Barcs, you are seriously confused my man. You are blaming religion for sin. We have free will. Man is to blame for his sins. People use religion as a tool to incite war. The fault for that is with humans interpreting select passages to aid their war mongering motivations. Here is a more detailed essay on the subject http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/submitted/Perry/holywar.html Your notion that the absence of religion would have prevented these conflicts is ridiculous. You're way off base with blaming religion for all the examples of wars that you cite. Even the crusades had serious political implication. You are taking things completely out of their historical context. Read a history book please. You're right about Einstein, he was not religious but he did believe there is God and he did believe Jesus was real. Here's an essay on him http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/einstein.html However, your counter to the science issue is off base. It's such a silly argument you make considering that the scientific revolution is a modern event and prior to this most of our discoveries and advancement of scientific thought were through religious organizations. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_religion_and_science You seem to not understand the most important concept of scientific theory which is that they make falsifiable predictions. Also please share all "the evidence and proof that goes against religion" before you throw that sentence into your argument. The statement that religious belief has remained static is absolutely false otherwise all Christians would still be Jews. Sorry to confuse you Barcs, I should have said "all Christians who correctly interpret and follow their religion don't support total war", rather than "Christians don't support war". And yes, I am pro life and against the death penalty.
Many? Is that 10? 100? 1000? 100,000? Yup you got them pegged, every religious group has a contingent that supports war. And genocide. And beastiality. And the sex slave trade. And every other reprehensible act known to man. Many? As in millions or tens of millions or a hundred million? Yeah, go fuck yourself and your naive ignorant rant. I suppose many Muslims support terrorism too, right? Asshat. _
MS I never thought you took this board seriously. Your typical short answers, your insults to other posters etc made me believe you were just trying to be an ass. I thought you were bullied heavily in life and that you were kind of trying to be an internet bully sort of. But man was I wrong. This thread has turned my opinion about you 100%. There is nothing whatever you wrote on this thread that I don't agree on. Big big respect. I tip my hat to you. All of your points are valid but above quote is probably the best sentence I have read in a long long time. By the way I am Muslim. Not practicing one though. Just Muslim by birth. Can you please provide your point of view about Islam? I really would like to see your perspective as you made me real curious. Thanks man and I hope I didn't offend you.
Christians don't kill people. Christians who incorrectly interpret and follow their religion kill people. Is there really anyone who isn't clear on this?
Barc, what's up man? Everything alright? I have not seen you this wound up in a while. Anywho, while I respect the rights of others opinion, I have to say that religion, has not been the main reason for wars over the centuries. Nationalistic pride has caused more wars and deaths than religion. WWI and WWII, wars that killed more people than all other wars combined were both started because of nationalistic pride, look up the title below and you will see the reason he was assassinated. Jun 28, 1914: Archduke Ferdinand assassinated Oppression by the powers that be have caused people to rebel against all kinds of authority over the centuries and it has not been religious oppression all the time. French Revolution, heck the NEW ENGLAND was started because people wanted freedom from the oppression by the redcoats. Even Tutsis vs Hutu in Africa were not religious wars, yet they committed genocide of 1 million people, the reason they fought was class warfare, one tribe looked down on the other. Who would have thought? Barc, religion has caused some wars, no doubt about that, but it's not and has never been the primary reason people have killed each other.
True, less than 7% of the recorded wars were fought over religion. Not sure if the below was posted already.
Religions are like society as a whole, they change over time as the society changes. Christians today are substantially more bloodthirsty than Christians of the early Roman era. Those people faced an unbelievably powerful governmental structure that killed them at a whim and in the most painful ways possible. They were organized against the slavery that was commonplace in all societies at the time. They used peaceful methods for the most part to spread the faith and it spread like wildfire in a world used to much more violent methods of persuasion. Today's Christians are also less substantially less bloodthirsty than the Christians of the Middle Ages who supported and concurred with a religious order that killed people at a whim and in the most painful ways possible. The structure of Christianity has changed multiple times over the centuries and each change has brought about waves of violence and unrest in which the various Christian sects that emerged killed each other with the same fervor that Muslims kill each other now. If you read the Gutenberg Bible of 1587 it becomes clear that turning the other cheek is lip service and stoning your neighbor for his transgressions against you is the preferred solution.
