# Why does religion drive people to kill? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 3, 2016, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-religion-drive-people-to-kill/753826 "2016-05-03T23:48:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2016, 5:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-religion-drive-people-to-kill/753826/21 "2016-05-04T05:36:29Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > I think that “culture” in general may have been a blunder on my part; I don’t think people go to war over cultural differences. Wars are generally over something more concrete. Water rights, acreage in general, the right to tax the peasants, and so on. > > Religion has led to war, but because of religion’s concrete power over people. If it were all purely abstract – toe-dipping vs. full-immersion baptism – I doubt war would result. I’m not convinced by this. Religious intolerance is often meted out by the majority group on to a minority group. I guess we could argue that they are trying to stamp out rivals before they have a chance to flourish… But it looks more to me like the same intolerance that might be directed at minority ethnicities and cultures, groups which are often already at the bottom rung of the ladder and have no real power. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2016, 5:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-religion-drive-people-to-kill/753826/22 "2016-05-04T05:36:54Z")
Trinopus, I agree with all of that. The question is, is any of it unique, or specific, to religion? And I think the answer is no, it isn’t. We’ve had wars, the outcome of which was that the conquered were forced to adopt the conqueror’s religion (or, at any rate, there was an attempt to force that; such attempts do not always succed). But we’ve also had wars whose outcome was to force adoption of the conqueror’s language, or other cultural markers. The truth is that these are all assertions of control and tools of cultural assimilation. We’ve also had wars whose aid was to force a country to adopt non-religious ideologies. For a recent example, if we take at face value the professed motivations of the perpetrators, look at the invasion of Iraq, which was an attempt to bring the blessings of liberal democracy to Iraqi society. (I don’t know whether Brian Ekers would consider liberal democracy to be an ideology “divorced from reason”, but there you go.) Or, consider the ludicrous “war on terror”; an attempt to stamp out the unacceptable, but entire non-religious, ideology of terrorism. Sure, in both cases there was a lot more at stake than ideology. But that just goes back to the point I have made consistently; the real motivation of all or nearly all wars is a desire for power or control, which power or control is wanted because it secures access to material resources such as land, oil, etc. Ideology - religious or otherwise - can serve to define or delineate the two warring communities, but the actual war is nearly always about something less conceptual and more material. (Which is why the decline in religious belief, and rise in philosophical materialism, which accompanied the enlightenment has not been accompanied by a reduction in either the number of the ferocity of wars.) ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2016, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-religion-drive-people-to-kill/753826/23 "2016-05-04T06:01:08Z")
MY personal impression is that as human beings, deep down, feel the need for everyone to agree with us. When someone doesn’t, it bothers us. It might be instinct, I don’t know. > [@Czarcasm](#): > > Come to think of it, this is a perfect example of what I just said-an attempt to deflect the subject away from religion. The problem I see, and correct me if I’m wrong, is that you want a black or white answer. But in the past religion _cannot_ be separated from a person’s culture, from their identity, their ethnicity. It’s not always the case, but many times, it is. Read the history of the Balkans, for example. It’s not an attempt to deflect. It’s the correct answer. If you don’t like it, there’s nothing I can do about that. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2016, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-religion-drive-people-to-kill/753826/24 "2016-05-04T06:34:25Z")
Even if you don’t truly and absolutely believe the core values of your subscribed group, _behaving like you do_ is a reasonably effective way to belong to the group (and be set apart from the not-group, which is also useful if they are the persecuted enemy). I think this probably applies to both extreme and moderate behaviour of religious people - they’re trying, consciously or perhaps unconsciously, to ‘fake it till they make it’. That’s pretty much what a ‘leap of faith\*’ is anyway. \*(Not so many people seem to use the term ‘leap of faith’ nowadays, but the underlying behaviour is still there.) ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2016, 7:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-religion-drive-people-to-kill/753826/25 "2016-05-04T07:05:14Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Come to think of it, this is a perfect example of what I just said-an attempt to deflect the subject away from religion. Religion is just an after-thought. If we didn’t have it, we’d have to invent it. Oh, wait a minute. We _did._ (ETA: And oh, BTW, I’m not pretending that I just invented the above pearl of wisdom. I’ve seen it around before.) ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2016, 9:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-religion-drive-people-to-kill/753826/26 "2016-05-04T09:06:51Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > Religion is just an after-thought. If we didn’t have it, we’d have to invent it. > > Oh, wait a minute. We _did._ True. But all the other reasons we have for denouncing Those People Over There as different, and therefore we must fight them, are also invented by us. So, again, this isn’t something that is particular to religion, which is what the OP is after. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2016, 9:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-religion-drive-people-to-kill/753826/27 "2016-05-04T09:20:29Z")
