Could someone please explain to me scientifically how religion is a cause of war?

Question

I've taken college level classes on what do we know about war and the thing is i must of have been sick the day they said religion was the cause of all wars added their is no historical or emperical evidence to suggest it would be. So why do people who are uneducated about world politics say it is a cause of war?


NAME ONE WAR IN THE HISTORY OF THIS PLANET THAT WAS CAUSED BY RELIGION?


(palestine and Israel are fighing over control of the region, so the cause is terrirtory NOT RELIGION)

In addition it would be very nice if you could use some emprical evidence or writing to prove it is.

The Crusades were fueled by religion but the cause was power, not beliefs.

Answer 1

The problem is not not religion. It is the way religion is mixed with government.

Back then, the church was heavily involved with the government. Think about it. Who would crown the Kings and Queens? Clergy. Who did the Monarchs need to pander to in order to gain support for their royal claims? Clergy.

The Crusades are not just the only wars influenced by religion.

The Thirty Years was caused by religion. It was fought in Germany and the factions were Catholics vs Protestant vs Protestant.

After that conflict ended, the Europeon powers agreed to never engage in a war over which Christian faith was the true faith.

Read the Constitution and it states that Congress shall make no law establishing religion. What this means is that Congress can not declare any one faith to be the official religion. A legacy of the Thirty Years War.

And Palestine and Israel ARE fighting because of religion.

Both faiths hold those territories as sacred to them and like Christians have a hard time sharing. To Christians, those territories is where Jesus walked. To the Jews, it is where they settled following Exodus. To the Muslims, it is where Muhammed ascended into Heaven following his flight to Medina from Mecca.

The sad thing is that you have individuals that use religion as an excuse to justify their actions, like "it is not murder to kill an infidel."

And in regards to Bush, God didn't tell him to attack Iraq. Cheney did, using a microphone that he installed in the Oval Office while claiming to be God.

Answer 2

Religion is born out of primitive fear.

Religion encapsulates this fear into a specific way of thinking and, anyone thing differently was an enemy to all. Sort of like gang turf wars.

It also became a "reason" for taking over other territory.

The war in Iraq (ie: US vs Iraq) has continued its impetus because we see the Islamic violence but believe that because we are Christian that our violence is fine.

Like Religion patriotism raises its numb head here too. Accepting 'collateral damage'. What a crock - excusing maiming and killing innocent by-standers. And this goes for the Iraqi fighters too.

One of the big stories about this, sense this is an American question is the story with a rumor of Saddam being at a specific restaurant and the American bombing of the restaurant killing all the innocents that were there. Even if the running and hiding Saddam had been at the restaurant the bombing would have to consider this a war crime. I haven't heart of Christians speaking out against this action and others. Nor have I heard 'patriots' speaking out against this action and others like it. Of course they would probably be construed as non-patriots very quickly. I also want to hear the politicians speaking out too.

I wonder what Huckabee would say.

We can easily get caught up in our evolved sense of fear of other groups and making our own that is 'better than the other'.

It's about time we strode beyond our evolved fears and used our minds to be in acceptance of others and using our well evolved brains to make rational decisions.

Answer 3

You can argue that in most cases religion might not be the (only) cause, but more of a pretext for a war. This is probably true. On the other hand, religion was very, very useful for warmongers over the ages.

The Thirty Year's war in Europe between Catholics and Protestants was definitely a religious war, even though there might have been other, minor goals the several war parties were after. But the war was started for entirely religious reasons.

The problem with religions is that they declare to be in possession of the ultimate truth. This is a perfect excuse for people to say that they are right, the other one is wrong, and there is no room in between. So let's kill them.

Answer 4

The most obvious example is the Thirty Years War, 1618-1648 (about). Other examples include the Crusades, the wars with the Moors, the English revolution, the squabbles over Kashmir, and the continuing warfare between the Sunnis and the Shiites in Iraq. There are no doubt others, but this is quite enough of a list to prove the point.

Answer 5

The original, clearly stated "purpose" of the Crusades was to reclaim the Holy Land from Moslem infidels. Never mind the underlying motives. There was also a Crusade against the Cathars in France, definitely doctrinal. And don't forget the 30 and 100 Years Wars. Definitely some good Catholic-Protestant action there.

The reason religion causes wars is the consistent assertion by religionists of divine authority for their actions. By ignoring human consequences, Christian warriors give themselves license to ignore the common humanity of their opponents and do anything they want in the "name" of God. Religion may not start every war, just some of the most viscious ones.

Answer 6

sure .
all the wars now there cause is the relegion .
how u can know this ??
simply by knowing what each religion says to its followers and what is written in there holly books .

for example :

u said :
(palestine and Israel are fighing over control of the region, so the cause is terrirtory NOT RELIGION)

and that is completly wrong .
who told u that ??

thats the reason that they demonstrate to the whole world ( notice that the biggest media companys and channels are owned by jews )

the really reason is the religion .

the jews believe that they r the god's chosen people and that palestine is the holly land that god gave them from the eras of there prophets so they fight for it .( the holly land in there books is palestine and its surroundings , but untill this moment they still fight to have palestine , then they will expand to its surroundings. thats why the peace between israelian and palesenian will never ever happen , becoz they will never give them even 1 cm from palestine ).

feeling that they r the god's chosen people means necessarliy that they see themselves the best and the other people like animals or even lower but not humans .
did u ever see how they treat palesenians or how they kill them ??
you can search and find by urself .

back 2 our subject >>>

at the holly land ,they believe that at the end of the world , there expected prophet "al maseh " will come to make the " kingdom of god " in orshalem al quds --- the capital of both palestine & israel .
so ,
they believe that the sooner they establish israel "on the holly land " the sooner there prophet will come , and then they will control the whole world untill it's end &the day of judgement come .

