The Myth of Religious Wars

[The Hen]

Crackpot, somewhere on his site M White advises that some of his categorizations will cause consternation. However, he also states ....

Q: Is religion responsible for more more violent deaths than any other cause?

A: No, of course not -- unless you define religion so broadly as to be meaningless. Just take the four deadliest events of the 20th Century -- Two World Wars, Red China and the Soviet Union -- no religious motivation there, unless you consider every belief system to be a religion.

Q: So, what you're saying is that religion has never killed anyone.

A: Arrgh... You all-or-nothing people drive me crazy. There are many documented examples where members of one religion try to exterminate the members of another religion. Causation is always complex, but if the only difference between two warring groups is religion, then that certainly sounds like a religious conflict to me. Is it the number one cause of mass homicide in human history? No. Of the 22 worst episodes of mass killing, maybe four were primarily religious. Is that a lot? Well, it's more than the number of wars fought over soccer, or sex (The Trojan and Sabine Wars don't even make the list.), but less than the number fought over land, money, glory or prestige.

[Sean]

Let's get down to the real cuntish behaviour here...

Very well, don't believe me, but google this-

'Religion causes wars by generating certainty.'

-Richard Dawkins.

So, we have Prof Dawkins stating an atheist belief that religion causes war.

The closest support of that assertion is that it is a sociocultural dissimilarity. However, my question previously hasn't been answered;

You may notice that when she quoted Dawkins and bolded the bit she was interested in she didn't bold the S on the end of wars.
The when she requoted she left out the S completely.

So we're left with the difference between what he actually said:
"Religion causes wars"
And what hooch for brains would have us believe he said:
"Religion causes war"

One letter can change the meaning of a sentence completely. Talk about taking a quote out of context...

Someone's been on the Old Spice today I think...

[Crackpot]

Sure. Let's just forget that it was Catholic vs. Protestant, that it stemmed from a 400 year history of religious discrimination, that what was at stake was whether or not Northern Ireland would be detached from an overwhelmingly Protestant nation and join and overwhelmingly Catholic one. Nah, none of that is relevant.

by the time 1974 rolled around? No not really. I won;t deny the underpinnings but the grievances and aims had lost all religious context.

Please. They were "holy wars", sanctioned by the Pope, for the purpose of recovering lands which held religious significance.

When you get down to it the reasons for the crusades were largely political supported under a guise of religiosity (with the added perk that you don't have to "pay" troops fighting for God) Especially when you note the Fact that there were no lands that were "lost" to "recover". It is easy to forget that at the time the RCC was every bit (if not more so) a political organization as a religious one

Fine, let's change the heading to "Religious Conflicts and Religiously-Motivated One-Sided Slaughters. Happy now?

only if you were to include the laundry list of non-religiously motivated slaughters throughout history.

How? An "Islamic revolution" is not religiously motivated? The fact that Iran became a theocracy as a result doesn't qualify it?

Sure you can ignore the large secular component to the revolution (I'd almost say it's fair to do so) But to claim it as ongoing? Power is and has been consolidated in a stable islamic state. the best you could do is stretch it out to the end of the Iran/Iraq war but that even is pushing credibility.

I'll agree with you on that one. Even Jones did not claim that the massacre had religious significance, he called it "revolutionary suicide".

It wasn't even that. it was a mass murder orchestrated to look like a "revolutionary suicide".

[loCAtek]

In spite of the fact, I didn't use absolutes to forward any points in this thread...

Excellent, so the argument is that absolutes are too vague to be considered evidence? Very well, then pls state the specific, statistical figures that support the contention that there are more religious wars, than secular ones.


Surely, if you demand it of others, you can do it yourself?

Since we all agree now, that vagueness is not a valid debate position. ThX for your consensus.

[loCAtek]

...and I was not vague here.

The root cause of wars is behavioral aggression inherited evolutionarily from apes who consistently, currently demonstrate it.


All else is nit-picking.

[Scooter]

In spite of the fact, I didn't use absolutes to forward any points in this thread...

Excellent, so the argument is that absolutes are too vague to be considered evidence? Very well, then pls state the specific, statistical figures that support the contention that there are more religious wars, than secular ones.


Surely, if you demand it of others, you can do it yourself?

Since we all agree now, that vagueness is not a valid debate position. ThX for your consensus.

Time to open another bottle. Looks like an early case of the DTs are setting in.

[Gob]

...and I was not vague here.

The root cause of wars is behavioral aggression inherited evolutionarily from apes who consistently, currently demonstrate it.


