March 26, 2013
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Religion=War?
Religion=War?
Or one of the lies that people tell each other.This is a rerun on an entry from 2010
Typical of the historical illiteracy (and lies) that some of the most evangelical of atheist like to say is one of their reason for being atheists.“Religion has caused most most of the worlds wars.”
“More specifically though, WWII was in every meaningful sense a religious war. Hitler came to power, on the back of a message straight out of the Martin Luther playbook;he was consistently supported by the catholic church and his entourage was shot through with people (like himself) extolling the most absurd religious ideas and concepts imaginable.”What you are looking at is a classic example of the sad stretching of facts, that we see when these evangelical atheists try to say a war was caused by religion.
Only a total idiot would think that WW II was a religious war.
The theory works like this. Did the people who went to war have a religion? As all cultures who ever existed have or had a region. So the answer is alway yes.
Because their religion effected them in some way, the war must be due to that region. And whatever you do at all times just ignore the atheistic communists
who hold all records for the number ofpeople killed in war or murdered for their cause.
The facts are when you look at all of histories wars, asking yourself the simplest of questions. What started the war? Why was it fought? The real answer is . . .
Only 7% of all war were fought over religion. With a little more than half of those involving one religion Islam. That’s right of the 1,763 wars chronicled in the“Encyclopedia of Wars” . 93% of all wars were fought for secular reasons.
Comments (155)
Therefore, we can only conclude that secularism is the reason for war!
Most wars weren’t fought over cocaine, but this doesn’t mean that cocaine habits are healthy.
@Celestial_Teapot - The last time I posted anything on the health benefits of having a faith. I was called a hater. But as you know those of less faith statistically tend to be less healthy. The cause of that? That is for another entry
@grim_truth - Using the same logic that is often used to say religion is the cause e of most wars. You have a stronger argument than religion causes most or even a lot of wars. It has been a motivate for war, but it is a very rare one
@trunthepaige - I don’t know what fuzzy math was used to make up your numbers, but there are examples of wars fought primarily for or motivated primarily by religion. Religious wars don’t have to tip the 50% mark to be unnecessary and harmful.
A single jihad or a single crusade is bad in and of itself.
@Celestial_Teapot - sure lets worry about the 7% and forget about the 93%. But what I am addressing is common lie, not a cure for war
@trunthepaige - Fair enough. It’d be nice, though, to be able to examine the methodology used in generating your figures. It is difficult to how any single historian (much less author) can account for all wars in history and give a fair accounting of all their causes.
@Celestial_Teapot - Its a lot more than one. the general theme that religion is not a common cause of war, let alone thee cause of war is the standard opinion among historians. One would think that before making the charge that religion causes most wars, that they would try to prove that was true. But no one has ever bothered to do that, before spreading the lie. They never try to prove it because they can not come close to proving it
@trunthepaige - Sure, the causes of war are almost always multifaceted. In many cases, however, religion is a major contributing or aggravating factor. It’s entirely expected, then, to find that only a small percentage of wars are counted as “religious.”
The French religious wars and the English Civil War were largely religious. So too were the conflicts between Iraq and Iran, between Palestine and Israel, and between Greece and Turkey. The Armenian genocide and the Holocaust both were both fanned by historical religious prejudices.
Humans are naturally inclined toward hatred. If all religion was completely eradicated we’d just find some other reason to kill each other. Either way, it keeps the population from getting too out of control.
I like that you make up your stats off the top of your head. I do that too.
@Celestial_Teapot - Yep and they add up to the 7%. land acquisition, tribalism, patriotism, even racism, are all far bigger reasons for war.
@the_man_who_broke_the_bank - Sorry dude if the math was too hard for you, or needing to look at an Encyclopedia is over your head. My site is for adults, this is likely much to much for you
@SKANLYN - Well yes sort of. Not too sure I see the “good” in it you do
No, really, I’m paying you a compliment. Not just anyone can do that. Also, a sterling execution of the old “straw man” technique:
@the_man_who_broke_the_bank - to be a straw man that would need to be an un common and weak argument. It is really weak, but it is very commonly said and believed. Want to see the old entry and all those trying to say it was true? You likely will see them come here on this one
People who are so hateful toward religion had hateful mommies.
@ImNotUglyIJustNeedLove - and drunken daddies
I also notice when they get on this kick they never want to talk about how religion has made lots of positive impacts also. All the hospitals and orphanages built, and soup kitchens and the like. I haven’t seen any evidence in any society that forbade religion, that that society was better off either.
@trunthepaige - Oh yes. We mustn’t forget about daddy. People often project the same view they have of their father onto God.
Drunken daddy means a-hole supreme being.
Yeah, hitler killed six million jews and it had nothing to do with religious ideology… His empire was just running low on fossil fuels and had a surplus of poisonous gas…
“My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter.
It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few
followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to
fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as a sufferer
but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage
which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the
scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How
terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison. Today, after two
thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than
ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood
upon the Cross.
“
- Adolph Hitler
Yes, WW2 had nothing to do with religion. Somebody just forgot to tell hitler that.
As for your statistic, it means nothing without the data and criteria it’s based on. And religion can be a contributing factor rather than being the sole cause of a war. For instance a dictator can go to war for power and resources but use religion or xenophobia to justify it to his people.
@mtngirlsouth - You think secular countries don’t have soup kitchens, orphanages etc? You think nobody would help the poor without religion?
I like you for being such a bitchy fighter using every claw and nail you got!!! that’s right, you nailed it, these anti-religionists are IRRATIONAL. and you know what…they know it, and you know what…THEY DON”T REALLY CARE either. their whole thing is just to lash out and destroy what they hate, rather than repenting and in humility admit that they are wrong, and trying to change.
