How many wars in the world's history could have been avoided without religions in this world?

Answer 1

Religion is an underlying driver in most wars. It's easy to see why. Theocratic governments have ruled for many thousands of years (i.e., religion is government). Democracies are on the rise, but theocracies won't go down without a fight.

Answer 2

Not all wars are caused by religion but Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Hinduism do presently or did cause war. For the common benefit of humanity as far as war is concerned, we would have been better off without the above religions. To the best of my knowledge of all the major religions, Buddhism is the only one that doesn't make war. Consider Tibet, the country was the home of peace loving Buddhists for at least a couple millennium and what do they do when China takes their country away from them? Those that can, bow their heads and leave. Now consider Palestine, not even a country when the Jews arrive and settle just a small piece of it. The local Arabs are compensated by being given all the rest of Palestine. An area 3 times the size of Israel (Jordan). Arabs then declare HOLY WAR to get back little Israel. And for 60 years have been spilling blood over it. Buddhists put life ahead of home. Because they know that home is just a place and that life is whats important.

Answer 3

There are certain instances where the religion is shown as the reason for the war, but basically wars happen for political and economical reasons. Religion is the best motivating factor. So the people use religion to join the people in their evil plans of war. If it were not religion, those selfish people would have used the second best motivator to enable more and more people to take part in their wars.

Religion is therefore not the cause of wars.
Its only exploited by some people, who used it for their purposes and destroyed the mankind. They created an impression that religion is responsible and have hidden their secret motives from several centuries.

Answer 4

I understand the point you are making but you should first consider this before you target religion as the actual cause of conflict ,rather than the "apparent " cause :

A society is capable of surviving for thousands of years unless it is attacked from within or without by hostile forces. where such an attack occurs, the primary targets are it's religious and national gods and heroes,it's potential of leadership and the self respect and integrity of it's members.
If you look around you , you will find countless examples of these points. They scream at us every day from the newspapers and TV.
Probably the most critical point of attack on a culture is it's religious experience. Where one can destroy or undermine religious institutions then the entire fabiric of the society can be quickly subverted or brought to ruin.
For the last hundred years or so religion has been beset with relentless attack. You have been told it’s the “opiate of the masses “, that it’s unscientific, that it is primitive, in short , that it is a delusion.
The source of this kind of attack is always covert and hidden. It is promoted by a few who have a vested interest in a slave society.
Unfortunately these few rely on creating fear and insecurity in others
to forward and promote their enemy propaganda. These others feel correctly they have to defend themselves from an attack, but because the real enemy is hidden, they can be manipulated to attack what they really should be defending as they cannot see the real enemy.

The key here is that underneath all these attacks on organised religion there is one fundemental target:
The spirituality of man, your own basic spiritual nature, self respect and peace of mind.

Answer 5

To blame all or even most of history's wars simply on religion is a good indication of ones ignorance about history. Whenever people say this, I ask them for one example - and all I hear is "uh...uh...."

There are many factors besides religion that compel nations to go to war against each other. People who blame religion for all the world's wars are generally those hostile to religion in general.

Answer 6

If you define religion as following the will of God then no wars would be avoided without religion.

If the question is "How many wars have been FALSELY justified in the name of religion?" the answer is someone tried to justify every war through religion.

We should however differentiate between militarists misusing religion and actual religion.

Answer 7

How many wars would have been caused if mankind had not been given morals?

There have been enough secular wars over the past 2000 years that religion is not to blame for war. Are the wars really about religion? Of course not, they are about secular power.

Answer 8

Considering that most wars are fought over land, money, resources, or pride- not many.

It is a common tactic in war to appeal to your pride, your common heritage, a shared faith, or other tactics to persuade people to fight and kill other people that you set up as the enemy- usualy by pointing out their different heritage, religion, etc.

Wars are fought for water- so is water to blame? Should it be outlawed or reviled for its role in the deaths of innocent people?

So, if two groups hate each other enough to go to war, would they still do so even if there were no religions?

The Crusades probably still would have happened in order to protect trade routes. The Northern ireland issues would probably still happen over issues of independence. The Middle East would probably still struggle over a myriad of issues.

In general- religion is a motivational tool in wartime, not usually a prime issue.

Answer 9

Very few of them. Religion is just a fallback when rallying others to your cause. The civil war, Viet Nam, WWI & II, did not have religion as the cause of the conflict. But when looking for an "us against them" banner, religion does very nicely.

Answer 10

Probably very few of them. Most wars are fought for reasons of politics and economics and then religion is co-opted to support the war effort.