How true is the idea that religion killed lots of people and was the cause of many wars throughout History?
I mean, of course people belonging to different religions have fought and the main narrative may have contained an element of religious difference, but it's not like people actually went to war over theological disputes. I believe that before the Enlightenment religion simply provided the main framework through which we could interpret the world and shape society, so people containing diverging political ideologies (as we'd call them now) articulated them through religion.
So basically, if you take liberals v. conservatives in today's vocabulary and placed them in a time where religious bonds were the main source of cohesion among a people, politicians would be saying that God either approves or condemns welfare, immigration, and all the other issues they fight over. Soon you'd have two different "religions" at conflict even though that would have no qualitative difference from what we do today.
>>446536
Religion is just an excuse.
>>446536
> How true is the idea that religion killed lots of people and was the cause of many wars throughout History?
Not true at all, and I basically agree with our statement. Some cultures used religion as a pretext, just like US today brings "democracy" and "freedom" to the world, but the underlying reasons were expansionism and struggle for power and resources.
Then again, there were some conflicts that make little sense without religion, like the first three Crusaders.
The religious kill in the name of their religion.
Making excuses for them doesn't change that fact.
>>446536
good book on the topic. "Fields of Blood: The Myth of Religious Violence".
I've always felt that nationalism had more blood on it's hands, especially when you factor in higher populations in later centuries and mechanized slaughter in the 20th.
You can convert to 'the right' religion; you will always be the 'wrong nationality'.
>>446536
It's more about "this isn't MY land, but it should be" than anything else
>>446536
Religion had something to do with it, but as a part of something bigger. Collectivism is the real cause for war.
>>446807
securing economic control of the Mediterranean is a big deal
>>448178
I doubt some Normandian knight, King of England or even Pope cared about "economic control of the Mediterranean". Venetians did for sure, being the happiest merchants they were, but the rest were mostly motivated by the religion and all than plundery-rapey thing.
>>446536
War is a arm of diplomacy. Most wars can trace their roots to the economic regardless of the stated reasons.
>>447454
Why don't you factor in all those purely selfish and never-ending wars under feudalism, before the nationstate? Imagine those guys with modern weaponry.
Lots of nationalism was emancipatory against unenlightened and sometimes repressive empires. Literally dindu nothing.
>>446807
>Then again, there were some conflicts that make little sense without religion, like the first three Crusaders.
Also, the enemy of the christians was getting larger and stronger, the popes kept losing power and control, so the crusades started. Religion did play a big factor, but mostly politic.
None of you guys ever heard of the thirty years war?
>>448460
>Catholic France, Calvinist Netherlands and Lutheran Sweden against Catholic Austria, Catholic Spain and Lutheran Saxony and sometimes Lutheran Danemark
I mean, yeah, the second defuckthiswordstation of Prague and the initial revolt was Protestant rebellion against Catholic opression, but after that it became just another "fuck the Hapsburg" war.
>>446536
Not so much cause as justification desu senpai.
Pic related was written in 1560 by the Flemish Ambassador of the HRE in Constantinople/Istanbul
*he was also the guy who managed to write down a few crimean gothic words.
>>448277
War became infinitely worse with mass conscription in the Napoleonic wars and it is only recently that conflicts have shrunk again to tiny armies fighting each other in distant lands.
>>446536
>religion killed people
Literally gun grabber tier.
Religion is just what mobilized the peasant, in the end as always war was fought mostly for government and finical elite gain, this goes for the crusades when you really look at it.
It depends on whether you consider the Catholic Church's power and authority to be a religious or political issue.
>>446536
Interfaith wars are almost always wars done for economic or political gain, with religion just being the justification. This is true both for the Islamic Caliphate expansion and Christian crusaders.
Wars within a faith, like the Thirty Years War, are a bit more complex. Certainly a country like France, being Catholic yet fighting on the Protestant side was entirely motivated by things other than pure religion, mainly the ambition to curb Austrian power, but the cause of the war itself is more difficult to pin down as either religious or non-religious.
The Holy Roman Emperor certainly has a political reason to want to rid his empire of Protestantism, due to the unrest it would cause for his rule and such, but the entire reason it causes unrest in the first place is a religious one.
>>448277
>Imagine those guys with modern weaponry.
I don't have to, senpai.
Right, so we have come to the agreement that religion is a good excuse to go to war,a catchall cassus Belli if you will, to further political gains that may occur as an outcome.