All else is nit-picking.

THE most stupid thing ever posted on a forum ever.

While I can understand that Locatek and her family may not have evolved much above the ape stage, the rest of us like to think we have...

[Sean]

Sure. Let's just forget that it was Catholic vs. Protestant, that it stemmed from a 400 year history of religious discrimination, that what was at stake was whether or not Northern Ireland would be detached from an overwhelmingly Protestant nation and join and overwhelmingly Catholic one. Nah, none of that is relevant.

by the time 1974 rolled around? No not really. I won;t deny the underpinnings but the grievances and aims had lost all religious context.

You couldn't be more wrong about that one CP. When I lived there in the '70s & '80s it was very clear cut. You were either a "dirty fenian catholic" or a "filthy proddy dog". Even today, the bombings may have stopped but the religious sectariansim is alive and well.

[Sean]

So can you tell me Lo why you deliberately misrepresented Mr Dawkins' viewpoint?

[Scooter]

So she could have another straw man to knock down, just like in her OP.

[thestoat]

Very well, then pls state the specific, statistical figures that support the contention that there are more religious wars, than secular ones.

Hang on lo - this is YOUR thread. Don't post some dribblings and then as us to post stats to refute them. YOUR topic.

[Crackpot]

Sure. Let's just forget that it was Catholic vs. Protestant, that it stemmed from a 400 year history of religious discrimination, that what was at stake was whether or not Northern Ireland would be detached from an overwhelmingly Protestant nation and join and overwhelmingly Catholic one. Nah, none of that is relevant.

by the time 1974 rolled around? No not really. I won;t deny the underpinnings but the grievances and aims had lost all religious context.

You couldn't be more wrong about that one CP. When I lived there in the '70s & '80s it was very clear cut. You were either a "dirty fenian catholic" or a "filthy proddy dog". Even today, the bombings may have stopped but the religious sectariansim is alive and well.

I'm not disputing the prejudices just that the prejudices were the driving force behind the conflict. My point being at that point religion had become a convienient dividing line but absent the difference in religion the conflict wouldn't have ceased (or possibly even abated)

[Scooter]

So if Northern Ireland had somehow become 100% Protestant, or 100% Catholic, that would have had no effect on the violence.

[Crackpot]

with all other factors being the same? no. the protestant catholic divide in that conflit ended up as a convinient marker of if you were a English or an Irish loyalist.

Can you point to any religious factor that the dispute was based on? Was there some "Fallability of the Pope" issue they were shedding blood over that I'm unaware of?

[Scooter]

Here's a clue - what determined whether you were an English or Irish loyalist was pretty much exclusively your religion. Absent a difference in religion, there would have been no conflict. If every Catholic in N. Ireland had been miraculously teleported to a far off planet that could sustain human life, there would no longer have been any agitation for N. Ireland to detach from the U.K. If the same had happened to every Protestant, N. Ireland would have long since become part of the Irish Republic. Either way, no more violence.

Religious factor? Catholics hated Protestants enough to want them dead. Protestants, vice versa. What more than that do you need to define it as a religious conflict?

[dgs49]

Semantics?

Most wars that are categorized as "religious" are categorized that way merely for convenience.

As with most of Europe, I suspect most of the "Catholics" and "Protestants" in Ulster are pointedly non-religious themselves, and really couldn't care less whether those on the other side of the divide are regular churchgoers or closet Scientologists. The war is over British hedgemony and Irish independence, and theology has NOTHING to do with it.

Similarly in the little corner of the Middle East where the "Muslims" hate the "Jews" the conflict has nothing to do with religion. Indeed, Muslims trace their ancestry back to Abraham, and more or less accept the Torah. It has to do with foreigners coming into their part of the world, buying up and stealing a bunch of property, then forming a sovereign state where the locals are made to feel like outsiders. There is only the slightest, tangential religious element to the conflict. The Muslims don't hate the Israeli's for their religious beliefs (any more than they hate all "infidels"). They may disagree with them on theological points, but not to the extent of wanting to exterminate them.

Within the Muslim community, the hate between the Shia and the Sunni's appears to be more religious than most such conflicts, but again, the main driving issues have to do with oppression and historical violence than the religious differences. And of course, there are many Muslim communities in which people ARE persecuted (and worse) for no reason other than their religions. One of Bush43's indirect "accomplishments" was to drive most of the Christians out of Iraq, and make the remaining ones subject to more persecution than they ever experienced under Saddam.

