Quote:
Originally Posted by LadyMischief
Maybe take a trek through history again and see how many conflicts were spurred from or spurned on by religious fervor. Hell, even the terrorist acts of today are "religiously motivated". Have you forgotten the crusades, the inquisition, many of the mass genocides in various countries were performed by people of conflicting religions. Ireland is an ongoing religious war.... even the US of A is happy to admit that "God told them to do it". And you can't tell me that in EVERY war, each side wasn't praying to their god that they would win. Religion was hardly a tiny catalyst in any way, and if you do your background research you will find that religious upheavals and religio-political jockeying have been at the roots of many conflicts that were claimed to have started for other reasons.
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And this is the problem with you anti-religious crazies. I've no problem with honestly dissecting religion, and appropriating blame where it is due (and there absolute is some, a fair amount even), but you carry on as if atheism is the answer to the worlds problems, or some enlightened movement incapable of ignorance in comparison to theism. I mean the "Gold told them to do it" bit, it's just a massive stretch, and if you believe it was the justification for going to war even for a second you are pretty naive. Most wars, past and particularly present are ethnic conflicts, not religious, and whilst religion plays a role in a number of other conflicts and in fact even constituting what is an ethnicity on occasions (take for example the internal conflicts going on inside Iraq), it doesn't necessarily warrant the wrap it gets.
The real problem I have though, is that when I look at developing (in fact even some developed) regions of the world that are devoid of religion I actually see something a hell of a lot less promising than what the atheists try to convince you would exist. Go to South America (and yes I know there are a lot of religious people there), or Africa and see how long you last with a decent watch on your arm, but I can tell you this, I've been to Lebanon, Syria and a whole host of other religious and poor nations and no one would touch you. Sure they have their downfalls, but to write off a moral order completely is going too far. And the point I make about non-religious based wars was to point out that you can't write off our present secular society wholesale because of them either. Look here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocides_in_history and consider to yourself why so few are religious based. I think it is because at least religion has some rules, atheists don't.
I mean how many members of MS-13, or the bloods and the crips do you really think go to Church and believe it, and try to obey it? How many people putting knifes into others or throwing fists at each other in drunken nights out in Britain (or anywhere in the Western world) do you really think are trying to be devout and decent human beings? What I see is a world in which we are collapsing one order (religion) and placing it by another (money, looks, materialism), and claiming that we are enlightened. Sure, some are, no doubt you are still a decent human being and intelligent, but the problem with this is that religion is something that holds together the masses and truth be told it was actually a hell of a lot more inclusive and stable than the order we've replace it. I think we need discussion about it though, not just assumptions.