> [@Tithonus](#): > > There are a tremendous amount of reasons. One of the most prominent, I think, is that some religious beliefs come with very high stakes. If, for example, you really truly believe that the only way into heaven is to follow religion X, and that anyone who doesn’t will be sent to hell for eternity, there’s no limit to the amount of persecution you can justify. That makes no sense. Such a belief would call for conversion, not for processing people into Hell faster. ---
**Author:** ![Wallaby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/dc4da7/32.png) [@Wallaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wallaby)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2016, 9:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-religion-drive-people-to-kill/753826/28 "2016-05-04T09:31:43Z")
> [@UDS](#): > > True. But all the other reasons we have for denouncing Those People Over There as different, and therefore we must fight them, are also invented by us. > > So, again, this isn’t something that is particular to religion, which is what the OP is after. See Post #2. ---
**Author:** ![Latro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2016, 9:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-religion-drive-people-to-kill/753826/29 "2016-05-04T09:57:54Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > That makes no sense. Such a belief would call for conversion, not for processing people into Hell faster. Were you under the impression that conversion was a peaceful activity? On the other hand, it is certainly not all religions that were violent because of their doctrines. The Abrahamics and Maya/Aztecs are exceptions. Most historic religions were pretty inclusive of other religions. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2016, 10:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-religion-drive-people-to-kill/753826/30 "2016-05-04T10:09:37Z")
> [@Latro](#): > > Were you under the impression that conversion was a peaceful activity? I’m perfectly conscious of the existence of forced conversion, but the bit from **Tithonus** I quoted called not for forced conversion, but for persecution. They’re different things. ---
**Author:** ![bldysabba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ecccb3/32.png) [@bldysabba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bldysabba)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2016, 11:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-religion-drive-people-to-kill/753826/31 "2016-05-04T11:34:48Z")
I’m skeptical of the idea that the contents of a religion/religious text and the ideas it holds dear have no bearing at all on the actions of its adherents, as apologists on this forum too often claim, and are doing so in this very thread. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2016, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-religion-drive-people-to-kill/753826/32 "2016-05-04T12:20:51Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Come to think of it, this is a perfect example of what I just said-an attempt to deflect the subject away from religion. No one is deflecting the subject away from religion if they bring up analogous examples of human division and explore how that might be similar or different from religious violence. It’s a perfectly good way to explore why religion causes violence. I find it a fascinating thing to explore. As Guinastasia points out, attempting to separate religion out from other aspects of personal, national and ethnic identity is a fool’s game. We don’t live on a planet where that’s a thing you can rationally do; hell, look at all the threads we’ve had about whether “Jew” is a religion or an ethnicity or both. Religion is intertwined with language, ethnic self-identity, nationalism, and even economic perspective. The religious differences between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland are tiny, but they sure have a lot of history of violence when at the same time either side would have treated a Muslim tourist with respect. That conflict wasn’t really about whether you liked the Pope or not - but that happened to be one of the divisions. [QUOTE=bldysabba] I’m skeptical of the idea that the contents of a religion/religious text and the ideas it holds dear have no bearing at all on the actions of its adherents, [/QUOTE] I’m not skeptical of the idea at all because at first glance it appear to be really obviously true. Christianity, Islam and Hinduism are, by number of followers, the largest religious classifications in the world, split up into a number of subcategories. All three are rather distinct in belief, underlying religious texts, and custom, even within themselves; I know the first two are related, but they’re distant relatives. And yet all three have been used as excuses for hideous violence. All three have sometimes been exceptionally violent and yet for long periods of time have been quite peaceful; it’s not long ago the Catholic church was burning people at the stake, but today the Catholic church is rather notably peaceful. The fundamental tenets of the religion have not changed but the proclivity towards violence as a religious group has. Less common religions have also acted with remarkable violence at times. If there is an obvious connection between the underlying nominal beliefs of a religion and its violence level, I’m not seeing it, at least not on a macro scale. If a religious group comes up with an excuse for violence they’ll wordsmith a way to justify it no matter what God’s word says. ---
