So religion has never been a factor in the cause of any war?
Has nobody ever been executed for not believing in god, or believing in the ‘wrong’ god?
Does the phrase “holy war” not mean a war for religious beliefs? Even a persons own religious beliefs can (and does) cause suffering, a kind of personal conflict, an internal struggle.
James, I respect you, as a thinker, but come on… Are you seriously saying religion is not a major cause of conflict in our world?
Ahh… so now we are down to “any war”. That’s a lot better.
None of which are wars.
That depends on what you call “religion”.
I personally use that word as more of its true essence. In which case, Communism, Socialism, Science, Secularism, and dozens of others are “religions” these days. But in the normal sense, of merely Judaism, Christianity, and Islamism/Mohammedanism, no those are not related to hardly any wars these days and not “the cause” of any of them. Lust for power uses anything that works. Saying that religion causes war is about like saying that guns cause war. Take the guns away from the people, and you do no more than make the poor poorer. The reason they want to take religion away from the people is for that exact reason and nothing else.
Of course Religion has been the cause of wars… allot of people like to think that leaders are somehow way more clever than they are and that they all “use” religion as a tool to control the masses, which I am sure is the case sometimes, but far from always.
But even assuming every leader throughout history merely used religion as an “excuse”, If the people hadn’t been religious they wouldn’t have bought that excuse, and wouldn’t have been motivated to goto war…
But we shouldn’t pick on religion… since any ideology would/could do the trick.
Getting rid of religion wouldn’t really help us at all if you think about it… what we need is to do is teach people to think critically and value thinking critically. Having done that Religion will naturally go away, and so will most forms of dogmatic ideology.
That will certainly reduce the amount of wars we have… but I don’t think we can get rid of war… unless we somehow get access to infinite resourcess.
Hey Boss, How’s it going?
Even as I agree with you, I have to ask if CT is capable of working. People seem to delight in simplistic answers to complex issues and that is no small part of leaders - both religious and secular - to substitute bombast for honest discussion with the typical sad outcomes.
Hi tent!
been a while 
That’s not true of the scientific community… and there’s a reason for that.
They would have bought another excuse. It’s not that the leaders need have been completely cynical, conscious they were using an excuse, it may have been part of their own honest rationalization. Non-religious states seem to find reasons to go to war just as much as religous ones.
Ah, now we’re more on the same page. And there has not been a society without an ideology.
Not Necessarily.
James, I’m not going to reply to anymore of your posts. I never said that religion causes ALL wars! Your first sentence implies I did.
James, I’m not going to reply to anymore of your posts. I never said that religion causes ALL wars! Your first sentence implies I did.
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I apologise for sounding so childish, and in case I offended you, James. What I should have said is: James I don’t believe that I can learn anything from you (much less that you would allow yourself to learn anything from me), so I don’t see any point in ‘talking’ to you. There are some on here that want to argue, or debate, whichever word you prefer, even when they, quite obviously, are fighting a loosing battle, so to speak; I, on the other hand, am looking for a “change of mind”- its a terrible curse to be, what you might call, a “real philosopher” (I still don’t really get that phrase). Apologies again if I offended you.
There is surely some measure of ‘truth’ (if you can conceive of such a thing.lol) in your words; I’m thinking your a clever man. Everybody is a “google expert”, know it all because someone else said it, in a book, or on the ‘net’ somewhere, but you seem, to me, to be a ‘genuine’ thinker.“Critical thinking”- this is what I want to teach my kids. (My kids education, by the way, is the most exiting thing in my reality right now, a major source of hope.)
Would you agree that religion does a huge amount of harm?
Absolutely… and I dare say: Undeniably.
Stem cell research is a clear example of religion doing harm…
The whole Creationism vs Evolution dabate is entirely religiously motivated and gets in the way of proper education…
People freaking out and acting violently over drawings of muhammed…
And the list goes on
But I’m arguing that as long as people don’t reflect critically on what they are told, that they will be duped into believing nonsense of one kind or another. So even getting rid of religion, some other dogmatic ideology will swoop in and take it’s place, moving them to do utterly stupid things.
Dan25, I think you are spot on. I’ve come to believe that all our gods are man-made images of something to vast and inhuman for our human minds to fully comprehend, so like the blind men feeling the various parts of the elephant, we visualize and understand the transcendent in differing ways, hence different gods. But all gods, at least in this one sense, are truly one God. Of course, we’d rather kill each other than be made to concede such an idea. But do not most religions have similar views on what is right and wrong when you get beyond the cultural diversity? So I agree with you fully, Dan, but I think that it’s clear how the particular beliefs of some religions make it impossible for its adherents to openly accept any other religion as equal to their own.
Samm
Daybreak,
If all these sacred books (Torah/Talmud, Bible, Quran, Mabinogion, Ettas, Mahabharata, etc.) express human understanding of something or the other, I take you to mean that they all have value as positive contributions to human knowledge and spiritual growth in spite of the inevitable conflicts between them. So you are agreeing with Dan but emphasizing that man “had already made sense” of his existence in some manner when writing these books rather than writing them “to help them…to make sense of their existence” this is a clarification of Dan’s position rather than a rejection of it, I think, because I’m confidant that Dan’s intent is the same.
Samm
Agreed.
Samm, you seem to understand me far ‘better’ than many on here (maybe, even, most).
That’s what the evidence indicates. Non-theist, even anti-theist societies have been quite capable of war, oppression, etc.