :eek:
Regards,
Shodan
Don’t a nation’s wealth and education level negatively correlate with its degree of religiosity? If so, just give it time.
However I think the US is an outlier, but even we are rapidly growing in secularism. Secularism is the fastest growing approach to faith here.
The reality is that religious strife typically isn’t that bad with some notable exceptions. We just like to make it a bugaboo for some reason. Not that religious wars don’t exist, but they are comparatively rare in the grand scheme of things. Very few of the conflicts we have right now are religious in nature. It happens that the ones the US is in have a religious component, but I’m not sure if we could really even call those religious wars. Is the Shia-Sunni divide a real religious divide, or is it a divide manufactured by Iran and Saudi Arabia? I’m not sure we know that answer. In Syria, the Kurds are largely Sunni fighting other Sunni while Assad is a Shia, but half of his military is Sunni and his greatest ally is Russian Orthodox. I think we like to say things are religious because it makes an easy story to tell without needing for us to really dig into the roots of the issues.
Religious wars are quite common; they are just less likely to be openly admitted to being religious wars compared to the past. The Cold War was to a large degree a religious war, American Christians against “godless Communism”; and it did a great deal of harm to the world. The US’s conquest of Iraq had the religious hatred of Christians for Muslims as a major if unofficial motivation. And so on.
I’m going to disagree. The first reason is that religious wars were very rare in the past. Not non-existent, but rare. The reason is fairly obvious, you tended to war with your neighbors and most of your neighbors are the same religion as you. The causes of wars tend to be well known and generally involve competition over resources and power. The fact that you have to reach for Iraq as a religious war is proof that you’re going off the rails. Iraq may have been a war of revenge and probably was a war for oil, but of all the reasons for war in Iraq, religion has to be near the bottom. We allied with Shia militias for goodness sake and invaded from Sunni countries. Saddam Hussein was about as religious as my dog until it suited him otherwise. What you’re doing is starting with the hypothesis that wars are about religion and then twisting the data to fit it.
We can look at our own history and see that most wars we were fighting against people of our own religion. Revolutionary we were the same people. 1812 same religion. Mexican American - same religuon. Civil War - same religion. Indian Wars - sometimes same religion, sometimes not either way, they were about seizing resources. Spanish American - same religion. Ww1-same religion ww2- same religion. Korea - apparently you think it was about religion, i think you’re in the minority considering our allies were Buddhists. Vietnam - see Korea. Middle Eastern ears - religious elements depending on the war
So was Kwai-Chang Caine. He just wanted to be left alone!
deep bow
Get rid of religions and some equally delusional belief systems will take their place, like political parties.