So, arguing with an irrational person is not going to get you anywhere. So, how are they going to see the WAY?they have to see me live it. But rebuking the sinner is good, instructing the ignorant is good, thank you.
@agnophilo - And your point is? That Hitler started WW2 because he was once Catholic? You do not even believe that so why are you saying it?
I came here for the coke.
Atheist =whiner. Christian = sadist.
money is the true root of all evil. The reason the Jews were persecuted in Germany was because the Jewish communities were thriving in the Diaspora. Even though they had no rights to owning land, they created wealth through giving loans. Not to mention, Europe was paralyzed by the Depression, and inflation was super high. They look at the thriving Diaspora and themselves, and who can they blame for their misfortunes? Of course the Jews, but with everything, there is a need for justification, and religion became the forefront leader of the persecution. I read today, with Hungary’s economy deteriorating, antisemitism is on the rise. Originally there were only 10% of antisemitic, it has risen to 20%.
My point is that religion is a facade to oppression and justification for war. It may be part of it, but never all of it.
@Tooty_fruits - Hitler tapped into latent Lutheran and Catholic anti-Semitism. In speeches, he even cited and pushed Luther’s book, On the Jews and Their Lies.
@Tooty_fruits - The French Religious wars and the Crusades were pretty much all religiously motivated.
@Celestial_Teapot - Yep it happened, but it was so far from being a major motivation for wars.
“I come not to bring peace, but to bring a sword” Lemme guess…out of context?
@tendollar4ways - Let me tell you about your guess. It has nothing to do with the facts I just stated
@Tooty_fruits - Good point
@trunthepaige - Your “facts” are weak and Fauxnewsie. Hardly any war has “1″ reason. We can look back on our latest endevour in the war making business and you couldn’t say it was a religious war however if you try and say there was no religious influences that helped to bring it about you would be equally disengenuous.
Had Bush decided to invade the Netherlands (who had as much to do with 9/11 as Iraq) it would have been a tougher sell. Bush saying God told him to invade the Netherlands probably wouldn’t have gone over as well even with the evangelicals. Muslims? Let the blood flow!!!
@tendollar4ways - My facts are 100% accurate and I did give you a very good source. That one source I have given, so far is one more citation than anyone has ever given to try and prove the lie that religion is the main cause of war. Let me know when anyone tries to prove that religion is the major cause of war. No one has ever done that, haters like you just say it. You say it with zero facts to back up the assertion.
In a way, WW2 was a religious war, but the religion in question was not Christianity. Contrary to popular belief, Nazism was not a political party but a New Age religion in it’s own right. Heavily influenced by Theosophy, mysticism, and Ufology (yes, it was that bizarre!), the Nazi party viewed the Furor as a religious leader more than a political leader.
I still don’t buy the argument that religion causes most wars, because I KNOW what causes most wars:
People who crave power more than they value human life.
@trunthepaige - So you are trying to tell me that had Bush wanted to invade a Christian country who had nothing to do with 9/11 it would have gone over as easily and with as much support? Wow…You really are a salesman aren’t you .
Interesting and I do not always agree with you but you always give me a reason to do research and learn something new. Have a great Monday evening and good day tomorrow.
@tendollar4ways - I am trying to tell you that you need to back up your assertion and stop just telling the same lie so often that you guys think that there is something to back it up with. When as a matter of fact no one has ever backed that claim up with anything more naming one war out thousands of wars. You need to at least beat the 7% for me to even talk to you. To make it 15% and you might get some respect but that could never be done. Religion is one of the least likely reasons for a war
@Grannys_Place - You have a great day as well. I hear the weather is nice out your way today
You might want to fix your typo because right now it is reading that religion causes more wars than secular reasons. Given that most wars are usually caused over racial/culture differences and/or claims to resources, I am sure that cannot be right.
@snarkius - You are right it hasn’t. That was a quote the statement I was refuting. I just made that clearer thank you for pointing that out
@tendollar4ways - Learn the difference between a war actually being fought for religious reasons and the propaganda that is used to promote the idea of a war to the populace.
@trunthepaige - The Iraq war was fought for Oil Rights, a Political Power play by the Neocons, financial gain for the Military Industrial Complex, Revenge among other things that are secular. I would agree with you that usually there are these sinister reasons which tend to be secular in nature at the heart of most wars.
However you appear to want to exonerate religion completely from the equation as you have done in the past with Religion (Christianity) = good, Non-religion (secular in this case) = bad Simplistic nonsense.
If religion is so righteous and pious like you claim, it wouldn’t be propaganda @snarkius - points to. GWB spoke to Jesus he claimed and he said he told him to invade. He even dised his Dad and said I answer to a higher father for Christsake.
If you want to play semantics and declare religion innocent in 93% of the wars, fine…you are free to believe any such horseshit you want.
If religion was so pious, it would be a restraint instead of the gasoline for the fire.
@tendollar4ways - Its not me, its almost every historian on earth. Just make a case show that religion is the major cause of war. Look up scholarly stuff, you do not need to do the work yourslef. It should be so easy to prove. Unless its not true
@Grannys_Place - I have a nice BBC article on the subject if you like to do your own reading.
All the non war atheist are here for a fight.
@trunthepaige - I guess I’m just a more positive person than you.
I agree with your last statement about war…but I don’t agree with you calling Richard Dawkins an asshole…I think he is an intelligent man who brings up some good points and who should take up Karen Armstrong in a debate…she has been challenging him to one for several years now and he keeps dodging her…that spells cowardice to me .good night.
Nationalism at times endow their followers the will to want to “beat” another nation.
Religion at times make followers want to “convert” people and groups at times (remember colonialism?)