now ,
so why christians then help the israelian project ?
(i mean the leaders here )
simply because they beleive that the true christian beleiver should beleive in israel and help it to be established .

and that explains also why the big companies take a percent of there profits and give them 2 israel .

finally ,
why israel then hate all arabs and not only the palestenians ?
this is toooooooooooo long story ..
its root return to the dayes of prophet ibrahem .
this prophet has 2 wives : sarah & hajar .
each wife has a son ,
is-haq & isma'el respectevly .
from is-haq the jews come , and from isma'el the arab comes ....... so we r cousins :)
the sons of is-haq called "bany israel " which the jews say that the come from .
in ancient times .. alot of prophets came to bany israel ,the prophets are from bany israel themselves .
means :god chose the prophets from bany israel .
so ,
u can say that they used to this .

at the era of prophet muhammed (notice : i said at these times , but prophet muhammed isn't a prophet yet ) .
the relegious men who knows and study torah from bany israel notice that there are many signs shows that a new prophet will come .
they know that from there books .

so ,
they speak out that a new prophet will come , and it will be from bany israel also ( as they used ..) bacoz they r the gods chosen people .
but what happened is that god chose his final prophet from arab not from bany israel .
and as u can consider ,
its a great honor for the people who god chose prophet from .

from here started the hate of jews 2 arab .
the hate become bigger & bigger untill we reach these days

do u understsnd now ?

i discuss only one example .

but what i should say finally ;
that i told u the story from religion point of view .
without discussing wether what the different religions sayes is in real true or not .
this is completely another story .

i hope that i said something useful 4 u .
and i hope that my answer will not be deleted !!

Answer 7

Okay, in psychology it has been observed that there are three ways to deal with persons in conflicts, granting autonomy, withdrawing an aggression. These can be thought of as co-operative strategies, control strategies and autonomy strategies.

A person can control their own actions, they can try and control the actions of others, or they can surrender control of their own actions and not try to control others.

Religions, but also a variety of other groups such as ethnic groups, form natural cooperative groups. War requires the pre-existence of cooperative groups. The religious wars in northern Ireland are drawn on religious lines for two reasons, one is that that was the original mechanism of discrimination and, two, it describes naturally occurring social networks. There was a joke in Ireland where they ask a guy is he a Catholic or a Protestant. His response is that he was an atheist. So they ask again, are you a Catholic atheist or a Protestant atheist?

Studies on religion and war by the state department and by economists find that religion plays a critical role in war in societies that lack diverse religious groups. The more competing religions, the less biased the societal discussions. In other words, a society with one primary religion is far more likely to engage in wars with neighbors and to collapse into civil war.

What appears to be happening is that religions provide non-scientific ways of processing communication. They are biased decision making tools, further they are systematically biased decision making tools. When communication is forced through many competing religions, people then resort to the facts in ways that everyone can agree on what they are seeing. The systematic bias in religion, when unchecked by competing myth systems, can set in motion a chain of discussion and actions that will trigger a war.

As cooperative groups, survival of the group in the short term depends on the absence of dissent. Groups do suppress dissenters. It is this biased cooperation which contributes, statistically, to the presence of war. Wars do not happen because of religion, power, food, goods, women etc. Wars happen because two or more people/groups cannot find a way to divide resources (real, intellectual, personal property, symbolic, political) which is "individually rational" for all participants. To use an economic concept, there does not exist a Walresian Equilibrium that is reachable by the parties involved.

Religion causes wars primarily by biasing communication and by limiting dissent within groups. I am not on a campus to look up the journal articles via the campus library, but they are out there. I have had to review them before for research into economic development. It isn't only religion that performs functions like this in a society, but religions tend to be the most organized of the myth systems in most societies.

It is important to realize two important distinctions between beliefs and knowledge. A belief is present, even when you are not actively thinking about it. Beliefs do not go away simply because they are not relevant at the moment, and they bias what can be thought about. I strongly recommend watching the Annenburg Project's "A Private Universe," created by Harvard's Astrophysics Department. Knowledge on the other hand is empirically know, whereas beliefs are statements about what is not known but is accepted as true. Knowledge, although not gone when not thought about, cannot bias thought because it is known to be empirically true. It may have some "observer bias" but these biases are created by beliefs and preferences and not the data itself. Beliefs however can be strictly false and people, when confronted with opposing evidence will not reject them. Again, see "A Private Universe," for a good treatment of the topic or ask an Education professor about "misconception theory."

The thirty years war is a good example of a war caused primarily by religions. Although war may have happened over power issues anyway, it is truly religion that triggered the war and others capitalized on it. The war could not have happened without religion and religion determined what was fought over and how it was fought.

Answer 8

Crusades? They were a very large series of wars. And not to be mean, but I don't think a link is needed for this one.

BTW, part of the reason that Palestine and Israel are at war is because of Jerusalem. Which is a holy city and does most definitely a cause for war.

Answer 9

If you've studied politics, then you know that wars do not have a simple cause. Multiple factors come into play. Religion is often one of those factors.

So, if you remove the religious factor, how many wars would have been prevented? Quite a few I imagine. That's the sense in which people say religion causes war.

Answer 10

the project with the "faith reasons all warfare" argument is that many of the bloodiest wars in the twentieth and twenty first century have not have been given any discernible link to non secular concept. as an occasion, WW1, Vietnam, Korea, the Russian Civil warfare (1917–1923), the 2d Congo warfare and the Chechen wars. additionally historic wars such simply by fact the yankee warfare of Independence, the yankee Civil warfare, The warfare of the Roses, English Civil warfare, have little if any non secular reason. faith is generally used as a conceal for the actual reasons of greed and nationalism, the present Iraq invasion has much greater to do with oil and political 'credit' than anti-terrorism or human rights.