Why is religion...

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(07-09-2017, 12:09 PM)Dill Wrote: Just my two cents--I think wars have many causes. If one wants to understand how they arise, how to end them, or how to prevent them, religion and notions of "greed" and "power" don't have much explanatory power, though they may work in some combination in some cases.

On the other hand, I think that concepts like "identity" and "security" are very helpful. Peaceful people may turn quickly to war for reasons of basic security. If they rally around a religious identity, that does not make their religion the "cause."  When basic security is disrupted, it also tends to disrupt identity, especially where tied to social status. Religion may help repair the damage.

So from a geographical and cultural distance, a group like ISIS, which arose in a security vacuum and is led by former Iraqi military officers who once had high social status and control of their country, may appear to be all about religion, since they call themselves the Islamic State and claim Allah as their ground of legitimacy, or about power if you are skeptical of their sincerity. But neither religion nor greed nor lust for power would have created ISIS had not the US invaded Iraq and Syria had not collapsed. And if ISIS is wiped out, they will simply be replaced by a similar religious movement, so long as the same security conditions remain in Syria and Iraq.

One cannot prevent "religion" or greed or lust for power, but one can construct policies that support rather than undermine the identity and security of people. Post war Europe was able to do that for 45 years (if you don't count colonial wars).

As usual, interesting take. I think there is a chicken and egg thing though, and I would be willing to flip your line of thought around a bit. Rather than identity being threatened and people rallying around religion I think it often goes in the opposite direction. People rally around religion and it is their identity, and part of the operative system of keeping it that way is to convince the faithful there are constant threats to their religious identity. Godless communism will destroy our church if we don't fight them over there before they come over here and Sharia Law will destroy our superior faith if we don't fight them over there... don't those sound like familiar ideas that set people up to back Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq? If the faithful weren't in constant fear of some "bear in the woods" that was gonna come and poop in their temple I am not so sure they would be so quick to send Johnny marching off to battle (again and again and again). I have a degree of respect for religion, particularly the more universal themes running through it as highlighted most effectively and beautifully by Joseph Campbell, but I think you and Bels are letting institutional religion off the hook too easily in this discussion.