Agreed, but there are lots of types of irrationality that are not based in religion.
Both Nazism and Communism appealed to science (albeit of the pseudo- variety!). Nazism had its references to scientific racism and social Darwinism; Marxism was an alleged ‘science of history’.
Now I’ll be the first to agree that this was not “real” science, but various sorts of tribalism taking on a “science-y” disguise to create an excuse to persecute the ‘other’ for the gain of the in-group, without conscience or remorse.
But then, much of what is done in the name of religion isn’t “real” religion, either, but various sorts of tribalism taking on a “religion-y” disguise to create an excuse to persecute the ‘other’ for the gain of the in-group, without conscience or remorse.
The notion that the partition violence was all sparked from the Muslim side simply isn’t historical. It was inter-communal violence, and both sides played a part in it. Your own links point that out.
The “two nation theory” isn’t accepted by all Muslims in India-Pakistan, and has been used by Hindu groups to justify Hindu religious/ethnic nationalism (again, your own links point that out):
The ‘well they started it’ is the sine qua non of inter-communal struggle. Maybe the Muslims did ‘start it’ with their separatist talk and action day. Maybe they ‘started it’ because they were legitimately concerned (rightly or wrongly) about what would happen to them as a minority in a united India. No doubt India is now a better place than Pakistan, but that seems rather besides the point - which, to repeat, is that the notion that one can’t even discuss Hindu religious and ethnic persecution in the same breath as Christian or Muslim, is a historical absurdity: the last century had plenty of examples.
I think it ultimately depends on what sort of God you believe in. If you think God just wants you to treat everybody with fairness and kindness you’re not going to get to upset if someone lives their life different from you. On the other hand if you think God’s a vengeful moralist who will punish humanity for its sins then violence might seem an appropriate response to keep those secular music listening, Sabbath driving, homosexual approving and generally heretical thinking sinners from bringing about the end of the world.
Well, the quotes you offer provide a workaround for terrorists if you assume that “martyr” = “terrorist”. And while Islamist terrorists and and their apologists routinely do appropriate the term “martyr” for this purpose, I remain to be convinced that it is their religious beliefs which lead them to do so, rather than simply a desire to rationalise their own expressions of anger. Is this any different from Dubya using the term “crusade” to describe his own little adventures?
No, no, no. That might explain why Abdeslam, etc, chose to go on suicide missions (though I’m sceptical that it was their true motivation). But it absolutely doesn’t explain why they chose to sin in the first place. Whatever lead them to sin in the first place, it wasn’t Islam, since Islam explicitly proscribes the behaviours they engaged in. Therefore, these are not men whose life-choices are driven by Islamic beliefs. Therefore it is not a given that their Islamic beliefs led them to terrorism. Your quotes raise the possibility that they chose to become terrorists in order to secure forgiveness for their sins. But (a) that’s not the only, nor the most plausible, reason why someone would choose to become a terrorist. And (b) even to make that choice they would first of all have to make a prior choice; to choose to believe that when the Hadith says “martyr”, it means “terrorist”. And that’s not a choice that arises out of Islamic beliefs.
So, there’s a good deal more than Islam at work here.
You’re not understanding me correctly at all. Also, you’re not fairly representing what I said.
I didn’t say that we can’t look at someone’s words or actions to determine his motivation. I pointed out that, if we look at both the words and the actions, they appear to contradict one another. It’s their actions which show that these people can not be glibly characterised as people motivated by their professed religious beliefs, and therefore we can’t take at face value their words, which claim this as their motivation.
What you’re essentially proposing here, I think, is a sort of perverse variation the notion of the deathbed conversion. In the deathbed conversion, which I suspect is a literary trope more often that it is a real-life phenomenon, our protagonist comes to realise the emptiness and futility of a life of selfishness, greed, indulgence and vice and he embraces Jesus as his Personal Lord and Savior™ just before expiring in the odour of sanctity. What you’re suggesting is that somebody lives a life of petty crime, intoxication, exploitation, sexual excess, etc before coming to realise the emptiness of this and deciding to redeem himself and give meaning to his existence with an act of orgiastic murderous violence. I’m sceptical that this is what happened - I’m seeing a continuity of anger and selfishness, not a radical change - but, even if it is, I think we still have to account for why he choose to find redemption in self-destructive terrorism rather than the practice of the virtues that Islam encourages - generosity, gratitude, contentment, humility, kindness, wisdom, tolerance, justice, mercy, etc.
Sure, you can quote-mine to try and find snippets which can be pressed into service to justify the path you are drawn to, but in general you find the quotes because you are drawn to the path, not the other way around. I don’t think we can rely on the fact that he found the quotes as conclusive proof that he was motivated by his religion; that ignores the question of why he was looking for the quotes in the first place.
