Is the adherence to ideology (instead of to a religion) the chief culprit in war, genocide, and oppression?

Question

It has been accurately pointed out that violence can arise from both religion (i.e., the Crusades and 9/11/01) and atheism (i.e., violent oppression from communist USSR and China).

The common elements of all of these phenomena are ideologies that carve reality to fit into their unyielding frames of reference. Both Communism and Religion develop a self-righteous justification for strong oppression of "non-believers." (The US war in Iraq was intended to "spread freedom," seemingly no matter how many Iraqis died in the process.)

Instead of religion, is blind adherence to an ideology the true problem of the 21st century? How are we to deal with ideologies that become more important than human beings? Is it the role of skepticism to raise questions whenever someone develops an unquestioning allegiance to ANY ideology, relgious or athestic?

Answer 1

You are quite right, organised religion and organised ideology have been responsible for the worst atrocities in the history of this planet.

As the count stands, organised religion is still responsible for far more deaths and destruction than non-religious ideologies (the relation is about 50:1). But in recent times the ideologies begin to catch up, thanks to the former USSR, modern Russia, China, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and the recent "war on terror" by the USA, which seems determined to make every country in the world "free and democratic" (as if G. W. Bush would know what that means) no matter how many people they have to kill in the process.
In fact, the idea that the USA stand for freedom and democracy is one of the greatest mis-perceptions. The USA stand for greed, massive organised crime, organised religion, organised fraud and organised exploitation of the rest of the world.

The key word, as you may have noticed, is "organised". Religion on a personal basis is fine and peaceful. It only becomes dangerous when it is organised in order to control people. And the same goes for any ideology. As long as it remains in the heads of a limited amount of people, no harm is done. But as soon as a group, party or state adopt an ideology as their motivation and excuse for doing bad things, the world begins to suffer in a big way.

There is probably no perfect and certainly no easy way to deal with this. But to begin with, it is important to curtail the influence of organised religion. No school should be run by a religious or ideological group or organisation, and people should be educated in a fair and impartial way along the lines of knowledge, wisdom and truth only. Believes are a personal thing and should never be made the subject of organised groups. That would get us onto the right path, but it will be a long and hard journey until we can rid the planet of all the religious and ideological fanatics. They are making too much money from their meddling and messing, so they will fight any attempt to strip them of their lucrative and comfortable positions.

Answer 2

War, along with famine and pestilence are some of God's means of keeping the earth's population in line with the ability of the earth to provide for those people. Just imagine a world without war-- humans would have had to have invented it just to have enough "Lebenraum" (living space) for themselves a long time ago. This is not necessarily DUE TO or because of religion-- war is necessary because we have a finite planet and human demands are infinite (it's sort of an extrapolation of the economic law of scarcity). This conflict inevitably leads to war-- whether religion is involved or not. BTW, your question is wrong on its face: since Communist countries (with no religion) have started wars (see Korea, Vietnam, etc.), then religion in and of itself CAN NOT be the reason for those wars, and your premise is therefore invalid.

Answer 3

I think the real problem is the acceptance of the theory that war can be justified by most people. Since most people accept it as a valid problem solving method, they can be manipulated into participating in it. If it were rejected as acceptable under any circumstances, then the basis for it would cease to be a factor.

Answer 4

Yes, blind adherence to any ideology is not good and can cause many problems. Skepticism along with a strong and continuing educations are good things to develop. Any ideology that does not welcome questions and challenges should be suspect.

Answer 5

Excellent question!!! Yes! I agree completely!

Answer 6

Fanatical dogma of any sort is harmful.

Answer 7

both