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| quote: | Originally posted by biznology
How many wars has religion caused then? At least twice as many? |
See I don't know how you can really argue that. Obviously the crusades were a war caused by religion, so were the Islamic cursades of Mohammed however. So that's what 2 or 10 wars depending on your counting (e.g. Do you believe in three Chrisitan Crusades or five?). Then there were definetly the wars of intolerance during the seperation of Christianity into sects, but was this a religious war so much as economic or one led by the state? Many of these wars were simply barons and lords breaking free from the grasp of the Church over their rule, little did most of them care about the reality of their religion.
Was the American war of Independence a war of religion then? Or was it simply a rebellion from discontented colonist angry at the fact that they were disenfrancihised "englishmen"?
Its all very subjective in your view, however I would argue religion was not the reason that caused these wars. It was other political, ethnic, economic, and social circumstances that are a detrement to war.
I would even boldy argue that aside perhaps from the Chinese occupation of Tibet, there is no religious war today (and the Chinese didn't really invade Tibet because they believed in a God.. although this was certainly a factor). Even this Western/Islamic war is a war of philosophy not of religion. It is not Christianity vs. Islam, it is the West vs. this philosophy of Islam, an Islamic fundamentalisim, or Isalmism.
Afterall lets look at the time before Monotheism, before "institutionalized religion"; The period before Emporer Constantine declared Christianity the religion of Rome. Thats 4000+ years of history, right? Now tell me.. do you know how many numerous and untold wars happened during this period? Thousands. Just think of the Greeks, or the Persians alone. Now in these cases it was not a fight for religion, of course their pagan Gods offered support and advice on wether to venture into battle, but rarely was it for religious sake (after all most were pagans who cared little about what river god one chose to believe over the other, paganism due to its acceptance of multiple gods is fairly tolerant in this regard). Now only was war quiet numerous during these times (as large unified states were few) but they were also more ruthless and savage.
To argue then that religion is the primary factor of war is very ridicilous; war happened before our "modern" religion, the ancient viewed the reasons for war as varying (Plato simplisitcally put war's cause as the overpopulation and greed of neighbors), and today the several varying theories of war, Balance of Power, the NeoConservative, and Classical Liberal views do not even consider religion as a prime cause of war.
Today more wars are propgated to creation between ethnic lines rather than religion.
| quote: | | And therefore, the state succumbs to the Church, as so often with organized religion the 'state' of society is more plastic that the institutions bonds. Is there then a separation between the two? |
Actually typically its the state that gets the upperhand on the Church! In Islam this has been the tradition basically since the death of Mohammed, as it allowed individual interperation and belief. In England the state discontented with Catholisim, made its own religion subservient to its will. Most of Asia never had strong institutionalized religions, and therefore always basically provided a supporting view to the rulers.
| quote: | | But lack of religion does not require an all powerful state. Stalinist and Maoist rule may have been anti-religion, but that is not necessarily why those regimes were so dangerous. |
True but compare apples with apples. And second, I am talking about the brutality of the state, a powerful state IMO is powerful as it has all the liberty in its hands, and deprives its citizens of liberty. Continuing...
Maosit, and Stalinists were basically facisit, right? Good.
Who else were facisits? Hitler and Mussolini.
Both Mao and Stalin got away with slaughtering their very own ethnic countrymen by the hundreds of thousands if not millions. I would argue first that these slaughters were grossly unproportional to any necessity to instill their rule.
Now how come Hitler and Mussolini did not slaughter there people in similar capacity, I would argue that they simply couldn't. The Catholic Church which was very strong in both these countries would never allow it, it protected its people offering a protection against such brutality and deprivation of rights.
Similarly one might even opine that if the Jews had such a strong institutionalized religion it might of afforded them more liberities and avoided their slaughter, something the Catholic Church was all to pleased to look the other way at.
| quote: |
As long as the religious institution of one state presupposes or confronts another it will cause problems. Religion just confounds this by each's universiality, following the whole "im right, youre wrong mentality" - yet there exists a distinct lack of hard evidence that anyone is right beyond faith... |
You don't need religion to make the "im right, you're wrong" mentality, you can do this by economics, social darwinisim, any other pseudo-science, ethnicity, social class, political affliation, nationalisim, culture, etc...
Again religion is an open book, it can be interpurted as tolerante or it can be interpurted as intolerant always beliving its right. I believe how it is viewed, is typically how the society feels, religion adapts to the culture that uses it.
| quote: | | and somehow, most organized religion denies 'faith' if faith is not applied in an organized manner| |
Again your interpertation.
On the Infinity note, yes why was he banned.. I felt his article was simply an article taken from http://www.faithfreedom.org . I don't necessairly knew if he believed in such things, or just wanted to see people's comments.
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