Religion Doesn't Start Wars

These are my final thoughts on the threads from this past Wednesday and Thursday's blogs. For now.

- Charles Martin Cosgriff

I think you're confusing people who have used religion wrongly, which does and can happen, with the truth or not of religion. Either there is a God or there is not, regardless of whether human beings capable of doing evil do evil in whomever's name or with whatever justification. Either the Catholic Church, or Islam or Buddhism or Judaism or Protestantism or Animism, is the true religion or not, regardless of whether individual Catholics or Muslims or Jews or Buddhists or Animists act the way they should. It is people who sin, not creeds.

Yes, religion has at times been a cause of war. Yet so has communism and Nazism, each secular creeds. Sometimes jealousy has caused war: Russia has been at war several times in its history merely seeking control of a warm water port for its Navy. It is people doing what they should not do who are the root cause of evil in the world. Religion ill used may have been a factor at times, but rarely THE factor, the reason for war. Territorial claims and downright conquest have led to more wars than religion.

The Roman Empire did not spread for religious reasons. They did it for power, resources, and tribute. The Spanish came to the New World for the gold, the plunder, more than for the conversion of the natives (though the Spanish religious did certainly work for that). But any way you slice it, when religion is used poorly it is the fault of the wrongdoer, not the creed.