**Author:** ![Memnon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f1d935/32.png) [@Memnon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Memnon)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2016, 12:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-religion-drive-people-to-kill/753826/33 "2016-05-04T12:21:47Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > That makes no sense. Such a belief would call for conversion, not for processing people into Hell faster. And if they don’t want to convert? ---
**Author:** ![Latro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2016, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-religion-drive-people-to-kill/753826/34 "2016-05-04T12:44:25Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Less common religions have also acted with remarkable violence at times. Examples please. Also, to put the precious few cases of Hindu violence, over the centuries, on the same level as Christian and Muslim violence is not warranted, IMHO. ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2016, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-religion-drive-people-to-kill/753826/35 "2016-05-04T12:49:27Z")
I’ll try to answer this, somewhat. Religion doesn’t necessarily drive people to kill, but it might make someone more likely to be a martyr than being non-religious, because you believe that death isn’t the end. You’re more likely to sacrifice yourself to a cause if you feel that you’re not really ending things in that self-sacrifice, and that you have a great reward waiting for you. It’s a short step from being a martyr to killing people, because a willingness to martyr yourself leads to a willingness to do all kinds of violent behavior, from suicide attacks, to attacks that might lead to someone killing you in revenge (or being executed by the state), or just risking your life while committing the violence. Aside from specific religions that can be interpreted by some to encourage violence (usually only fundamentalists/extremists), that’s the only thing I can think of that might make a religious person more likely to be violent. Otherwise it’s as people have said, homicidal jerks using it as an excuse, just as people use racism or political beliefs or other similar things to justify murder. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2016, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-religion-drive-people-to-kill/753826/36 "2016-05-04T12:51:28Z")
We are social and tribal creatures. That is how we became so successful in the first place. Religion is just another form of tribalism, the ultimate appeal to authority, the ultimate fount of knowledge, the ultimate wise tribal elder sitting in judgement. A vestigial, pre-historical solution to a pre-historical need but hey, the instinct runs deep. Of course the problem isn’t religion per se, but dogma. it just so happens that many religions remain dogmatic at their core and when that dogma maintains that you have the divine, supernatural, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient being on your side…well anything goes. Inciting people to violence at the behest of a god is child’s play…why the hell would you refuse to do their will? Who the hell do you think you are? The same of course goes for any ideology that demands absolute adherence. Leader worship cults as seen in North Korea, Stalinist Russia, Nazi Germany, Cambodia, Maoist China…they are functionally no different to traditional religion other than their infallible leader is earthbound rather than celestial. So to me, the less dogmatic and less ideological a religion or worldview is, the better. That’s why such as Humanism, Jainism or Quakerism are far harder to twist into weapons of terror…Christianity, Islam, Judaism?..far too much explicit and implicit hate, terror, bigotry and judgement bound up in obviously error-strewn ancient texts for my liking. Sure, adherents can interpret those religions in their own, harmless way and billions do but for the power-mongers and hate-peddlers there is plenty of vitriolic raw material for them to use to their own ends. (and it is divine remember!) It is a shorter walk from the Talmud, Koran, Bible. little red book or Mein Kampf to the gas chambers or the salt mines than it is from the principles of humanism. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2016, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-religion-drive-people-to-kill/753826/37 "2016-05-04T14:48:06Z")
> [@Latro](#): > > Examples please. > > Also, to put the precious few cases of Hindu violence, over the centuries, on the same level as Christian and Muslim violence is not warranted, IMHO. I disagree - it is just that, in the West, they don’t attract as much attention. For example, the years 1947- 1948 was notable for (at least) two reasons: (1) the creation of the state of Israel; and (2) the partition of India into India and Pakistan. If you asked the average person which created the more religious violence - I suspect most people would answer that the first did. However, this is not even remotely true. Inter-communial violence between Muslims and Hindus (particularly, violence directed against civilians) was greater by several orders of magnitude. Allegedly, and estimated 1 million Muslims were killed by Hindus, and 1 million Hindus were killed by Muslims. > **[List of massacres in India](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_India)** > > A massacre is the deliberate slaughter of members of one group by one or more members of another more powerful group. A massacre may be indiscriminate or highly methodical in application. A massacre is a single event, though it may occur during the course of an extended military campaign or war. A massacre is separate from a battle (an event in which opposing sides fight), but may follow in its immediate aftermath, when one side has surrendered or lost the ability to fight, yet the victors ... Here’s an article on it: > **[The Mutual Genocide of Indian Partition](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/06/29/the-great-divide-books-dalrymple)** > > It displaced fifteen million people and killed more than a million. How did it happen? The notion that there have been “precious few cases of Hindu violence” is simply not historical, when they have been participants in several in the last century. ---
**Author:** ![vivalostwages](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d07c76/32.png) [@vivalostwages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vivalostwages)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2016, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-religion-drive-people-to-kill/753826/38 "2016-05-04T17:31:11Z")
> [@friedo](#): > > People are dicks. Religion is just an excuse. This is precisely why people like Ted Cruz go on and on about how righteous and respectful of life and prayerful they are, then turn around and proclaim that they want to go to war, torture people, etc. If THEY do it with their own version of righteousness or sharia law, then it’s perfectly okay in their minds. They don’t see the disconnect, because no such thing exists within their worldviews. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2016, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-religion-drive-people-to-kill/753826/39 "2016-05-04T17:54:27Z")
