It’s a great debunking of the atheist myth that “religion is the cause of war and root of all conflict and suffering in the world” that some atheists spew out on a daily basis as their reason for opposing religion.
The post goes on to use statistics and sources to debunk these two claims, showing that most wars in history were secular and most suffering is down to secular reasons or nature rather than religion.
Well, golly-Now that I can no longer post my daily “Religion is the cause of ALL WARS!!!” screed, all I’ve got left to fall back on is “God? What God?”
Like the rest, I just skimmed the wall-o-text above, but for the sake of debate, I will agree–partially–with the OP. Religion ***is not ***the main cause of war. Social, economic, political reasons normally are.
I would argue that religion has been used and has used war to advance it’s own agenda (and the agenda of others) in almost every conflict, and religion has allowed itselft to be used as a rallying point and recruitment tool for the “right” side in almost any conflict you care to name. People may not fight and suffer for some Prince who wants to rule a neighboring dukedom, but for "protecting the faith’ and ‘advancing moral laws as called upon by (name your God/Prophet here)’, it’s a great rallying point.
And that religion (all of them, possibly excepting Quakers and the like) has let itself be used in this manner is perhaps the greatest “sin” of all.
Or, as the author Eric Flint put it rather pointedly in one of his Ring of Fire books: “Those M**Fers dissed us, so we’re going over there to get them.”
Ironically, I’ve heard this claim more from my fellow Atheists: “Religion is just an excuse. Take religion out of the equation and people are still going to find an excuse to kill each other anyway.”
As is my usual annoying wont, I actually started to go through this with a claim-by-claim examination, and even *I *got bored.
Suffice it to say there’s a lack of references where they’d be helpful and a bit of a blurring of terms, and a hell of a lot of well-poisoning, but there do seem to be some interesting thoughts in there. I’d be very interested in discussing points of this rather than have a whole article dumped on me.
Okay, I took a bullet for the team and actually read through the first two posts in the thread. I’m going to summarize them:
Atheists claim religion is the main cause of war and the root of most suffering in the world. The OP says this is not true.
The Crusades, which are generally seen as a religious war, were actually conducted for secular political reasons against the rising power of the Seljuk Turks.
The number of people killed in the Spanish Inquisition is lower than most realize.
Most wars have been conducted for secular political reasons not religious reasons.
Many of the world’s worst political atrocities were conducted by communist regimes which openly opposed religion.
Most individual crimes like murder, rape, and suicide have no religious motive.
The problem is that, if you can convince the poor and/or ignorant that great wealth and eternal happiness can be had if you fight for the right god(s), if makes for one hell of an excuse…especially if a threat of eternal damnation is thrown in for good measure.