A Pakistani man has reportedly confessed to participating in the recent bloody attacks in India. India is predominantly Hindu, Pakistan is predominantly Moslem, and one of the terrorists’ targets was a Jewish center.
Meanwhile war rages in Gaza. Israel, an officially Jewish state, is raining hell down on Gaza in response to unremitting rocket attacks by a militant Islamic force entrenched in Gaza.
Remember Northern Ireland? Catholics and Protestants murdering each other there is no longer surprising or especially newsworthy.
The Inquisition was a religious initiative. It’s hard to find anyone who would describe it as anything but brutal and unjust.
In the period precursory to World War II, the indigenous Japanese religion, Shinto, became a force for belligerent patriotism. During the war, Japanese fighters were bombarded with messages about the sacred honor of dying in battle against the enemy, after which they would supposedly continue to fight with even more power in the spirit world.
Armaments of the Germanic states have, for centuries, borne the imprint "Gott mit uns," God is with us. Under Hitler, military uniforms, e.g., belt buckles, sported the swastika and the same outrageous claim of divine approval.
Enough of religion! many say. Certainly enough of organized religion. That’s the cause of so much evil.
That attitude is understandable, and it’s a thought I’ve entertained in the past. As a behavioral scientist, however, I can’t ignore some "confounding variables" that argue against a simple, unqualified conclusion.
Take the issue of Hindu versus Moslem. In India, Moslems are much more likely to be urban dwellers, and Hindus more likely small town or rural dwellers. Moslems predominated in the area that broke away to become East and West Pakistan, today’s Pakistan and Bangladesh. Tensions exist over the territory of Kashmir. Issues of political power are at least as strong as conflicts over religious beliefs.
Enmity between Israel and Islamists could be described as a war for territory. Considering the minuscule size of Israel compared to the immensity of predominantly Moslem lands, from Turkey to Morocco, that seems a stretch. That Israel represents western thought and values in an area where democracy is a rarity and ruling classes resist modernization is a better explanation of the ongoing conflict. Many dictatorial rulers benefit from that conflict: Convince the people that Israel is the enemy, and perhaps the people won’t pay so much attention to how badly they are oppressed. Every young Arab who blows himself up to kill Israelis is a young Arab who won’t be storming the palace. Warriors of Hamas and Islamic Jihad are not loathe to kill Israelis who happen to be Arabic Moslems.
Remember Sirhan Sirhan, the man who murdered Robert Kennedy after hearing him pledge continued support for Israel? He was born in a Christian family, and became a Baptist before killing Kennedy. His religion had nothing to do with his hatred.
In the middle ages, the Catholic Church represented political power. To some degree its existence forced a kind of Pax Romana on people who had traditionally engaged in constant mini-wars; clan against clan, city against city, principality against principality. Threats against Catholic theology were threats against that control. Jews were a threat because their continued existence questioned the premise that an all-powerful deity wished the entire world to accept the divinity of Jesus and the supremacy of the pope. So then it really was a religious conflict, right? Not quite. If the pope wasn’t appointed by God to rule over all humanity, why should he hold that political power? A large ruling class would have no standing.
Also worthy of mention is that before Henry VIII became eager to dump his wife, when England was still a Catholic nation, and Spain and France were Catholic nations, the three fought many bloody wars against each other. Religion can’t be cited as the cause of those.
In Northern Ireland, Catholics are likely to be of Irish heritage, and Protestants are likely to have British family trees. Economically, Protestants are the haves and Catholics the have-nots. The combat there has been more of a class and ethnic conflict than a religious war.
Here in the U.S., urban gangs regularly bathe the streets in each other’s blood. The religious beliefs of the gang members are overwhelmingly Evangelical Christian. In the early 20th century Catholic Italian gangsters and Catholic Irish gangsters emptied plenty of sub-machine gun magazines into each other.
Japanese Shinto was always a serene religion that co-existed peacefully with Buddhism and Confucianism. It was only well into the 20th century that it was forcefully subjected to military rule, becoming the "official" religion that venerated the emperor as a god and demanded unquestioning obedience to authority.
Are non-religious people invariably overflowing with the milk of human kindness?
Not the individuals I’ve met in my work as a forensic psychologist. Of course I was disgusted by sadistic murderers and rapists who walked into an examination carrying a Bible, but plenty of the worst I saw had never been influenced by any religious belief or affiliation.
Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin both attended parochial schools, but could hardly be described as practicing Catholics. Their crimes against humanity easily surpass anything the Inquisition brought about.
In the more distant past, there was a guy you’ve heard of, Attila the Hun. Some Hungarians think of him in heroic terms, but to everyone else, his savagery was legend. His was not a religious cause.
In fact, it appears that those who lust for unlimited power and profess no religious faith, are, if anything, more vicious in their pursuits than those who subscribe to a creed and a religious affiliation.
The bottom-line answer, in my own thinking, is this:
People have always tended toward religious identification of some kind. At baseline, the core values of all religions are amazingly similar;
Conflict, hostility, lust for power, are unfortunately omnipresent among humans;
Religion is frequently distorted – hijacked, if you will – to excuse and accommodate the latter. It does not cause these unlovable human characteristics, and, in fact, often softens and modulates them.
Eliminating religion, if we could, would not substantially improve the world.