[carsongross]

Sure, the Inquisition was bad. But so was the gulag. Seems like the 'tempered by compassion' thing is more important than the left hand side, doesn't it?

There is absolutely no historical connection between religion and war. From http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/08/06/god_and_the...

"Moreover, the chief complaint against religion -- that it is history's prime instigator of intergroup conflict -- does not withstand scrutiny. Religious issues motivate only a small minority of recorded wars. The Encyclopedia of Wars surveyed 1,763 violent conflicts across history; only 123 (7 percent) were religious. A BBC-sponsored "God and War" audit, which evaluated major conflicts over 3,500 years and rated them on a 0-to-5 scale for religious motivation (Punic Wars = 0, Crusades = 5), found that more than 60 percent had no religious motivation. Less than 7 percent earned a rating greater than 3. There was little religious motivation for the internecine Russian and Chinese conflicts or the world wars responsible for history's most lethal century of international bloodshed."

[lutusp]

> There is absolutely no historical connection between religion and war.

Absolutely false -- you have grossly overstated your claim and even contradicted your own sources. You have posted statistics that say either 7% or 40% (depending on source) of wars are caused by religion, and then blithely made a claim that contradicts your own evidence.

If your claim were true, having religious beliefs would produce a reduction in warlike tendencies and violence in religious believers, a claim that is obviously false. If you want to argue that religion doesn't lead to violence in and of itself, you have to ignore India, 9/11, every bombed abortion clinic, and dozens of other examples from the recent past, to say nothing of history. You would have to live in perpetual denial of reality.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_violence

I can't meaningfully quote from the above article -- every line contradicts your claim.

[carsongross]

Wow, an article on religious violence goes over religious violence. Who would have guessed?

7% of all wars in history have been religiously motivated (note, that is not by body count: if we went that way the atheistic russian and Chinese civil wars plus nationalist world wars would make them a round-off error.)

Do some religious people commit violence? Yep. So do some environmentalists. Is the problem environmentalism? So do socialists. Is the problem socialism?

I get it: HackerNews commenters generally don't like religion, mainly on first-principle and emotional grounds. But there is no reason, logically, to exaggerate the dangers of religion, nor to deny the observable benefits.

[lutusp]

> 7% of all wars in history have been religiously motivated

You're picking data to suit your beliefs. Another of your own sources said the number was 40%. In any case, this contradicts your prior claim that: "There is absolutely no historical connection between religion and war." That's quite false, however you cut it.

> Do some religious people commit violence? Yep. So do some environmentalists.

You're moving the goal posts and posing an absurd argument -- not unlike the child molester who says, "So? Who's perfect?"

> But there is no reason, logically, to exaggerate the dangers of religion, nor to deny the observable benefits.

I can't possibly exaggerate the dangers of religion in a country that (because of religious belief) rejects science and critical thinking, murders health workers, and tries to force Creationism into public school classrooms as though it's science.

And what benefits did you have in mind? A way to control the behavior of people who aren't very smart and need to have their hand held as they cross the busy street of life?

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity_and_intelligence

Quote: "In a 2013 meta-analysis, led by Professor Miron Zuckerman, of 63 scientific studies about IQ and religiosity, a negative relation between intelligence and religiosity was found in 53 out of 63 ..."

[carsongross]

You are the one picking data. The reality is that non-religious, even restricting to the more tightly defined atheist, people are responsible for more death and suffering than religious people. Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot. End of discussion.

Religious people are happier and more moral. They are less intelligent, for sure, but there is no correlation between intelligence and morality. Furthermore, since there are far more religious people in the world than non-relgious people, in absolute terms there are more intelligent religious people than intelligent non-religious people.

Good times are to be had outside the anti-religious bubble most people swim in here, you should come on out.

[dennisgorelik]

If anything, atheism has stronger correlation with wars and violence than religion has (after controlling for the age of civilization).

Consider WW2: it was not backed up by religion. USSR was an atheist state and Germany was only mildly religious.

How about Cambodian Civil War: what was Pol Pot's religion?

[lutusp]

> If anything, atheism has stronger correlation with wars and violence than religion has ...

"Atheism?" You're absurdly arguing that every war not started by a recognized religion is started by atheists. You're overlooking the fact that a non-religious war is most often fought by people with religious beliefs -- not atheists.

> USSR was an atheist state

Oh, do learn some history. By that reasoning, prohibition stopped Americans from drinking, and laws against prostitution prevent sex workers from plying their trade.

Do you know the term "self-reference"? This conversation has a big element of self-reference. You're defending religion for a reason other than a dispassionate pursuit of truth, and you're not very bright. You represent the I.Q. norm that's been scientifically established for religious people.

If your arguments were more than paper-thin and self-contradicting, if you had the requisite intellect to construct substantial arguments, you wouldn't have religious beliefs and we wouldn't be having this conversation. Self-reference.