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Originally Posted by Oracle.
I'm quite interested to see what people think of this. I won't directly pose the question "Does religion cause war?". This thread is more for general discussion surrounding, as the tile says, the link between religion and conflict.
I really don't think one can look back through history and still deny any link between the two. Religious beliefs have been involved in the causes of many wars and conflicts. I wouldn't blame at as the sole cause, as politics and empires come into play as well.
If everyone believed the same thing, there would be no need for war. You even have groups within some religions who disagree with each other. For example, Catholics and Protestants within Christianity. The (perhaps ongoing) conflict in Northern Ireland wasn't caused by differences between Catholics and Protestants, but you can't deny a link. Plus, certain political views correlate with certain religious views. There are plenty more examples where that one came from, but it's obviously the one most relevant to me, therefore I chose it.
Religion also seems to have some role in a lot of wars that weren't necessarily caused by it. For example, Hitler and the Jews during WWII. And we all know the Holocaust wasn't the first or last case of persecution of a certain religious group.
Essentially, what I'm saying is that I think religion empowers and encourages conflict and division between large groups of followers.
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Persecution and genocide against Jews was primarily ethnically based, not religiously based. Nazis viewed those of a Jewish and Roma heritage as racially inferior.
Jews who were atheists, secular, or Christian were killed regardless. Jehovah's witnesses were killed and imprisoned based only on their religious beliefs, however.
There are still countries in the world today with very severe religious persecution going on . Sometimes there is an ethnic twist to it (Rohingya in Burma) and sometimes it's solely based on religion (Jehovah's witnesses pretty much everywhere).
We should probably just stop killing each other.