Religion - a major cause of political violence in the past and present?

[gambit]

I said it before and will say again: That we do not live in a moral and intellectual vacuum.

Everything we do have a source justification. We eat because of hunger, drink because of thirst, and the list goes on and on.

What is to 'justify' ?

...show or prove to be right or reasonable.

Religions are not needed in order for a set of moralities to rise. If anything, if a course of actions can be justified independent of religious sources, that course will occur. In reality, it is easier to convince the masses based upon logic 'If P then Q' than it is to simply say 'Because God say so', although merely invoking the deity does work sometimes. For the Western culture, it had better be 'logical' an argument in order to convince people.

But the fact that we have parallel universes, one where 'God say so' is sufficient and one where logical thought processes are preferred, proved that we do not need religions to do kind and horrific things to each other.

The definition of 'negotiation' is...

...discussion aimed at reaching an agreement.

Why do negotiations fail ? How about when religionist A negotiate the religionist B to concede that God A is true and God B is false, and religionist B refused ? That was very much a negotiation. See above definition.

Likewise, A can present what he believes to be 'logical' and negotiate B to give away all lands to A, and B has his own logical reasons to refuse.

Religion is not the sole source of conflicts and irreconcilable differences. We can even wonder if religion actually is the last resort to justification when all attempts at logic to reach an agreement failed.

 

[William Hung]

Religion is not the major cause of political violence.

There are two major causes of political violence:

1. The inherent nature of egoism possessed by most people.

2. The Pareto Distribution and Pareto Principle Pareto distribution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Pareto principle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thats the truth. It’s because of the pareto distribution phenomena. No matter if religion exist or not, or what kind of economy or government runs this world, the Pareto principle will always stay true. Add to this the inherent egoism in human beings and conflicts and violence will always ensue, from the stone age until now.

The question is, can conflicts and political violence ever be eradicated given that the Pareto principle will always be observed?

 

[Pakistani E]

It's not religion thats the problem. It's humanity, when have humans ever needed an excuse to kill other humans? Humans kill each other over wealth, over political differences, over ethnic and national differences, over property and even women. Many have been killed for simply looking at another person the "wrong" way. Not too long ago, whole armies marched on the whims of dictators and ego maniacs who conquered great lands. Many of these were motivated by personal glory and fame and power. They manipulatd religion when it suited them and discarded it when it was no longer necassary. Not to beat a dead horse, but if you look at most of the bloodiest wars in the world, a significant number of them have had nothing to do with religion.

The true question for me is not what bad has religion contributed, but what good it has done. For if we compare with other human matters such as the ones I discussed above, I would say for me personally, religion has stopped me from becoming violent, or looking at petty differences when I interact with my fellow human beings. With religion, I know that I am accountable if I injure another soul or take their wealth or treat them harshly. It almost seems to have become fashion to deride religion and to simplify world events through the prism of religious and non religious. The conflicts in the world are far deeper than religion.

 

[TankMan]

Humans - a major cause of political violence in the past and present?

Cavemen used to kill each other. Some of the world's mass murderers were atheists. Both of these had no religion involved. Therefore, I conclude that humans are the main culprit for violence, and therefore we should all abandon humanity and convert to being a more peaceful species, an example of which is pictured below:

This trend of bashing religion is becoming boring, predictable, and plain stupid. As if the world will be any better without religion. People will find another reason to kill each other, and all you pseudo-intellectuals will find another culprit. This will continue to the point when posts telling us to become grass will become actual, serious and widespread.

Yet, instead of worshiping them as divines in human form,

You say that as if it's something that should happen. It shouldn't happen. That's worse than any of what you have described as being the evils of religion.

Your problem with religion is that it makes people think they are superior to others, yet you say that people should worship other people - is that not the same as some people being superior to others?

Sort out those contradictions first.

 

[Azizam]

Religion is an outdated concept that is silly in every way imaginable. It should be ridiculed everywhere and even banned where it's uncontrollable. Killing in the name of these fairy tales is ridiculous to the core and perhaps out of all reasons to kill, this should be the stupidest reason. Would we not ridicule someone if he thinks spiderman or superman is real? Or what would we think of someone who would kill or rape because of some comic book story?

And to think that some countries are run according to a ridiculous book shows that humanity has a long way to go to be considered an advanced civilisation. This is 21st century. Information is easily accessible so there's no reason for ignorance in this scale. This is the era where we should drop such primitive ideas and look at each other as one civilisation to expand our presence into solar system and beyand.

 

[TankMan]

As a person with religious background myself, all I can say is that said theory is correct with a few exceptions. These exceptions being wars that didn't involve any religion, but yet managed to kill and destroy more human lives than all religious wars combined. Yes, I am referring to the horrors of WW1 and WW2. But apart from that in our recorded history, every other war or conflict between humans of this world had something to do with religion.

Your basic premise is flawed. Every war or conflict between humans of this world had something to do with politics - someone had something to gain from war. Whenever religion has been involved, it has been used to rally public support and nothing more. It has almost never been the main or sole reason for conflict, arguably with the exception of the Crusades and some similar religious wars - which also undoubtedly had some political motivations behind them.

Let's look at some of the biggest conflicts in history, except WW1 and WW2 as you have already mentioned those.

The Mongol conquests - 40,000,000–70,000,000 deaths. Not because of religion. In fact, the Mongols made religious freedom a law to avoid conflict between people of different religions in their massive empire. Yet they still killed millions.

Colonization of the Americas - Native Americans almost eradicated (numbers vary from millions to a hundred million). Had almost nothing to do with religion, had everything to do with greed.

Napoleonic Wars - up to 6 million deaths - purely political. Napoleon was a deist and didn't believe in any of the organized religions, even though he was raised as a Catholic. Napoleon also saw religion as a political tool, summarized by this quote:
"It is by making myself Catholic that I brought peace to Brittany and Vendée. It is by making myself Italian that I won minds in Italy. It is by making myself a Moslem that I established myself in Egypt. If I governed a nation of Jews, I should reestablish the Temple of Solomon."

Russian Revolution - about 5 million deaths - purely political. No religion involved.

Chinese Ming-Qing dynasty wars - 25 million deaths. Religion played a very small part in uniting some Muslim rebels, long after the war started, who then fought in support of the non-Muslim Ming dynasty. Barely significant to the conflict, but shows how religion can be used to rally support.

France vs England, Hundred Years' War - lasted 116 years, casualties a few million. Purely political, the war was between two Kingdoms of the same religion. The most significant part played by religion here was Joan of Arc being made a saint and used to rally support for the French.

I can go on and on.

Conflict has historically been political. It is only nowadays that we see a sort of revisionist history trying to blame religion for everything bad that has ever happened.

Yes, many of the greatest scientists, inventors, thinkers humanity has produced were not even religious.

And many were. Many of the Greek philosophers were religious. Plato believed in creator(s) and a benevolent God or Gods - is his contribution to philosophy and humanity's progress any less valuable because of that?

The Islamic scientists of the Islamic Golden Age were also religious.

Many relatively recent Western philosophers, like Rene Descartes, were also religious.

They contributed more to relieve the suffering of all mankind with their knowledge and hard work than any religious person could ever do.

Oh really? It'd probably take forever to compile, but I'd like to see a comparison table of religious and non-religious philosophers/thinkers/scientists.

Somehow I highly doubt its conclusions would be in favour of the statement that non-religious people did more for humanity than ''any religious person could ever do''.

Another one of your premises - that religion somehow stops people from contributing to humanity's development - is incorrect.