Note that I’m not saying that no-one can be motivated to violence by his understanding of his religion. I’ve said all along that this can happen; just that it’s not unique to religion. It’s common to religious and non-religious ideologies alike.
I’m also suggesting that where religion is a factor, it’s not so much the ideology of the religion that’s at play; it’s the tribal claim of religion. “I’m a Muslim; my community is under attack; I must defend it!” has a powerful claim, but you could change “Muslim” to “American” in that sentence and the claim would be pretty much the same. And in neither case does the appeal of the claim have much do to with the ideals or ideologies that are associated with being a Muslim or being an American; it’s more atavistic than that.
Nothing so sweeping. All I’m saying is that we can’t take someone’s words at face value as either a full or a necessarily correct account of their motivations. If we really want to understand their motives, we have to look both more widely and more deeply.
It’s not that absurd, if you look at the contrast between the ethical mandates of Christianity and what Christians have actually done. Or the contrast between the principles of the Enlightenment and the fairly horrifying things done in the name of Reason.
Right. So these guys are already operating at the thin end of the rationality curve, which gives me even less faith into the reliability of their insights into their own motivations.
That doesn’t make sense. The 9/11 hijackers may have held irrational beliefs, but that doesn’t mean their actions were irrational. It also doesn’t mean that you have better insights into their motivations than they did.
Behaviour follows belief. Given the requisite beliefs, any action can be deemed rational. If you came to believe that aliens have implanted a transmitter in your dental fillings and are reading your thoughts, pulling your own teeth out suddenly becomes a rational thing to do. Indeed, you could argue it would be irrational not to pull your own teeth out. Similarly, if a man really, truly believes that dying in a suicide attack will earn him a first-class ticket to paradise, it’s really easy to understand why he might fly a plane into a building.
The fact of the matter is that there is nothing which better explains the behaviour of violent religious fundamentalists than their violent fundamentalist beliefs.
I’m not so sure. Their background level of ordinary secular hatred is also very significant.
The 19 highjackers from the 9-11 attacks violated many of the tenets of their ostensible faith, having liquor and attending strip clubs while waiting to act. They weren’t behaving like Muslims on their holiest behavior, but more like anti-westerners on a hate binge.
I think, in most of these cases, there is another gripe that outweighs the purely religious. Hatred of Israelis for occupying the West Bank; hatred for Americans for their sway over the Saudi Royal Family; hatred of Hindus for seizing Muslim shrines; and other material grievances.
They also use it to justify anything that they do for the sake of their religion; even things that anyone outside of their cult might reasonably comment, “Are You Fucking Crazy!?”
Another point is you are not to question anything that the leader of a cultish group says. They’re doctrines are always right, even when they change their view and totally contradict themselves, then deny it (think 1984).
I’ve told quite a few people “If your group says it’s okay to kill people or to die for them, get out of the group.”
I believe religiosity is a risk factor for extreme, mass causality violence. It is not the only risk factor but i don’t see how people can argue that it’s not.
If you take a bunch of poor, disenfranchised, uneducated people who are looking for a sense of purpose and meaning in their unhappy lives, religion has enticements that will draw these people to it very readily. If that religion is all about kumbaya love and peace, and it steers adherents away from our more noxious human tendencies (like prejudice and xenophobia), then it unlikely you’ll see a bunch of killing from those people. But if that religion preaches that life is all about waging a war against evil forces and that ample awards in the afterlife await those who fight this war (and conversely, ample punishments await those who don’t), then of course you’ll see violence come from this.
The thing that makes religion dangerous is that when it takes root in a believer’s mind, it can cause irrational, self destructive behaviors. The poor person who tithes 10% of an income that they can’t afford to lose is acting against their self-interest, but the fear of displeasing a supernatural father figure overpowers what should be their self self protective instinct. The person who straps on a bomb and blows up a bus is also very much acting in contravention to self-interest, but their desire to please a supernatural father figure overpowers the part of their brain that is screaming this is suicidal insanity, now quit it.
What causes people to act like this? Not being exposed to alternate ways of being. Being taught from a young age to submit to authority figures who use coercive tactics to enforce extreme viewpoints. Having little else to pin one’s hopes and dreams on, and lacking a sense of empowerment. Being suspectible to manipulative people with ulterior motives.
If religion died out, would we still see mass violence? To me that is like asking if soda became outlawed, would we still have obesity. Probably we would. Would there likely be less? Probably. How much less ldepends on whether some other vice emerges to replace it.
Most “extreme, mass causality violence” in the past century had absolutely no religious basis; in fact, were inspired by creeds that held religion in contempt.
