Does Religion Cause War? Posted in: Belief and Truth

I’d argue it’s not religion

It’s lust for certainty where problems begin.

Faith is belief in something unknown. Something you choose to believe. Denying you don’t really know, and surrounding yourself only with like-minded people, doesn’t make something known. Why should it? How can it? That self-deception may be cosy for a while. But it easily leads to demonising of anyone does not embrace the party line. And banishment of those who dare to question. Is this what God wants of us? Surely this willingness to pretend is anything but a sign of spiritual sincerity?

Same time one has to wonder at the source of the ability to embrace a faith as truth. Where that inspiration comes from? Does not God inspire faith from within by awarding some sort of ‘religious experience’. If so, God seems to be implicated in what follows … typically that experience is narrowly interpreted to feed the idea that a chosen religion is the only way. To protect this seedling idea, professed similar sounding experiences of those of other religions have to be dismissed as false. The mindset of us and them thus becomes firmly established and the stage set for all manner of conflict.

Perhaps there is some higher purpose to this?

I doubt that purpose is war.