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The last Iraqi war supposedly was not about oil…..then why spend all that money?
The war on Terrorism is a thinly veiled threat to get back at extremist Islamists who are also pushing war to get back at the Heathens.
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@trunthepaige - How about you pointing to the three last wars? That the post 9/11 wars are not mostly about religion? Give me the last three recent war that was not caused majority by religion.
@trunthepaige - You are being extremely weaselly. Had religion (Christianity) been strongly against going into Iraq instead of strongly supportive of…..we wouldn’t be there now.
yeap. religion did not invent guns or bombs.
I was watching this documentary related to Hitler/WWII and that there was this operation called Valkyrie (there’s now a hollywood movie starring Tom Cruise) and it’s about these people under Hitler who tried to kill Hitler and [some of them] they were Catholics. Of course killing is a sin but they just didn’t see any other way. obviously those attempts failed but at least they tried.
and here’s the
link
about the pope at that time condemning nazism
.
sorry about it being wikipedia.
I will say only this. The reason for one’s actions, “good” or “bad”, is rarely, if ever, truly religion. Religion, a product of ignorance most certainly, is a substitution for information one does not have. That is, it is used to explain what is already there. (Though to be fair, it can reinforce or encourage what is already there.) However, by turning to religion to explain behavior, we ignore the real causes, which science has made significant strides in exposing, between neurology, psychology, and yes, evolution. There are more important, more relevant reasons to do what is considered “good” and “right” than the simple fact that it is considered “good” and “right”. Likewise, there are better reasons to avoid what is “wrong” than simply that it is considered “wrong”. There are better ways to define and determine both. And there are better ways to encourage “right” and discourage “wrong” than the primitive methods we are presently accustomed to. The slapdash explanations offered by religion do little more than make the “bad” worse, and undermine the value of the “good”. I sincerely hope we, as a species, manage to evolve beyond such myths.
so you admit that 7% of wars were fought for purely religious reasons. frankly, i find even one single religious war to be enough to dismiss religion as being as evil as it is good.
As far as I’m concerned there are 2 different sides of wars.You have one side trying to rule over and one side fighting for freedom.Religion has it’s part in EVERY war,it is never the cause of war unless it is started by a lunatic.All the biggest wars of the world in our time are either for ones power or ones freedom.Thats the bottom line.
@flapper_femme_fatale - Who started the Civil War? Democrats.
Who got the US involved in World War I? A Democrat
Whose tin foil hat foreign policy allowed the outbreak of World War II? A Democrat
Who got us into the Korean War? A Democrat
Who got us into the Vietnam War? A Democrat
Whose tin foil hat foreign policy led to 9/11 and that rampaging maniac Saddam Hussein? A Democrat
Whose tin foil hat foreign policy has allowed the Middle East become a war zone for the first time since the Crusades?
A Democrat.
I’d say your obsession with religious evil is a bit misplaced.
The GWOT is definitely a religious war because so many of the people fighting us are motivated by religion.
In WWII, the Germans tried to exterminate the Jews for their religious beliefs, but not because the beliefs of the Jews conflicted with their own religious beliefs. The Germans din’t invade Poland, Russia or France in a religious-fueled desire for conquest, it was racism fueled. The Japanese had their own secular motivations.
In the end, people always find reasons to kill other people. On the day-to-day basis, hardly anyone is murdered for their religion. Extrapolate that to a larger scale… most wars are over power, resources, political influence, territory etc. War is the fault of human nature, in fact, if more people took the peaceful tenants of their religions more seriously-that is to say were more motivated by the fundamentalsof their religions- we would probably have fewer wars.
@Maverick83 - Religion is the greatest civilizing force in human history. All the great civilization throughout the world and throughout history have risen up around religion.
On the other hand, atheist societies have seen the greatest mass murder, mass misery and mass brutality in human history.
What’s wrong with you people? Can’t you see the nose on your own face?
People are people.
Instead of thinking of it as a line….like, your crazy extremist religious people on one end of the spectrum, and your atheists pointing fingers and saying religion is the thing that’s wrong with this world…think of it like a circle, where the religious extremists and atheist extremists (yes, I said it) fall in roughly the same space on the circle.They are where the circle begins and ends.
There will always be an atheist who blames all the worlds problems on religion. In their world, religion is suppression. Religion tells them what they can or can’t do. And that’s wrong to them. Just like war. And when religion is so oppressive that there is any trace of it that may have caused a war, it’s logical for them to place blame at the heart of a person. That person is Catholic, and they say it changed their life, but look at what they did. Look at what they did for their religions sake. Of course, the argument neglects to acknowledge the truth that people are human…
And on the flip side…there are religious extremists who believe that a society’s godlessness is the reason the world has problems. And they blow up buildings. And an entire religion is shunned and hurt from it. Muslim women had to hide their veils.
There is reality in both arguments, but really…the world has issues, and we spend way too much time trying to define them and place blame for them, when we should be fixing them.
@PPhilip - I have got to love the way no one even tries to prove that religion is the major cause of war, then they keep saying it is and asking me to prove more than I already have, all while they can prove nothing. You guys are all making unfounded assertions and think I need to prove you are wrong.
