War: Was religion the only cause? (Disclaimer: No im not having a rant.)?

In our RE lesson today there was a discussion about war and peace and how different faiths interpret it. Then, one boy put his hand up and said that religion was the only cause of war and without it we would be at peace. At first i thought it was irrational but then again many wars have been religion against religion. I guess some civil wars might not be religious. It just made me think.





Can you think of any wars that werent caused by religion (Or to stop religion like with the Holocaust)? Even though im an Atheist id quite like to show this boy up and remind him that religion isnt always the cause of war.War: Was religion the only cause? (Disclaimer: No im not having a rant.)?
The history of human warfare goes back to the beginning of recorded history (and, no doubt, well before that). A recent comprehensive compilation of the history of human warfare, Encyclopedia of Wars by Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod documents 1763 wars, of which 123 have been classified to involve a religious conflict. So, what many Atheists have considered to be ';most'; (or ';all'; in your case) really amounts to less than 7% of all wars. It is interesting to note that 66 of these wars (more than 50%) involved Islam, which did not even exist as a religion for the first 3,000 years of recorded human warfare.





Since the United States of America is and has been one of the most religious countries over the last 200+ years, if the atheists are correct, the U.S.A. should have been involved in the largest number of religious wars of any other nation. In fact, the United States has been involved in 17 wars, only one of which (the ';War on Terror';) has any religious entanglement. The number of Americans who have died as the result of religious wars is 14.2/year, which is less than the number of people who die yearly from dog bites.





The atheists claim that religion is the cause of most (or even all) wars is shown to be false. The history of human warfare shows that less than 7% of all wars have religious causes. If atheists are correct, the most religious industrial nation, the United States of America, should be involved in more religious wars than any other country. However, only the ';War on Terror,'; among all 17 American wars, involves a religious component.





Edit; and you can remind the boy about the communist regimes in China and Russia each slaughtering over 50 million of their own people. And yes, they were atheists.War: Was religion the only cause? (Disclaimer: No im not having a rant.)?
The first World War had nothing to do with religion of any kind; it was the result of many factors, mostly having to do with an entanglement of alliances and pacts between nations in Europe and Asia.





The American Civil War had nothing to do with religion. Neither did the Irish Civil War (1922-23). Nor did the Spanish Civil War (1936-39).





The Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Falklands War, the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War, the Austro-Hungarian War, the Texas War of Independence, the French-Indian War, the American Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Spanish-American War...there are very many wars that had nothing to do with religion.
Im under the impression that war is mostly due to greed and wanting to steal another country's natural resources - religion is just the excuse used the majority of the time to engage in war.





THe Veitnam war was not based upon religion. Our reasons for entering WWII were due to Japan attacking us - not for any religious reasons....
The list is endless. War started when our earliest ancestors wanted more land, women for breeding stock, (no offence intended), better artisans to make flint axe heads, etc. All that has happened, is that religion has been used by persons in power to justify/motivate war.
The crusades were billed as religious wars but they weren't about that at all. The combatants only use religion to inspire the troops that they are doing this for God and they will have a reward in heaven if they die.


Wars are always about money, territory or most often power.
Well in Buddhism the cause of all conflict is due to greed hatred and delusion in the minds of beings. Attachment to sensual pleasures, clinging to views. So those two above are the main reason of conflict attachment to sensual pleasures and clinging to views.
WWII wasn't a religious war.





Neither was Vietnam, the Korean War, the fist Gulf War....
i used to have a link to a study the U.S. army did that showed about 12% of wars were religious.
Money wars, perhaps.





Iraq comes to mind.
It's worse than irrational it is uninformed.





Two places to start :


In perhaps his most convincing chapter [ book is What's so great about Christianity ], D'Souza examines ';A License to Kill: Atheism and the Mass Murders of History.'; Here he challenges Richard Dawkins's assertion that ';'what matters is…whether atheism systematically influences people to do bad things. There is not the smallest evidence it does.''; D'Souza points to the 100 million or so deaths inflicted by Stalin, Hitler, and Mao (all professed atheists) during the 20th century, which surely qualify as ';bad things.'; On the other hand, the deaths produced by more than 500 ostensibly Christian undertakings of religious warfare or internal persecution, such as the Inquisition, the Crusades, and witch burnings, amount to only one percent of the body count accumulated by the atheistic ideologies of Stalin, Mao, and Hitler. In D'Souza's words, ';It's time to abandon the mindlessly repeated mantra that religious belief has been the main source of human conflict and violence. Atheism, not religion, is responsible for the worst mass murders of history.';





2) Whoever said that has not read the most important work so probably not the less important either !!





The Gods of War: Is Religion the Primary Cause of Violent Conflict? (Paperback)


by Meic Pearse





Make the boy cite something !!! That is the most basic of scholarly conventions !! By the way, how ironic that the only thing that idiot accomplished was to bring to bear more hate on religion !!
Hi!


Religion is not the cause of wars.


Man causes war.


People who want war sometimes use religion as an argument for it, to make it seem more just and holy.


The problem is most religions can be interpreted in different ways e.g. if you look at the Bible on one hand it tells you ';An eye for an eye'; which obviously means you are aloud revenge and retaliation, on the other hand it says ';Turn the other cheek'; which is obviously a pacifist line.


This comes in handy if the politicians want to invade or bomb a country and they have no justifiable excuse for doing so, so they say they are doing it for God.


The Vietnam war was not caused by religion but by political differences i.e. the fear of the rise of communism.


World War 1 was also caused by political and diplomatic issues and alliances.


World War 2 was more caused by politics and economics as well, in pre-war Germany, Christians as well as Jews were imprisoned if they were considered dangerous to the regime.
It really depends on how you're looking at it. Usually the -real- cause for war is not religion, religion is used as a justification. For instance, the war we're having now in Iraq was promoted among Christians as a battle between Christianity (good) and Islam (evil) but it really isn't about that at all. Even the Crusades were not really about spreading Christianity or protecting the Holy Land from the Saracens.





Religion and politics have been so tightly twisted together forever that it's often hard to tell where one leaves off and the other begins. Over much of history some of the biggest religious ideas were really political and vice versa. Wars are risky and cost money so political leaders usually had a very practical reason for waging wars, but religion was very useful to justify them and get people to support them.
hello