Sleepy said:
I phrased my post carefully, I didnot flat out state that religion caused those wars. Thats never been my position, it is a factor though and one that cannot be denied. Yes venal humans go to war marching under a banner of religion (and often against the tenants of said religion) for reasons often based on greed and hatred and pride, yet religious differences are motivators. And in many cases were the excuse used to justify the conflict.
Oh yes it is a factor that can't be denied, and it does increase tensions between peoples as it's an obvious difference, well it used to be it's less so now as many states are secular. If it wernt for religion though it would be something else tat is used to justify wars to control resources, a particular countries morality, race or almost anything can be used as justification. It just so happens that religion is the one used.
So yes i think religion is a factor but only because it's the simplest to apply often, but when a country is warring with another facton of the same religion, nationalism, race, and other justifying factors are used, people will use the easiest thing to justify their aims, most of the time thats easily done with religion.
Look at the war in iraq, the western worlds (us and the US) morality is being used to justify a war which is plainly a war for the persuit of resources, we would not be acting were it not for the oil in Iraq, otherwise there would be countries far higher up the agenda than Iraq, the Nepalese royal family are currently killing civilians because they have had enough of the monarch exercising total control, will we act there ? will we buggery, because it's not in our economic interests to do so, Iraq was.
*Before anyone has a moan about me being anti US i'm not i am meerly stating the reasons for this war, i was against the war but only because i was being lied to, if the US and GB govt had just come out and said, well we need to secure the oil but as an aside we'll get rid of saddam as hes an arse****, i would have gladly supported it, but they tried all sorts of rubbish to justify the war claiming that they are somehow better than others who have gone to war over resources. It doesn't bother me that countries go to war over resources, i'd rather it didn't but it's the way of the world and humanity so i accept it, i just don't like being lied to and treated as if i have the intelligence of a 10 year old