The syrian civil war, the Libyan civil war and the Somali Civil War. That was easy. No one even tries to say that ether Iraq war was over religion. none of the wars Iraq instituted against its neighbors had anything to do with religion. If you want to know why we fought the last Iraq war try reading the war resolution, if you forgot it had nothing to do with religion and we were supported by a lot of Islamic nations. As to the Afghan war being started by religion it was. SO why did you even think it was going to be hard to show that most wars, even in the cherry picked last few years, are not religious wars? do your really thing that when two Muslims kill each other over politics, its really them trying to expand Islam? Sort of like the other guy here trying to say Hitler started WW2 over religion. That is more than a little bit of a stretch
Even if your last statement was true, and it was not, it’s still only 7% of all wars that were religious wars. With most of those 7% being fought due to only one of those religions. Islam
@nixxyknox - Not to say anyone is about to commit genocide but. In every conflict (war) before one sides starts killing the other. Their leaders need to dehumanize the enemy. Most people do not like to kill other people who are just like they are. So first you need to make your people think those other people (the enemy) are evil to the point of being lessor humans who deserve to die.
None of the worlds problems are going to be solved by the secular calling the faithful violent, less intelligent and dangerous. Saying it will be a peaceful paradise on earth, when we kill off all religion. That is lie with zero basis in fact. That is a lie that is intentionally dehumanizing those of us who have a faith. Dehumanizing another group of people, is not about bringing peace.
@SlickRick297 - You pretty much made my case. If the people who say that religion was dangerous really believed it. They would be frighted for their lives when churches let out on Sunday. But I have never seen anyone looked frighted by the young men coming out of church services.
@flapper_femme_fatale - Then politics, politicians, and governments are to be most fear. They stared the other 93% so they must be far more evil than good. And the truth is, all you just said was that humans are as evil as they are good.
@Maverick83 - Oh I know purely secular scientific peoples never do evil things. The medical experiments of the Nazis must have been good things, the Soviets were proudly secular (atheists actually) the Chinese still are proudly secular they never did (and do) bad things did they?
Saying science will make us good people is hilarious, you have just turned a method of learning into a faith
@f5ye_angel5 - wikipedia is a good source, so long as you look at its sources.
@tendollar4ways - Dude you have not even tried to make your case. Would you mind if I show your unfounded opinion no respect until you do
@Tallman - Well one he really can be one. Calling parents who raise their children in a religious environment child abusers, qualifies as being a world class asshole. He can be so polite right up to the time he makes a slanderous and vile comment like that. SO I will stand behind calling him an asshole, until the day comes I hear him say he is sorry he said such things. But he means it so he never will. As a matter of fact he keeps doing it
@ImNotUglyIJustNeedLove -
all of them were Christian, as well
and you talk of wars in the 20th century as though they’re all i should be concerned about.
@trunthepaige -
“Then politics, politicians, and governments are to be most fear. ”
none of those are an ideology that has ever commanded its believers to kill non-believers.
“ And the truth is, all you just said was that humans are as evil as they are good.”
that’s true. but that doesn’t mean i don’t look forward to the day when religions no longer exist.
@flapper_femme_fatale - Yes it is… kill or drive out all the none Germans or Serbians.. You dismiss the greatest evils ever done and the worst mass murders by far because they had nothing to do with religion nothing at all.
Sorry dear but you are an irrational bigot in that regard.
@flapper_femme_fatale - You mean like Adolf Hitler was Christian? Blaming being a Democrat on being Christian sounds silly especially when you accuse the GOP of being taken over by Christian.
Those damn Christians ruin everything because they’re EVERYWHERE!! Even in your underwear!!
They’re coming to take me away! Hee! Haa! Haa! LINK
@trunthepaige - I would only be surprised if you gave my opinion respect. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/wtwtgod/3513709.stm You basically think in black and white and me in grey.
@tendollar4ways - Gray wow you need a mirror
@tendollar4ways - You do know that series agrees with me right.
“the authors of the War Audit say there have been very few genuinely religious wars in the past century.”
@trunthepaige - And I agree with your assertion that there are few “religious” wars depending on how you define “religious”. I however disagree that most wars are fought without religion’s influence.
@tendollar4ways - You mean fought without human influence. 99% of the worlds population is religious to some degree. Making your statement silly. And now that you are slowly agreeing with me that religion is not the major cause of war. I expect to never hear that crap out of you
@trunthepaige - The War Audit would Define the Palestinian/Israeli conflict as not a religious war and I would agree. However I would prefer not to hear your crap that religion plays no role in continuation of this conflict.
@trunthepaige - The point is we all sort of disagree with how big of a role does religion play in war.
“As to the Afghan war being started by religion it was.” quote from yourself, even though the ten dollar link says this:
“Osama Bin Laden portrays the campaign being waged by his terror network as a religious duty.
But the authors of the War Audit say it is much more about his opposition to the political order in Arab countries and the presence of US forces in Muslim nations.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/wtwtgod/3513709.stm
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So there is loose interpretation to major cause of war and contributing cause of war. If the Atheists changed their tone to major contributing cause to war would they still be wrong or be partly right?
Let me say that religion has persuaded me in some good cases and in some bad cases probably to a lesser scale than Philosophy would. The nature of religious belief sort of works on us more than other ways in which we think. That is the nature of religious beliefs.
@trunthepaige - The gray and mirror was a low blow BTW. I am getting a few gray’s and it is depressing.
@PPhilip - You think the way you do because the Democrat Party owns government, schools, mass media, and science, not because of religion.
In a postmodern civilization like ours, only throw back hard heads like me remember thought as it was before the Leftist Takeover.
And just look how popular I am!
And good lookin’ too!
@ImNotUglyIJustNeedLove -
“You mean like Adolf Hitler was Christian?”
being an agnostic, it’d be physically impossible for me to give less of a shit about whether someone is a “true” Christian. that’s the job of fellow Christians to determine who is and is not true to their faith. if someone professes a belief in Jesus, they’re Christian as far as i’m concerned. it’s not my job to make excuses for those who are horrible representations of Christ… it’s yours.