This analysis ignores the fact that religion tends to separate people into groups and those groups tend to go to war against each other more often than against similar believers. I would argue that every conflict that is happening in the Middle East today and for the last half century can be traced to causes that include religion as a primary factor in the conflict. Shiite or Sunni vs Jew Shiite vs Sunni Christian vs Shiite or Sunni In conflicts of the Middle Ages all of the above existed in addition to Christian vs Jew.
While they may worship different gods the majority of the wars were not because of that belief, most are about power and control.
Christianity, Judiasm, and Islam are all Abrahamic religions that worship the same deity. Judaism considers Abraham to be a prophet who got messages from the beyond. Christians also believe that, and also consider Jesus a prophet (/deity)- and then Muslims consider Abraham and Jesus prophets (but don't consider Jesus a deity), and then Muhammad is their third prophet. In each religion, the last prophet that they believe in is the big one that their religion is mainly based on, but they don't reject the others or believe in different deities.
The understanding that the three religions worship the same deity in different ways is new and very fragile. Catholics did not recognize Islam as worshiping the same deity until Vatican II in 1965. Islam considers both of the prior prophets to be flawed in some way that makes the third prophet the divine truth. Judaism mostly ducks and tries to get out of the way of theological arguments like the ones above. Jews have been pitted against the question for much longer than the others and are wary of anything in the religious realm that creates dissension or chaos. Long experience has taught Judaism that nobody wins religious wars, it's just a question of who loses biggest.
It's not new or fragile. Each religion considers itself to worship the same deity Abraham did. Period.
That wasn't the point of my post at all, how about this. "Christianity, Judiasm, and Islam are all Abrahamic religions that worship the same deity. Judaism considers Abraham to be a prophet who got messages from the beyond. Christians also believe that, and also consider Jesus a prophet (/deity)- and then Muslims consider Abraham and Jesus prophets (but don't consider Jesus a deity), and then Muhammad is their third prophet. In each religion, the last prophet that they believe in is the big one that their religion is mainly based on, but they don't reject the others or believe in different deities" all that said the majority of the wars were not because of their beliefs, most are about power and control.
I was deliberately not addressing whether wars are started because of religion. I was just jumping in to correct an erroneous statement. All three of those religions claim to worship the same deity as Abraham. I'm not participating in the overall arguments of the thread.
And my original post was only to address the issue of the percentages of wars fought over religion. Which religion, what they believe, etc. did not really matter.
This is not accurate. Historically the Catholic Church believed Islam to be a separate faith that worshiped a different God. This is because Islam rejects the Holy Trinity which is the basis of most Christian sects including Catholicism. Christians considered Muslims and Jews to be infidels until very recently. The definition of the term is essentially unbeliever. Christians considered people who believed in God but had fallen from the true path to be heretics. Islam considered Christians to be kafir or unbelievers. Islam considered Jews to be kafir but protected by the will of the prophet who explicitly said that people of the book, recognized to be Jews, must not be made to convert to Islam if they choose not to but must instead be kept separate and made to pay a tax to the authorities who would be Islamic in all cases. Jews just ducked and hoped for the best. Life was better for them in Islamic lands than Christian lands because Christians offered them no protections at all and considered them to be the murderers of the prophet. Islam specifically denied that the prophet had died on the cross and that the Holy Trinity existed at all and thus had no blood oath against the Jews. All of this changed slightly over the ages but not always for the better. Vatican II began what we now recognize as the one God with multiple ways of keeping the faith. There are currently Christians and Muslims who believe as a matter of faith that their God is different than the others. Not worshiped differently but actually different. The strong implication is that the other God does not actually exist. You can find their arguments on the net if you look hard enough. One key element is that one name for God was rooted in a small pantheon of Gods, with the name reserved for the Moon God in the culture he was worshiped in, alongside several other lesser deities.
