Quote:
Originally Posted by Fruitonica
Eh, I interpretted Dac's slightly ambiguous wording as saying that religion was the cause of the vast majority of wars. Even if my selections were a biased and narrow, they are easily significant enough to display that religion was not the cause for the majority of significant wars in the 20th century.
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Right but that doesn't mean it wasn't the main factor or even a small factor in every war of the 20th and 21st century. Lets look at the most recent one you listed. Iraq falls under the whole "War on Terror" banner and the Bush administration declared this war because of 9/11. Bin Laden said he bombed us (not because of our freedom) because of our ties with the Saudi family, bases in the middle east and our support for Israel. America is a pretty Christian nation and it's logical to assume because of this we have interest in Israel where the end of days is supposed to happen. If Israel were to fall and all the Jews were die Jesus couldn't come back according to Christian theology. So to say "Oh well Religion wasn't a factor in Iraq" just shows an ignorance. When it comes to Jerusalem and the Middle East religion is always a major factor.
I'm not saying our invasion of Iraq was motivated by religion because I don't think it was but on the Middle East side its an issue and it's why there's so much instability in that entire region. I don't think Religion is the cause of moderate and modern democracies to go to war anymore because were simply not that radical in our beliefs (thank god, if only we could get rid of it in our government entirely) but as for the Middle East? It's full of conflict so to say religion hasn't been the cause of wars in the 20th century is just absurd.
Basically what I'm trying to say is if we're going to examine religion being the driving factor behind war we need to look at things, even in the 21st century, with a greater scope and beyond western democracies.