“Blaming being a Democrat on being Christian sounds silly especially when you accuse the GOP of being taken over by Christian.”
seeing as i’d rather die than be associated with the GOP, who they are “taken over by” is of little interest to me. now my father, on the other hand, recently broke his affiliation with the party because of its extreme religious faction. but that’s not really my concern.
anyway, my point was simply this: if being a Democrat can make one evil, so can being Christian. either one is an ideology. religion, unlike politics, has a history of telling its followers that they’ll be rewarded in the afterlife for committing crimes.
@trunthepaige -
“You dismiss the greatest evils ever done and the worst mass murders by far because they had nothing to do with religion nothing at all.”
i don’t dismiss them. i just don’t believe they somehow make religious violence look more acceptable, as you apparently think they should. last time i checked, your religion condemns killing… period. why should Stalin’s actions provide a nice excuse for you to not condemn your fellow Christians? and you call me a bigot… you’re the one excusing violence done in the name of God because other people do it too.
@flapper_femme_fatale - Adolf Hitler was about as Christian as his contemporary ruthless dictator over in Russia, Josef Stalin.
Did you know Josef Stalin wanted to become a Catholic Priest. But he opted for total domination and mass murder like his German brother Adolf.
Christian is as Christian does. And what those two barbarians did was NOT Christian by any means.
@Rescued_by_grace - I agree with this statement. All war is about power and domination PERIOD.
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I try to stay out of debates about religion because of how butt hurt people get over the debate on both sides. Wars are fought between governments and leaders of governments. Citizens, no matter what they believed, get dragged into those wars because the government decides it needs to be fought.
In my opinion the majority of wars are started because the “government” in power cares more about being in power than they do they people they are supposed to be protecting. They will use religion, race, the immorality of the “enemy” and a reason that the other should be conquered and controlled. Religion does not start wars, evil people who may be religious are the cause of some wars. Getting rid of religion won’t end the need that some people feel to dominate other people. There will still be war with or without religion.
@Erika_Steele - ”Getting rid of religion won’t end the need that some people feel to dominate other people.” Unfortunately some of the extreme atheists would not like hearing that line just because they are searching for a logical explaination that religion is “bad”.
Still the causes of war is unfortunately tied up with ways in which religion operates. Maybe it is both human nature and the ways that religion operates? Still I am a major cheerleader for the need for peace despite what warmonger propose.
If twenty dominoes have to fall in sequence before the last one jingles the bell, which domino caused the jingle?
Religion is certainly often a factor. But several other forms of evil are often also involved.
@ImNotUglyIJustNeedLove - Your method to point towards the new (in favor of the old?) is just a funny tactic.
We need to end warfare and it will be difficult to determine which ways is the best way to have harmony on Earth. I say restraint, but North Korea is making a lot of war sounding noise. I wonder if you will ever blog on ways to have peace on earth?
I don’t know all the reasons war are started. I had a history professor say that in all of world history there has only been 50 years of peace. lol I do not know how he knew that, but it sounds true.”
Sometimes I think earth is a penal colony.
I did not know about the wars being started by secular reasons.
frank
@Celestial_Teapot - Islam is the cause of most of those wars you mentioned. Now as for the Holocaust, that was entirely racial.
Paige, you can do so much better than this. All this shock type stuff you do is beneath your ability. I’ve never heard Richard Dawkins say that WWII was a religious war, not that he could have and I didn’t hear him. Be that as it may, who cares what he says. We should all try to get our history from unbiased sources, from historians would be a good start. People that can tell you what happened without telling you things they couldn’t possibly know. WWII had a lot of angles, but neither religion or lack of religion played a major role in that war and anyone who says otherwise has yet to convince me through any method that would stand up in a court of law. War is hell and a lot of bad things having nothing to do with warfare happen. Secular and religious ideologies mix and 80 years down the road all we have are those eye witnesses as to what motivated a certain action from anyone. People seem to come away from the same story with completely different points of view. The focus should be on accuracy and not shock journalism.
Religion is a very powerful tool to manipulate people. Although religion
is not exactly equivalent to war, it was/is still commonly used.
There were the Holy Wars, aka those tiny little wars lasting a hundred years called the Crusades. The reason for the wars were not exclusively religious but they used religion to manipulate people.
And you read the Bible of all things! The whole Old Testament is full of wars that were fought in the name of religion/God.
The Jews have been fighting for almost their entire existence because of their nationality that was deemed by God himself as “His People”.
More examples:
Reconquista.
Taiping Rebellion in China
Holocaust
Children’s Crusade
Salem Witch Trials (not a war but bloodshed in the name of religion)
Muslims vs. Christians in Bosnia
Aztecs vs. Christians from Portugal and Spain
The Arab-Israeli war(s)
The millenia long conflicts between the Shia and the Kurds
The conflict between Israel and Lebanon (hezbollah)
World war 1 started because of a religious fanatic shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
Hutus and the Tutsi’s. African War
Wars in Ireland
There are even more examples than that.
@ImNotUglyIJustNeedLove - *shrug* not my call to make.
@brown_buffalo - Damn reasonable of you. I really like that
@flapper_femme_fatale - No not at all. I am telling the truth. That it is rare cause of war not the major one
@somewittyhandle - It would be nice if you tried to prove that point
It isn’t that religion started so many wars, it’s that religion made it easier for so many wars to begin, Paige, and thereby religion has the blood on its hands of millions of millions of people on both sides of the battle lines. We at Table 54 have never read an article concerning history that was so full of mistakes, innuendo, and misunderstandings. One wonders where you get your history from. Mark is correct in his point about WWII. How could anyone claim that religion had nothing to do with it while staring directly in the faces of 6 million dead Jews is beyond us!
