Ok in the effort to not hijack the “who would you kill…” thread in GD I have started this little gem.
Jmatthewb started it off with this:
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I of course disagreed here:
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Jmattewb comes back again with:
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My final reply before starting this was:
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So, what is everyone elses thoughts on this?
Is Religion the main or major factor for the start of most wars?
Is Human Nature and the quest for power glory and wealth the real motivation behind most wars?
Osip
PS. I have already realised I ment to refer to: Revolutionary wars in south america, not civil wars.
For another good example consider the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. These were the godless Soviets after all. You’re absolutely right, people will always find a reason to kill each other and where religion is used it’s just a convenient excuse. For almost every war where religion was used as a justification there was usually found a more sinister underlying reason. Let’s just hope we can get away from having it be an institution.
Actually, I think it’s debatable whether even the Crusades were motivated primarily by religion. Sure, the official reason was to “liberate the Holy Land”, but the reason a lot of the barons got involved was in hope of loot, and control of important trade routes.
Don’t have a cite, but I imagine I can find one, if anyone wants to debate it.
The Crusades were also a good way to get rid of a whole lot of guys who had spent their entire lives training to kill lots of people, and who were feeling antsy. Sending them off to kill the heathen kept them from killing their neighbors, and got loot and power besides. (My source for that is Barbara Tuchman’s A distant mirror, but she put it in more scholarly terms.)
Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t the Crimean War caused by the Tsar claiming that Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire were being abused by the Turks?
No, the Crimean War was caused by the Russians’ desire for control of the entrance to their warm water ports in the Black Sea. To do that they needed to take control of the straits between the Med Sea and the Black Sea from the Ottomans. The Allies wanted to check growing Russian power so they ganged up on her.
The pretext given for war was a dispute between Orthodox and Catholics over some holy site in Palestine. However, when that question was resolved without Russia getting control of what it wanted diplomatically, they invaded anyway.
In quite a few wars, while religion may not be the underlining cause of the conflict, it was most certainly the fuel that kept the warriors going when they needed a reason to kill strangers.
What percentage of wars are we talking about when you say “quite a few.” Given the astounding number of conflicts that have occurred in the history of the world, yeah, quite a few used religion as a reason to keep fighting.
However, I think that in a large majority, the thing that kept people going was either plunder or nationalism. Honor and loot were a good reason for a lot of people to keep going.
I think the idea of holy wars was simply a way of giving the war a higher justification than the base motives that kept everyone going. An example is (are? were?) the conquistadores. They were motivated by the plunder, but justified the pillaging by saying that they needed to convert the savages because it sounded nicer. Without the religious aspect I’m sure they would have found another reason and kept doing it anyways.
Here’s another example of religious differences being used to inflame passions against an opponent. British passage of the Quebec Act in 1774 infuriated the American colonists and is considered one of the sparks that set off the Revolutionary War. One key provision of the Act that was highly resented was the order for tolerance of the Catholic religion. According to Barbara Tuchman in The March of Folly “The Inquisition was forecast for Pennsylvania…the whore of Babylon invoked, a ‘Popish’ army and ‘Popish hordes’ pictured…as ready to subvert the liberties of the Protestant colonies.”
Religious differences aren’t necessary to start a war. But they can come in awfully handy.
I think of religion and war more intertwined at a basic level.
King: “Go, charge those spears!”
Soldiers: “No way!”
King: “Look, if you do, there will be an afterlife, so you won’t really permanently die”
Soldiers: “I dunno…”
King: “It will be a great afterlife, paradise, much better than this world!”
Now, would they be so willing to charge the spears, guns, forts, etc. if they thought their lives would cease to be? Would they even join the army in the first place?
I was going to say something related to that - we may still fight wars, but I bet there would be a lot more morale problems. People are a lot more likely to risk their lives when they think they have an afterlife waiting for them.
Well, yes. The Quebec Act was, after all, one of the “Intolerable Acts” cited by Americans as a reason for revolution, and which led directly to the First Continental Congress.
I’m not convinced. After all, Maryland was a safe haven for Catholics and no one seemed to have a problem with it.
Quebec Act may have been considered one of the intolerable acts, but I have a feeling that the other ones (Quartering Act, the Massachusetts Bay Regulating Act, Boston Port Act, and the Impartial Administration of Justice Act) were more influential. After all, most of these injustices were eventually countered in the original Constitution or Bill of Rights. If the idea of religious liberty was so anathema to the Founding Fathers, why would they protect it in the Bill of Rights?
Oops, I meant to add something else. The real reason that the Quebec Act pissed off the colonists was because it extended Canada’s border to the Ohio River and effectively cut off the original western boundaries of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont.
But to be fair, if there was no religion, I’m sure the folks responsible for starting wars would have found some other excuse anyway. “God” is just a historically handy convenience.
