On 3/6/2003 8:28:25 AM, jennifer johnson
wrote:
>probably one of the most
>controversial questions to be
>asked. I have never been a
>religious person, partially
>because for all the good that
>comes out of religious there
>is also an equal amount of
>bad.. how many wars have been
>fought because of religion.
>how many people have died
>because of religious
>persecution. And I guess the
>hardest thing for me is that
>it seems to some degree or
>another all religious have a
>basic core of morals yet it
>seems that they spend alot of
>there time fighting over who's
>version or god is the right
>one.

It could be that there is a God, but all the
world's religions are failed human
attempts to understand him. It could also
be that one of the religions is right, but
many of its adherants are hypocrites
(perhaps this is due more to the
hypocritical nature of human beings
rather than the religion itself). One thing to
consider is that if human nature is weak,
then subscribing to any lofty sense of
principles is bound to generate a certain
degree of hypocrisy. Additionally, you
might have cases of insincere political
leaders using religion as an excuse to
advance their very material and mundane
aspirations of power.

I think another thing to consider is that
atheism and marxism have been
responsible for more killing and
persecution in the 20th century than all
the religious wars from the beginning of
history combined. When you count the
corpses created by Lenin, Stalin, Mao and
Pol Pot, Europe's religious wars pale by
comparson.

One final note may be that religious
differences are often paired with ethnic or
cultural differences and that very often
these an equal if not greater source of
conflict between groups of people. The
recent conflicts in the former Yugoslavia
and in Northern Ireland are good
illustrations of this.



Prof. Borrowdale
borrowdalej@lanecc.edu
541-463-5434