Religion is what?

How’s that again?

Religion is the cause of all wars.  Says who?  I suppose if you repeat a lie often enough people will indeed believe it.  The view that religion is the cause of all wars appears to be a popular view that reveals a rather poor grasp of history.

Was World War I caused by religion? No.  It was caused by the assassination of Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand on 28^th June 1914. How about World War II?  Started by Adolf Hitler promising not to march into Poland and then doing just that.  What about the other wars during the twentieth century? Korea wasn’t started by religion, nor was Vietnam, nor the Falklands war or the Gulf wars.  Whatever the reason for the conflicts, not one was caused by religion.

Go back in history and what do we find.  The Napoleonic wars were the result of another little corporal trying to look bigger than his height would allow!  Wars are usually and almost always politically inspired while ‘religion’ has often been used as excuse for sticking the armored boot in. Religion as the cause of war may go back to the age of ignorance, but today’s new age of ignorance is the cause of a different kind of butchery.

So what is the real cause of war? Politics.

Is it that simple? Er…… Yep!

Religion builds large churches and does nothing to feed the poor. Yeah, right. Churches are built by the people attending them and it’s the people who attend the churches who give money to church-run charities that provide aid for the poor.  Charities like Cafod in England, Trochre in Ireland (who contributed more aid to the Balkans following the war there than the United Nations) and in the USA Catholic Charities – and those are just the Catholic contributors of aid. Protestants also contribute aid.

Yeah, I suppose knocking and mocking religion provides an individual with a good reason not to learn from it.  Principles like respect for life, love for one’s neighbor and the promotion of human dignity can all go by the board so that teenagers can play video games in which they learn that life has no value.

The real reason for not bothering with religion: selfhood.  But that's just my opinion - take it or leave it.