> [@UDS](#): > > Trinopus, I agree with all of that. The question is, is any of it unique, or specific, to religion? > > And I think the answer is no, it isn’t. We’ve had wars, the outcome of which was that the conquered were forced to adopt the conqueror’s religion (or, at any rate, there was an attempt to force that; such attempts do not always succed). But we’ve also had wars whose outcome was to force adoption of the conqueror’s language, or other cultural markers. The truth is that these are all assertions of control and tools of cultural assimilation. > > We’ve also had wars whose aid was to force a country to adopt non-religious ideologies. For a recent example, if we take at face value the professed motivations of the perpetrators, look at the invasion of Iraq, which was an attempt to bring the blessings of liberal democracy to Iraqi society. (I don’t know whether Brian Ekers would consider liberal democracy to be an ideology “divorced from reason”, but there you go.) Or, consider the ludicrous “war on terror”; an attempt to stamp out the unacceptable, but entire non-religious, ideology of terrorism. > > Sure, in both cases there was a lot more at stake than ideology. But that just goes back to the point I have made consistently; the real motivation of all or nearly all wars is a desire for power or control, which power or control is wanted because it secures access to material resources such as land, oil, etc. Ideology - religious or otherwise - can serve to define or delineate the two warring communities, but the actual war is nearly always about something less conceptual and more material. (Which is why the decline in religious belief, and rise in philosophical materialism, which accompanied the enlightenment has not been accompanied by a reduction in either the number of the ferocity of wars.) I’m going to strongly dissent from that, because it seems to imply that all ideologies, religious or political, are just fig leaves for material interests. The Albigensian crusade was about many things, including political control over the south of France (and the Balkans, in the case of the suppression of the very similar Bogomils), but what it was about most importantly, _at bottom_, was radical ideological differences. The Catholic and Orthodox churches went to extreme lengths and perpetrated horrible crimes to wipe out the Albigensians and Bogomils respectively, because they seriously believed that these were ideas which, if allowed to spread, could result in the everlasting damnation of their followers. At a nonreligious level, the Cold War wasn’t just about a contest for global influence between Russia and America, it was in large part a war between two sides which really believed that their ideology- capitalism or communism- was the key to human happiness. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2016, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-religion-drive-people-to-kill/753826/40 "2016-05-04T18:35:24Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > I’m going to strongly dissent from that, because it seems to imply that all ideologies, religious or political, are just fig leaves for material interests. > > The Albigensian crusade was about many things, including political control over the south of France (and the Balkans, in the case of the suppression of the very similar Bogomils), but what it was about most importantly, _at bottom_, was radical ideological differences. The Catholic and Orthodox churches went to extreme lengths and perpetrated horrible crimes to wipe out the Albigensians and Bogomils respectively, because they seriously believed that these were ideas which, if allowed to spread, could result in the everlasting damnation of their followers. At a nonreligious level, the Cold War wasn’t just about a contest for global influence between Russia and America, it was in large part a war between two sides which really believed that their ideology- capitalism or communism- was the key to human happiness. The problem is that it is often very difficult to tell the difference between conflicts that are “at bottom” over sincere differences in religious ideology, those that are “at bottom” over simple differences in tribal or ethnic identity, and those that are “at bottom” for other, more material interests of the participants. An example of this is the ‘wars of religion’ in Europe, and in particular the Thirty Year’s War. As the name implies, they were wars ostensibly about imposing one form of Christianity over another. However, any analysis that insists they were “at bottom” struggles over religious orthodoxy has to face certain problems - like (Catholic) France allied to (Protestant) Sweden. How can a Catholic country ally with Protestants to fight fellow-Catholics in a “religious war”? Because it became “less about religion and more a continuation of the France–Habsburg rivalry for European political pre-eminence”. It may have started as a purely religious conflict, but it surely didn’t end as one. Now, this isn’t to deny that some conflicts are more about religion than others; that is a highly individual analysis. Suffice it to say that examples that are ‘purely’ about religion or ideology and not also, (or even primarily), about conquest, aggrandizement, plunder, ethno-nationalist rivalry, great power dynamics, etc. are pretty uncommon on the ground. Take the Cold War. I would say this was _not_ primarily about ideology, but is more akin to the great-power posturing for advantage observed towards the end of the Thirty Year’s War. Just like France sough to “contain” the Hapsburgs, the US sought to “contain” what it perceived (rightly or wrongly) as Soviet expansionism. Just like France, the US wasn’t picky about who it partnered up with to do so - eventually striking a deal with (Communist) China against (Communist) Soviet Union (the analogy isn’t perfect, but for China it is - read China instead of France, then: pragmatically partnering up with an ‘ideological opposite’ against its ‘ideological similar’). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-religion-drive-people-to-kill/753826.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-religion-drive-people-to-kill/753826.md?page=3)