General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Bill Maher Ignites Twitter Firestorm With Just 21 Words on Islam [View all]jobycom
(49,038 posts)Atheists, of which I am one, can be just as bloody as religious people.
The thing is, religion never really causes these wars and slaughters. It's all about ethnic identity, and really, it's all about money. People who don't have something or feel that others have what they want find some way to justify taking it from those who have it. Race, religion, borders, immigration status, etc, are always blamed, but they are just excuses. I guarantee you that if the people sitting on the oil we want in the Middle East were white Christians, we would find some way to demonize them, rob them, and slaughter them, unless it enriched us more to identify with them. Wars are never really caused by religion. Even the Crusades and the Religious Wars were about money, land, and power. I'm sure religion was a useful tool of the leaders, and I'm sure a lot of the foot soldiers and atrocity supporters drank the "us versus them" koolaide enough to use religious ideals to fuel their hatred, but wars aren't started by angry people. Wars are started by greedy leaders.
The Khmer Rouge and the Stalinist Soviets believed that religion was a cause of the problem, and tried to eliminate it, often by killing believers. But they wound up doing the same thing they were trying to end. The real problem wasn't the religion, it was the power of the classes who had been using religion to control the masses. Blaming religions can lead to the same horrors that following religions does.