-Y
@Table54 - The “Encyclopedia of Wars is full of mistakes? Sure it is
do you mind if I lend you no respect respect until the day you can show that the major percentage of wars were caused by religion? That is the baseless assertion that you could never back up. Calling my excellent citation a mistake is funny considering that it is you who is making the baseless claim. But if there is any validity to your claim, you will have no problem backing it up. But you never will be able to back up that Lie.
The last guy who tried, on this entry. He ended up citing a source that agreed with me.
I feel like most (if not all) wars are fought for financial reasons. People may use religion to hide their true intentions, but I feel like money is usually at the heart of it all.
@kuai_le1011 - the Reconquista. was not a religious war. It was recapturing lost territory from the Moores. Yes the Moores did originally invade in a holy war, but fighting back an invader is not religiously motivated. the Holocaust was culturally and racially motivated. The conversion away from the Jewish religion or being a secular Jew did not save you. The Gypsies where Christian as were the Poles and other Slavs. Of the ones you listed about half were not about religion.
Again that is not the point. Religion is provably not a major reason for the vast majority of wars. Or genocides not to say it never happen it did happen in 7% of all recorded wars. If you want to talk genocides the records are all held by officially atheistic nations
@TheyCallHerEcho88 - Exactly they are fought for some sort of gain.
Paige, Paige, Paige. We did NOT say that religion caused wars (Some they did but that’s not our point), we said, “religion made it easier for so many wars to begin.” There is a profound difference between those two statements.
-Y
@trunthepaige - Yes it was. Several Christian kingdoms re-established Christian rule over the whole
Iberian Peninsula through the conquest of Muslim kingdoms.
I said religion did not equal war all the time but that it was a tool that has been used to manipulate people into war. I don’t feel that’s incorrect assessment.
@Table54 - And the atheism of Marxism is a major reason for the 100,000,000+ murders of the communists?
Again I grow tried of unsupported assertions
@kuai_le1011 - No that had to do with the Muslims being invaders. You could not let the enemy stay behind your lines. The Muslim were enemies, they had fought on the other side
and I can see how Some might thing WWII was religiously affected.
“Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with
the will of the Almighty Creator:
by defending myself against
the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord
.” -Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
@trunthepaige - without the religious (Spanish Catholic Church) and conservative party support for Ferdinand VII, the reclaiming would not have begun.
@kuai_le1011 - They would be fools for doing so. Those are the words of a man who is on record as wanting to put an end to Christianity. He used any words that would win him an election and put himself in power. No one claims that Hitler did what he did to spread or end a religion. That war was openly fought to gain control of territory for the German people. The Germans who were of aryan ancestry that is.
@trunthepaige - I agree that he was highly manipulative and a sociopath. I’m just saying that I could see why some would hold that belief.
I personally don’t. I have had a few too many history classes.
@kuai_le1011 - Are you claiming that because Ferdinand VII could point to the Islamic practice of conversion to Islam by the sword, and say to other nations that they were next. That made his war, a religious war? No it was a war of self defense and as the name states re conquest. They were taking their land back. TheMoslems
had already been stopped in France and driven back to Spain, They were
also invading up to Vienna on the other side of Europe . They were not
peacefully minding their own business. The Christian nations very much needed to support each other or they would have been destroyed. To say not wanting to be invaded made their motivations religious ones is well wrong. The Muslim invasions is part of the 7% of wars that were religiously motivated. It is most of that 7% as a matter of fact.
@kuai_le1011 - I can tell you have had a lot of history classes. This was a nice discussion
@trunthepaige - Ferdinand used the influence of the church to imprison liberals who would have stopped him from changing the laws. I am not saying it was a directly religious war but the catholic religious leaders of the church knew his intentions and enabled him to proceed. On the Muslim side, it was a religious war. They were claiming land in the name of Allah. Yes, it was a political move to conquer but they did it with righteous indignation.
And by religious, I don’t mean Christian. I mean Muslim, Buddhist, Christian, Judaism, etc. Any religion.
@trunthepaige -
I agree. I like that we can disagree without it getting to a place of degradation and that there is intelligent input.
@agnophilo - ”Yes, WW2 had nothing to do with religion. Somebody just forgot to tell hitler that.”
The first two groups of people Hitler had rounded up put in concentration camps were Priests and intellectual free-thinkers. Hitler was looking for a secular solution to Germany’s problems. It’s clear that he didn’t see God/religion as part of the solution. On some level believers were the problem to Hitler, so on some level religion was dragged into WWII as a victim, though not as a cause.
@tendollar4ways - ”Had religion (Christianity) been strongly
against going into Iraq instead of strongly supportive of…..we
wouldn’t be there now.”
At the time, Pope John Paul II recommended that the US avoid going to was with Iraq. The Catholic Church in America was not in support of war in Iraq. During the War in Iraq, about half a million Christians in Iraq were kicked out of their homes right under the noses of US soldiers (many of whom were Christian, but didn’t see this quiet persecution). It seems that the politicians, republican and democrat, are the only ones who are happy with us trying to make them have a democracy against their will.
@trunthepaige - the rarity doesn’t mean the instances in which it causes wars are any less horrible or indicative of religion’s ability to create conflict.
@trunthepaige - “Oh I know purely secular scientific peoples never do evil things.”
Did I say they don’t?
@Celestial_Teapot - Not necessarily true. During that time, the Arab Byzantine Empire had control over the middle east, and the trading routes that extended from that toward the West. Basically they had monopoly over advantageous routes to the east, and the West wanted those routes. They, of course, needs a means of justifications, and what better way to incite support for the war by utilizing anti-Arab sentiments, and exacerbating to warfare. So the Crusades left cities littered with bodies and bloody pools. Therefore, it wasn’t completely a religious warfare, and far from being as holy as they declared it to be. As for the French Wars, it was based on economic gains as well. :/
My point is don’t rule out an economic vantage point when it comes to war. Just look at the war against terrorism. Need I say more?
