Oops, forgot your last piece, so...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Somnilocus
No, I don't. Certainly some would have, but not all (or perhaps even most). Religion provided moral justification, and without it, what reason would they have had? If it's "for God" or "by His will," and therefore for morally just reasons, it makes it that much easier and that much more likely. Just as if Bush had said "We're going to war with Iraq for oil!" that never would have flied, but he justified it by telling the people it was being done for good.. hell, some have even justified it with religion. With religious justification, there is also unquestioned obedience... at least with other forms, it can be logically challenged by people rather than blindly followed.
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So you don't believe that without religion, the Conquistadors would have killed Aztecs? How about gold? There was plenty and the Conquistadors took it, they didn't need religion for that. In fact, that was the primary motivation for their subjugation of the Aztecs, they certainly weren't trying to convert them (which would be the case in a religious war).
You don't believe that medieval knights would have killed for land, treasure, ethnicity or some other reason? You might want to take a look at history, because those were primary motivations for them given that they all tended to have the same religion, so religion couldn't be used as an excuse.
Again, you look for justifications. The need for justifications assumes that the people have a choice. Only since 1800 has justification even been necessary for war in the vast majority of cases. Still, justifications abound. As I said before, money, land, food, retaliation, growth, etc. are all valid justifications that exist without religion and are used as often or more so (espeically when, as is common, neighboring countries share the same religion).
Your example about Iraq is somewhat flawed. First, because again you are relying on justification, something not necessary in most of human history, and second because all of religion was not part of any justification for the Iraq conflict. Have some (very, very few) people tied religion to Iraq, of course, but as in other cases above, it was neither the primary or even an important cause or driver of this war. In fact, if President Bush had said that we were going for oil, he would have been lying (we have yet to take any oil from Iraq for domestic use and until the current economic crisis, oil prices rose more rapidly during this war than at any time since President Carter).
Many religions teach that nobody should obey in an unquestioning manner. Christianity, for instance, requires its adherents to question the messages that they hear and compare them to scripture and use that as a basis for determining right and wrong. If a church leader came to me tomorrow and tried to say that God wanted me to go to war for some religious excuse, I'd call him a liar because the scriptures don't support such a message. There is nothing unquestioning about it. Certainly some people would not question, and some faiths don't allow questioning, but that doesn't mean that all (or even most) religious people are going to follow a religious motivation in an unquestioning fashion.
-- Jeff