Re: !
A correction if you please: I don't think that religions provide a "reason" to make war. But religions do, I think, provide an "excuse" to make war.
To explain myself, I believe that most armed conflicts are due to rather mundane reasons: land grabs, disputes over natural resources, tit-for-tat revenge attacks etc that are readily understood in terms of normal human psychology.
But most people like to think of themselves as being good guys and would feel bad about plundering and killing others. In such cases, religion can provide an excuse to get people "all worked up" so to speak, by giving the conflict a moralistic tone and making it feel to like war is some kind of righteous, noble act.
|