-Religion is the opium of the masses. -Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand. -Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.
So true...
Now, what do YOU think? Does religion cause wars? Does it keep people in line? Or is this topic pointless? I think that religion is BAD. With no religion on Earth, there would be less war. WW2. Massive slaughter of Jews. Without Jews or any other religious group, WW2 may never have even started.
Without Jews, WWII would still have gone about. Know why? Power and greed, the REAL reason for most wars. Hitler would have still thought himself superior to another race if there were no Jews around, and would still have attempted to dominate the world.
Personally, I find religion in itself to be a hindrance to the world. And this is coming from a Christian. However, true Christianity is not about religion (i.e. following a bland routine day in day out) but having a real relationship with a God that loves and cares about us.
Your claim on WW2 is false, WW2 wasn't caused by Jews, you sound like Hitler, (Skip down two paragraphs if your not killertron and your not in need of a history lesson) a big factor in WW2 was how the Allies treated Germany after WW1 and Revenge was wanted. In the aftermath of World War I, the defeated German Empire signed the Treaty of Versailles. This caused Germany to lose 13% of its national territory and prohibited the annexation of Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Danzig, and mandated German armed forces number no more than 100,000 troops. Some of the Treaty's prohibitions were of conscription, manufacturing of weapons, import and export of weapons, and imposed massive reparations on Germany. Bitter Germany was.
National Socialist Adolf Hitler became the leader of Germany in January 1933. He began a massive rearming campaign. This worried France and the United Kingdom, who had lost much in the previous war, as well as Italy, which saw its territorial ambitions threatened by those of Germany. To secure its alliance, the French allowed Italy a free hand in Ethiopia, which Italy desired to conquer. The situation was aggravated in early 1935 when the Saarland was legally reunited with Germany and Hitler repudiated the Treaty of Versailles, speeding up remilitarization and introducing conscription. Hoping to contain Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Italy formed the Stresa Front. The Soviet Union, concerned due to Germany's goals of capturing vast areas of eastern Europe, concluded a treaty of mutual assistance with France.
Im not saying that the Jews hadn't had any impact, but it was definatly not the cause of the war. And true that if there wasn't any Jews, they wouldn't of been killed, but the war would of still happened. What I think your saying goes further then what you said, you feel the world would be better without racism or intolerence, Sure without religion Jews wouldn't of been killed, but there would still be slavory and racism.
But I've been dragging on to much and to the question you posed I think religion is a good thing. People need some guidance in their lives, and religion provides it.
Now that we all know the reason of WW2 lets get on with the topic. Religion can help in some cases. It's true that it does start wars(the crusades) and it does split familys and nations(Iraq, sunnis and shites) but it does have a postitive effect aswell. As Skull said, after the history lesson, it does provide a little bit of guidence in our lives. It also gives us a reason to not just give up in life. My last point before I get to how I feel on it is it gives us a new set of morals to live by and usally these morals are good.
I am a religious person and I do beleive religion is not the best thing. It would be better if religion and politics can remain seperate but I don't think that will happen.
On the topic of religion,i consiter it how much you belive in it. some people worship daily, others, only if its a family occasion. Some belive but don't praise their beleif in any way. Then there's the rare amount of people ("agans" i think) who have no form of religion at all. Reilgion i feel has a low efect on wars. WW2's genecide of Jews was becouse of Hitler(and Nazis) being Racist. with no couse of dealing with the war.
1: If people read their own bible,(or other religious text) then religion would stop wars. Oh and if their were know hebrew religion, it would not have changed ww2 at all. Very few people (including German people) knew about the holocost, the reason ww2 happend is because Hitler was invading contries like a kid attacks a candy dish. Also, hitler just needed a scapegoat. Hittler just needed a race he could blame Germany's problems on. If he needed to, he would have picked people who chewed there fingernails, or people who had cats.
To 55554444 and so on and so forth I am a pagan as you would call me. Pagans do have a form of religion its just diffferent to the monotheistic beleif. We still praise our Gods and still pay homage to Them.
55554444333322221: The people who have no religion at all are agnostics, and, depending on how technical you want to be, atheists (atheists tend to be more anti-religious than the merely areligious agnostics).
I'd like to see acknowledgment of the term organised religion here, though. Because it's in the "organised" part that much of the social controversy takes place. How important is organisation to religion, or even religious practices as we know them?
55554444333322221- pagans are polytheistic, atheists (like myself) are solely anti-religious, while agnostics don't really care if there is a religion or not.
SkullZero- I was merely pointing out that one of the largest causes of the war was Hitler blaming Germany's loss of WW1 on the Jews. WIthout Jews, there would have been far less slaughtering. I know that Germany was badly treated after WW1, and WW2 would have happened anyway, but i still hold my beliefs that WW2 would not have been such a big deal without Jews.
Anyway, I would like to point out that i am not insulting anyone for being religious or trying to make others join me in my atheism. I don't care if people want to follow what they believe, they have a right for that. I follow what I believe, just as the Pope does.
killertron's post is pretty solid, so this is not a reply to his post so much as a general comment.
Though the relevance of Hitler to the thrust of the thread is debatable, it's still a historically fascinating question.
It's true that according to primary and secondary sources, as well as a detailed study of Adolf Hitler's biography, his bitterness was specifically directed against the Jewish people- but the need for a scapegoat to blame one's troubles on is significant, tied in with his personal history and struggles as a failed aspiring art student.
The thing is, it's very difficult to say whether "WWII would have happened", or the Holocaust etc. had happened whether there was a significant Jewish population or not, because there are too many contingent factors. Simply put, changing one thing in a retrospective analysis might require us to change other things, and the most we could say would be "they were in the wrong place, at the wrong time," but the population being there in the first place was dependent on a number of other things...etc.
Then there's the whole question of what "WWII would have happened" meant, which goes along the theme of the thread of "Will there be a WWIII?" We're only having this discussion now because it is retrospective. Perhaps it was inevitable, one way or another, that some kind of WWII happened given the consequences of WWI, and the only thing that can be attributed to the presence of the Jewish population and their being persecuted would be the particular manifestation of the Holocaust itself, etc.
This is why (to address the OP) ultimately whether Jewish people and thus religion had a big part to play in the primary factors for WWII is not a reflection of how religion might play a role in war itself, and whether this is a good/bad thing. Religion and war seem to stem from fundamental functions and desires and will thus inevitably happen and interact on some level.
Thus my view on religion is a neutral one- it just *is*. Until you start citing particular parameters, for example "organised" religion or "religious doctrine" as opposed to a general "formation of mythos" and "spiritual integrity".
thats a hard topic because it helps people get a round by thinking there is someone up there to see when you die but it also causes wars between different religions
That is not true Grim. My religion which is somewhat organized, not as organized as the catholic church but still, is very democratic. The priest has the power to make the sermons and such things but as for money rasing events and things like that its very democratic for the say 25-30 people we have as members. We all choose what we want then vote. So for some religions thats true but for others its not