[Scooter]

As with most of Europe, I suspect most of the "Catholics" and "Protestants" in Ulster are pointedly non-religious themselves, and really couldn't care less whether those on the other side of the divide are regular churchgoers or closet Scientologists. The war is over British hedgemony and Irish independence, and theology has NOTHING to do with it.

Of course it doesn't. It could just as easily have been the case that Northern Irish Protestants were fighting to join the overwhelmingly Catholic Irish Republic, and that Northern Irish Catholics were fighting to remain within the overwhelmingly Protestant U.K. The fact that the reverse was the actual case was entirely happenstance.

Similarly in the little corner of the Middle East where the "Muslims" hate the "Jews" the conflict has nothing to do with religion. Indeed, Muslims trace their ancestry back to Abraham, and more or less accept the Torah. It has to do with foreigners coming into their part of the world, buying up and stealing a bunch of property, then forming a sovereign state where the locals are made to feel like outsiders.

And why are they being made to feel like outsiders? Because they aren't Jews. Those Jews who came to create a Jewish state in Palestine did not take land from Jews who were already settled there. They only took land from non-Jews (primarily Muslims).

There is only the slightest, tangential religious element to the conflict. The Muslims don't hate the Israeli's for their religious beliefs (any more than they hate all "infidels"). They may disagree with them on theological points, but not to the extent of wanting to exterminate them.

I am sure that most religiously-motivated hatred isn't based on deep theological analysis. "X is of a different religion than Y, therefore X and Y are enemies" is probably the extent of the reasoning that goes on in most cases. That doesn't mean it isn't religiously motivated.

[Crackpot]

Scooter what you're missing is that the religion was determined by thier loyalties not vice versa. English=Protestant Irish=Catholic You may as well be talking about british and Irish loyalists. because that would have ended the violence as well. The fact that you can't come up with a distinctly religious reason for this violence speaks voulumes not to mention the nearly universal lack of tensions between Catholics and Protestants everywhere else in the world.

Fact is the only reason religion had anything to do with "the troubles" is because it was an artifact from the time when it meant something. Hatred as well as religion are passed down from generation to generation. But loosing or changing ones faith had no bearing on ones stance on the status of Northern Ireland.

[Scooter]

Scooter what you're missing is that the religion was determined by thier loyalties not vice versa.

Really? Care to show evidence that Irish Protestants converted to Catholicism because of loyalty to the Irish Republic, or of Irish Catholics converting to Protestantism because they were loyal to the U.K.?

English=Protestant Irish=Catholic

Absolutely fucking wrong. Protestants in Ireland considered themselves every bit as Irish as Catholics did.

You may as well be talking about british and Irish loyalists. because that would have ended the violence as well.

That's right, and the U.K. loyalists were Protestant and the Republican loyalists were Catholic. Is it sinking in yet?

The fact that you can't come up with a distinctly religious reason for this violence...

One side was Catholic. The other side was Protestant. Catholic and Protestant aren't "distinct" enough for you?

...not to mention the nearly universal lack of tensions between Catholics and Protestants everywhere else in the world.

So what? Hindus and Muslims aren't at war with each other in the U.S., Canada, Australia, etc., but in India they couldn't figure out a way to live together under a single national government, and millions were slaughtered as a result. Oh, wait, that wasn't a religious conflict either, I guess.

Fact is the only reason religion had anything to do with "the troubles" is because it was an artifact from the time when it meant something.

It was an "artifact" that was front and centre in the modern consciousness.

Hatred as well as based on religion are passed down from generation to generation.

Fixed that for you.

[Crackpot]

Are you aware of the origins of the Anglican church? Are you so Dence that you can not see how Being Anglican (protestant) would mark you as being loyal to the King?

You may as well be talking about british and Irish loyalists. because that would have ended the violence as well.

That's right, and the U.K. loyalists were Protestant and the Republican loyalists were Catholic. Is it sinking in yet?

So what you're saying is that a preference to blue uniforms over a preference to gray uniforms dictated where you stood on the American civil war as well? Without showing how the conflct is/was perpetuated by religion the statemnet that it is a cause is tenuous at best let alone the primary cause.

So what? Hindus and Muslims aren't at war with each other in the U.S., Canada, Australia, etc., but in India they couldn't figure out a way to live together under a single national government, and millions were slaughtered as a result. Oh, wait, that wasn't a religious conflict either, I guess.

Are they integrated the world over or do they hold on to thier respective communities? Interesting note if the lines had been drawn by someone who had the slightest idea of the differences involved and population makeups Partition might have worked.

Fixed that for you.

that the best argument you can come up with?