@monobeam - Evangelical Christianity (which is different from Catholicism) strongly supported the Iraq war. GWB supposedly spoke with Jesus and he told him to invade. Save me your revisionist history which is what Paige is trying to do with this post and seems to be a trend.
@ImNotUglyIJustNeedLove - You should write a compilation of your most frequently used arguments. Call it Loborn’s Big Book Of Unsubstantiated Assertions. You could save yourself time, and simply substitute the assertion numbers for your arguments.
@Maverick83 - Nope but you more than implied that such thinking would usher in a better world. We all have a right to our opinions so you can have yours. But it is only an opinion I would say its not founded on any history of that being the case
@flapper_femme_fatale - No they do not. But I think it is obvious that the evils man does is simply human nature. Blaming a religion for it requires some proof.
@tendollar4ways - Wow talk about stretching the truth. He never said God told me to do it. He only said prayed about it.
@Tooty_fruits - That was one of the wars I tend to say is religiously based. But there is no doubt that it had other more typical reasons for it at well. But it was the classic case of using religion to fan passions of the men fighting
@trunthepaige - http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1007-03.htm “President Bush said: ‘I’m driven with a mission from God. God would tell me,
“George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan.” And I did, and then God
would tell me, “George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq …” And I did. And now,
again, I feel God’s words coming to me, “Go get the Palestinians their state and
get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East.” And by God
I’m gonna do it.’
@tendollar4ways - What a load of shit that is.
Here was your Girl in 08′s speaking about “God’s Task” ”that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending them (American soliders) out on a task that is from God. That’s what we have to make sure that we are praying for, that there is a plan, and that that plan is God’s plan.” http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles_of_faith/2008/09/sarah_palin_on_1.html
Your People Paige. Started the war, profiting from the war, leveraging the war as it continues(Palin in an attempt to get elected) and you have the nerve to sell the innocence and riteousness of your religion?
You have no shame but…ya is a Repub.
Uno Mas…
http://www.alternet.org/story/140221/bush%27s_shocking_biblical_prophecy_emerges%3A_god_wants_to_%22erase%22_mid-east_enemies_%22before_a_new_age_begins%22
@Tooty_fruits - The Crusades began with Pope Urban II’s exhortation to retake the Holy Land. This was offered in the context of Christians and its importance in the New and Old Testaments.
The French Religious Wars were Civil Wars within France between Protestants and Catholics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Wars_of_Religion
I’ll add another one: The India-Pakistan wars. India was only partitioned in 1947 to satisfy Muslim separatism. India and Pakistan shared a common culture, the only fissure was religion.
@tendollar4ways - ”You have no shame but…ya is a Repub.”
Wow you needs to be incurably weak minded to think the way you do. But I suppose it makes it easy on you to make yourself feel like a good person. You can lie cheat and steal, but you still feel moral, because you base what is good vs evil on what political party you vote for. Just like paying for indulgences back in the middle ages. You can be an evil bastard and go to heaven because you paid off a priest. In your case voted for Democrat
@trunthepaige - Marxists and Communists killed people not because of anything to do with the fact that they shunned religion, but for purely political reasons. If you didn’t agree with their ideals concerning government you were axed. If you stood in the way of their personal gain, you were axed. If you were considered a threat to them personally or a threat to the state, you were axed. If the whim suited them, you were axed. Their murders had nothing more to do with their dislike of religion any more than did the man in the moon. And as for unsupported accusations; you, my dear Paige, are the queen of the bunch. The majority of what you say goes unsupported. But we like you anyway! You’re good people!
-Y
@trunthepaige - Nice one Paige. The Encyclopedia of Wars is a Jr. High School level compilation deemed ” by no means comprehensive” by the School Library Journal. We think you need to dig a bit deeper than this on the subject.
-Y
@Table54 - But it is so head an shoulders above anything you have provided. If you would like to make a real argument… religion as a main reason behind war, please do that. But so far I am the only one who has ever provided any proof of any kind
@Table54 - You so made my case. They were atheists who did the murdering, but they did not kill due to their atheism. They had other motivations that were the main ones. That sounds like a familiar argument.
Ahh, but you see – that’s our point. Religion is NOT a main reason behind war. It is one of the main reasons for killing DURING wars. Think about it for a minute. Say you are the king of country “A” and you want to go to war with country “B” to gain their land, or their natural resources, or whatever. You have to motivate your people…get them revved up and in a killing mood. What better way to motivate them than by saying the enemy is against their most profound belief – their religion. Your rallying cry is, “Kill the infidels!” You thereby instigate the killing, rape, and plunder that is so much a part of any war.
Now, we realize this is very simplistic, Paige. We think our points are not so radically different as they seem. If you can get your people into killing mode by exploiting your enemy’s religion, you reach your goal of conquest. After all – the end justifies the means.
-Y
@trunthepaige - We said, dear one, we are not all that far apart in this. Killing – for any reason – seems to be the historical sport of mankind!
-Y
@trunthepaige - It’s a rational prediction. There is no historical precendent that I’m aware of, for “such thinking” on a scale any larger than an educated but disregarded minority, and I feel I should preemptively point out that a culture which is atheist/secular is not inherently consistent with “such thinking” by virtue of its atheist/secular nature.
93 % of wars were fought for secular reasons?
To be truthful, there are religious components to just about any war. The genocide committed against Native Americans was based both on secular, material reasons (Europeans/Americans wanted their land) and ideological/secular (“manifest destiny” and Christianizing the continent). You will scarcely find an exception to his case. It’s always a blend.
