I was just wondering on your views about wars being caused by religion.

Some yes, others not.

I'm thinking you'll have to be more specific than that, JCDenton.

Onyx8 wrote:Some yes, others not.

/thread

JCDenton wrote:I was just wondering on your views about wars being caused by religion.

Wars that are caused by religion are religious wars, and pretty much always based on superstitious feelings of superiority. What about them, do you want us to state the obvious and condemn them?

In my view, all wars ultimately reduce to tribalism - "their" tribe did something (or failed to do something), and that action is having detrimental effects on "our" tribe. So, "our" tribe must go and sort "their" tribe out.

There are many ways of distinguishing "their" tribe from "our" tribe, but religion seems to be one of the best, if not the best. Certainly (as Dawkins pointed out), if you run out of other ways such as skin colour, surname, of the shape of one's nose, you can always fall back on religion to distinguish "them" from "us". And religion seems to be astonishingly effective at rousing huge reserves of indignation and anger, which appear to be almost trivial to channel to destructive ends.

If religion disappeared tomorrow, would it mean the end of war on our planet? Almost certainly not. There would still be conflicts over resources, and all the other tribal markers. But it might make it just that little bit harder to get people to get people to resort to violence for a particular cause.

JCDenton wrote:I was just wondering on your views about wars being caused by religion.

Views on wars caused by religion? OK, war caused by sects or religious nut-bars is fucking shite. Where's the love, man?

What do you think about people killing the bejesus fuck out of one another based primarily on a difference of opinion?

double post!!1

If someone declared war on religion -not mentioning any names/institutions - that would be a religious war.

Some people who worship the Almighty Dollar (mamon) are quick to go to war for their religion.

Do you have a trampoline Lion IRC?

Lion IRC wrote:If someone declared war on religion -not mentioning any names/institutions - that would be a religious war.

The institutions that routinely declare war on religions are other religions. Crusades and jihads, anyone?

How many divisions does Richard Dawkins have?

At the start of Islam then certainly Muhammad went to war because of his newly founded religion and equally the Catholic (Christians) church also went to war because of its religion.

But that's really an excuse that hides the desire to acquire wealth, land and people and it becomes quite hard to easily blame religion.

At best it can be said that religion does not prevent war.

Equally religion does not prevent famine, disease, poverty, fear, nor the causes of those things that ail humanity.

Given the vast amount of money spent on religion, billions per annum, it's a poor investment.

Nebogipfel wrote:How many divisions does Richard Dawkins have?

There HAS to be a gag in there, somewhere!

Ironclad wrote:

Nebogipfel wrote:How many divisions does Richard Dawkins have?

There HAS to be a gag in there, somewhere!

Stalin once asked an advisor how many divisions the pope has.

Yeah, that's what I had in mind. Lion, when some unnamed person or institution does declare war on religion, make sure you let us know about it.

Yes Lion, secularists are at "war" (conflict) with religious fascism (in politics). Political wars/economic wars happen all the time.

Whats AC's death count so far?

Ihavenofingerprints wrote:Yes Lion, secularists are at "war" (conflict) with religious fascism (in politics). Political wars/economic wars happen all the time.

Whats AC's death count so far?

Seconded.
Why is it that an atheist can say a few things against religion and they're instantly "at war" and fundamentalist and so on? Meanwhile theists generally have to get their body count into multi-digits before their considered a bit over the top.