The religious casualties caused by ethno-nationalism, Nazism and Communism outnumber those caused by religion by a considerable degree - probably a couple of orders of magnitude at least (though there will be definitional problems - were the casualties of Indian Partition ethno-nationalist or religious?).
As a motive for killing, religion is topical because of recent Islamic extremism: but for all their horrors, they are pikers in perspective. ISIS and al-Quida have nothing on Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.
i find it hard to argue that Nazi atrocities had no religious basis. It would require believing it was a coincidence that Christian Germans saw Jews as enemies, just as their own religious beliefs encouraged them to. If we posit that racism, xenophobia, and nationalism were in play, surely we need to also acknowledge the role of religion.
This may be true, but dictator-led violence is not germane to the OP. We’re talking about religion as a trigger for violence in people in general. My position is that under certain conditions, a religion that preaches a certain way of thinking about the world will inspire violence in believers who might otherwise not be violent.
Saying that there have been worst cases of mass violence in recent history not involving religion doesn’t really counter this; all it may suggest is that the right conditions for religious-inspired violence aren’t ubiquitous and constant.
Perhaps, but if we do we must also acknowledge the role of “scientific” antisemitism, race theory, Nazi “racial science”, etc.
Yes, we can certainly include religion in a list of things that inspired or encouraged antisemitism and, therefore, the Nazi atrocities. But the question the OP raises is “What is it about religion that makes people kill each other?”, and in post #11 Czarcasm puts it thus: “What it is about religion specifically(NOT exclusively) that drives people to violence?”
And the answer, so far as I can see, is “nothing”. We can’t find any way in which religion causes violence or killing which isn’t replicated by non-religious causes of violence or killing. It’s fair to say that, historically, Christianity in German identified Jews as outsiders, to be viewed with mistrust and hostility. But all tribes have people that they identify as outsiders, and view with hostility, and if the Germans hadn’t used religion to rationalise this they could have used something else, and examples of something elses used for this purpose abound.
The example of Germany is a pertinent one for another reason. Historically, German religious traditions didn’t just engender hostility towards Jews, but also towards Muslims. Luther’s language about The Turk is every bit as ripe as his language about The Jew. So why was the Holocaust directed at Jews and not at Muslims? Because there was a large Jewish community in Germany, and in the territories which it came to dominate between 1939 and 1942 and there could, therefore, be (real or perceived) competition for power, resources, wealth, etc between the Good German People and The Jews in a way that there could not be between Germans and Muslims. Which underlines the point I have made all along - what causes people to fight and kill, in the end, is not religion, or eugenics, or the desire for a purer world; it’s the desire for power, wealth, control and security. And that’s universal.
Hitler’s targeting of the Jews had nothing to do with religion – it was about race. In fact, there were many clergy members who had converted, or had Jewish ancestry that were sent to the camps. Edith Stein, a nun, for example, died in Auschwitz.
But there is also nothing which better explains the behaviour of violent ***non-***religious fundamentalists than their violent fundamentalist beliefs. This account of violent fundamentalism is independent of religion. So this suggests that the answer to the question “is there anything particularly about religion which fosters violence?” is “no”.
We can come at this another way. If we agree (as I think we do) that the violent fundamentalist behaviour is caused by, duh, violent fundamentalism, we can ask “are religious people more prone than non-religious people to embrace violent fundamentalism?” But, again, we note that the decline of religion has, on the whole, been accompanied by an increase in violent fundamentalism, and that history abounds with examples of fundamentalist violence fuelled by non-religious beliefs, from The Terror, via the Somme, Soviet Russia and Maoist China, to the Cambodian Killing Fields and contemporary North Korea.
Most the the arguments that I have seen to the effect that, yes, religion fosters violent fundamentalism don’t start from the evidence, which is actual incidences of violent fundamentalism; they start by asserting (usually prejudicial) preconceptions about religion - religion is authoritarian, religion is irrational, etc. But this just begs the question of whether religious people, or religions ideologies, are any more likely to be authoritarian, irrational, etc than non-religious people or ideologies.
I say that I am a Christian because I believe in the God of Abraham and that Jesus was his messenger. Other Christians tell me that I am not because I will not accept the Bible as absolute truth, be it OT or NT. and I will not blindly follow their dogma. You could say that dogma is behind the problems suffered within and between the three main religions and that it is this difference in dogma that is the cause of the majority of religious wars. In some cases like the slaughter of Catharism it was the pure greed of the French king who wanted to expand his boundaries and his partners in crime the Church of Rome who wished to destroy the teachings of Catharism as their beliefs questioned the dogma of Rome. It is not always the belief in a deity that causes wars but the dogma often created through self interested people who see their form of dogma as a way of forming an army of zealots who will joyously give their lives on the promise of a ticket into heaven