Insofar as WWII, I think the point is that Nazism and Stalinism both were ideologies with religious-like components. The difference between the perspective of an ideologue or a religious fanatic and that of science is that science encourages its practitioners to lay out the requirements by which *
they themselves will admit error if met*
. The list of famous scientists who had to admit that they were wrong reads like a Who’s Who list: Newton, Einstein, Pauling, Hawking, and more. Ideologues and religious fanatics by contrast never admit error, because their arguments are dogs that forever chase their own tail (the Bible is the word of God because it says so in the BIble).
-netnguy
@monobeam - Yes, “first they came for the christians, and I was not a christian, so I said nothing – after that they’d already come for 96% of the population of germany so there was really no one else to come for.”
Your revisionist history is not worth bothering with. Here are pictures that showed hitler’s real relationship with various churches (including the ones he personally attended). Did hitler persecute some christians who opposed his ideology? Of course. What, you think an atheist mass-murdering psychotic dictator wouldn’t dare oppress a fellow atheist?
But to pretend religion wasn’t part of his ideology or motivation for killing six million jews when I just quoted him explicitly saying why he hated them is dishonest.
@Maverick83 - I offer 2500 years of tried and true philosophy and reasoned thinking.
You respond earnestly by calling it “Loborn.”
Forgive me for being shocked.
@trunthepaige - My point is what I explicitly said, that his actions were explicitly motivated by christianity and that WWII was, at least to some degree, about religion (contrary to your thesis). And even if he was simply using religion to justify his policies, the religion enabled the war rather than motivating it.
As for your implication that he was a former-catholic:
“I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so” -Adolph Hitler, to Gen. Gerhard Engel, 1941
@mortimerZilch - You’re the only person I’ve seen here so far that’s ranting and raving. You might want to look in the mirror before you accuse others of being irrational and closed-minded. Or to put it another way, remove the plank in your own eye.
@agnophilo - That is one hell of a stretch I’m going to let that one go.
@trunthepaige - Not what I was saying and you know it. I have admited that there are secular componets to almost every war…even the Crusades. You however are trying to exonerate Religion and are trying to say it is innocent in 93% of all wars.
Dems are scoundrels and voting for them doesn’t make you moral… I am not perfect by any means.
Projection much?
@tendollar4ways - I am not saying it. Most historians say that. As to projection get real back to that mirror dude
@trunthepaige - You are twisting shit which is why I said you are Repub. That seems to be their modus operandi. You are taking a statement by these War Surveyist that state that most wars are not strictly religious war however they define it and are streching this to religion played no part in 93% of all wars.
Dishonest.
@tendollar4ways - I said what I said and it was true. Sorry you can not read well enough t understand what I wrote. Maybe if you would quit assuming you know all there is to know about anyone by way of their voting. you would be able to understand what they say and write
@trunthepaige - The reason I am no non-religious has absolutely possitively nothing to do with religions influence on world wars.
@tendollar4ways - I never though that at all. this is just one of the many anti faith “facts” that tend to be lies. But they are never the reason someone is anti Christian.
I think that most of the 7% can also be reduced to the acquisition of property and land.
@ImNotUglyIJustNeedLove - Yes, in the same way a junkyard offers 100 years of automotive technology.
You apparently said something I said was a “stretch” and then deleted your comment. So no response?
@trunthepaige - Your response to being told hitler cited a book written by the father of the protestant reformation as the basis of his campaign against the jews is that it had nothing to do with christianity? By that logic if I lead a revolution and kill a million people on the basis of the apologetics of CS lewis that would have nothing to do with religion either, right?
How is killing explicitly in the name of god nothing to do with religion???
I mean say it’s a corruption or a perversion of your religion or a false doctrine or a politician using religion to manipulate people – but to say that religion played no part is just absurd. Nazi germany didn’t even practice separation of church and state, “positive christianity” was the official religion of the nazi party. They published their own edition of the bible. German soldiers swore an oath to god and the fuhrer. Darwin’s writings were banned from the libraries and burned in the streets. The secret goal of the nazi party according to testimony at the nuremberg trials was the formation of a one world christian theocracy to unify everyone under their christian doctrine. They were setting themselves up to be the new vatican, enforcing their doctrine by the sword (or rather the gun) like the crusaders of old.
But what does that have to do with religion, right?
@agnophilo - I did not intentionally delete anything . But I am playing with a new layout so who knows what I may have done. I will look back and see what is missing when i am done
….actually, differences in religion have been the biggest cause…. ….when you consider, after much study, ALL the faiths on the planet preach peace, communication, tolerance and a general let’s get along attitude, after you get away from those haters among all the faiths, even those who do not believe there is a savior or even a supreme being above, would rather see peace among us, most anyway…. it’s the haters that define most of the differences among us, in general…. …in my humble opinion…. Peace, ma’am, while we can have it…
@Pcygniime - .”actually, differences in religion have been the biggest cause”
No not true. not even close to true and you could not prove that statement as true to save your own life. But that is a very common thing for some to say. The lie is so common that many believe it, having heard may others say it. And the others said it because they heard others say it. But no one has ever looked into it and proved the statement true.
@trunthepaige - Hitler said in his book Miene Kamph ” a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth” Does that mean it actually becomes true? NO certainly not, but as humans we tend to believe to be true what we hear repeated most often. The reason is we have a tendencie to accept, that if others believe it, it must be so. With no regard for actual facts. That is human nature, and Hitler understood that very well. He also manipulated it very well . I can see the validity of his statement proven right here everyday. People choose what they want to believe, and do so. It has always been so, and will most likely always will be so. We humans are a predictable lot, with a sheep heard mentality. That is why Dictators do so well