From the link: "Come on! The Crusades, The Inquisition, Northern Ireland, the Middle East, 9/11. Need I name more?"
I realize the author was purposely making a strawman, but the list is interesting. The inquisition was not a war. And none of the others are/were religious wars.
The Crusades were an economic struggle over who would control the Mediterranean.
Northern Ireland was a class struggle between the economically advantaged Anglicized Irish against the suppressed loyalist Irish.
The wars in the Middle East are basically conflicts over land.
9/11 was a reaction to US intervention in the Middle East. Osama bin Laden was pissed off over the stationing of US troops in Saudi Arabia.
A related myth is the oft quoted atheistic propaganda piece from Steven Weinberg that for good people to do evil, it takes religion. Just like the war myth, simply thinking about the subject immediately renders it obviously false.
It can be argued that religion can be used as a justification to get people to go along with engaging in, or at least supporting, a war (one of those evil things it allegedly takes religion to enact), but the root cause of the war is almost never religious and other justifications can and would be found.
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From the link: "Come on! The Crusades, The Inquisition, Northern Ireland, the Middle East, 9/11. Need I name more?"
I realize the author was purposely making a strawman, but the list is interesting. The inquisition was not a war. And none of the others are/were religious wars.
The Crusades were an economic struggle over who would control the Mediterranean.
Northern Ireland was a class struggle between the economically advantaged Anglicized Irish against the suppressed loyalist Irish.
The wars in the Middle East are basically conflicts over land.
9/11 was a reaction to US intervention in the Middle East. Osama bin Laden was pissed off over the stationing of US troops in Saudi Arabia.
A related myth is the oft quoted atheistic propaganda piece from Steven Weinberg that for good people to do evil, it takes religion. Just like the war myth, simply thinking about the subject immediately renders it obviously false.
It can be argued that religion can be used as a justification to get people to go along with engaging in, or at least supporting, a war (one of those evil things it allegedly takes religion to enact), but the root cause of the war is almost never religious and other justifications can and would be found.
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