Religious faith and war
 

I wonder how many volunteers for military service we would have if nobody believed in a God who promises a life after death. A move away from such theological dogma might be the answer to ending all war: no soldiers, no war.

Believe it or not, people will fight without religious motivation.

Edit: You know what, come to think of it, I'm pretty insulted by this insinuation. I'm a vet, and I didn't join the military hoping to die and be richly rewarded in the afterlife. This topic is stupid, ill-informed and inflammatory.

Agreed, Fug.

Religion (or perhaps religious conflict) has been a factor of war, but no wars are caused by religion. They were caused by stubborn and intolerant people.

Perhaps a removal of stupidity and religious intolerance would be a better goal.

For instance, I am equally as un-offended if you are muslim, buddhist, atheist or satanist. Whatever you like. I tend to be christian, but with several differences that I won't get into here. Yet none of the others offend me, and for me personally, perhaps none of them matter in the end.

What does offend me, however, is when one thinks they are right and are compelled to try to convince me to agree with them. In saying that all "theological dogma" must be removed, are you not as guilty as the next, perhaps even as guilty as a semi-retarded ex president?

Whether i believed in a god or not, if someone took my property, killed my family members, or just slapped me in the face, it is humans' innate nature to be compelled to retaliate. you dont need a god to fight for what you believe is right nor die for it.

i really do believe that most wars are political wars that end up using religion as pawns for their own end to justify wanton killings of innocents. since politics does not defend such a thing as killing of innocents, the next best excuse is religion.

i agree, this notion that godless soldiers are the answer to ending conflict in absurd.

yes - the notion that all war would disappear in the absence of religion is absurd - but the thought process is not flawed. Despite what you may have heard on Fox news, the world's religions have been at war pretty much throughout all of time, one way or another. Theology is not the ONLY reason for war - I'm not saying that at all. But I DO think that there would be substantially less wars without religion and religious undertones. ESPECIALLY in other countries with more clearly defined religious-based governments and societies - countries in which people COULD be motivated to go to war by religion (hate to cliche it here, but ...jihad anyone?). So, while I do understand the offensiveness here, taking it so personally is a little narrow-minded. No need to shut down a thread just because you don't agree with it or you are offended by it...I don't think it's intentionally offensive...

I don't know if that's what lofhay meant. If you only have one life, one opportunity to live and love and create and be happy, would you choose to dedicate yourself to war? Would you put your life in greater danger of being shorter if this is it?

^^ But more people die of heart attacks than anything else. Whats the point of being afraid to die with such a statistic? No, religion is only ONE reason for war.

First of all, religion is never a reason for war, it's something that's put out as an excuse for war. Wars are made for land, money, and sovereignty. And mostly, for land and money. Wars purportedly about religion: actually about land and money.

As for life after death as a comfort inducing folks to become soldiers more easily, I think that's ridiculous. The idea demeans the legitimate bravery of good soldiers, and it projects absurd priorities on religious believers.

I believe in life after death, and I can tell you right now it doesn't make me much readier to risk my life here, let alone to sign up to fight wars.

the arab-israeli war is just one prime example of one such war.

You're not wrong, my friend! That is very true.

the crusades

RM, usually two word answers arent enough to stimulate debate. care to elaborate on your view?

I know plenty of Atheists in the Military.

I was going to research "Atheist" Military's such as the Chinese (currently) and the Russians (under Stalin) but then I realized that your argument is moot since achieving your 'ideal' would require a war the likes of which the world has never seen, and would require continual 'pruning' of those who foster religious beliefs....since religion by it's very nature is not a negotiable position.

Slightly off topic, but I find that the insurgents are trying to pitch the GWOT as a religious thing, whereas the war itself is really secular. For the OP to blame almost all war on religion indicates that the insurgents are doing a pretty damn good job spinning the war on terror.

My .02.

I don't think it's as black and white as "the war is secular".

I know a sergeant serving in Afghanistan right now that's convinced that he's fighting the evil Muslims for Jesus. Why does he think this? Because the military is overwhelmingly Christian, the American poor are overwhelmingly Christian, there are plenty of Christian chaplains that are either afraid to stand up to crusading or support it, and the previous administration made it pretty clear that the Judeo-Christian god had a role to play in this war.

Threadjack to GWOT:

The GWOT has nothing to do with religion. Private Joe Snuffy might believe that he's doing the work of White Jesus by crusading to the desert and ripping apart a Toyota minivan with a M249... and Mohammad Muhmammud believes that he's repelling the Great White Devil when he installs half-ass IEDs that tear apart our rolling examples of abysmal tactical thinking (humvees), but honestly... nothing to do with religion. I don't have to dig up that whole 9/11 thing to make the misplaced self-defense point, do I?

Religion is the master status that a lot of nutjobs like to bring up, but it has nothing to do with the GWOT other than stirring the idiot pot.

GWOT could have been focused in the Philippines or North Africa or anywhere. Afghanistan/Pakistan (Vietnam rules all over again) was the current hideout. Iraq was/is a distraction. Hell, GWOT could have been targeted at Canada assuming they could ever actually do anything to piss us off.

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FWIW, the religion line on my ID tags said "INS. SALES." I was deployed for a few days... never once thought of the afterlife.

Why is it their beliefs don't count? If they're the ones doing the actual occupying, how can we just ignore their views?

...because ancient mythical superheroes have yet to appear and duke it out in space so as to solve all our problems.

Sorry, atheist commentary.

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No, seriously... belief vs. reality. I might believe that I'm on a magical crusade to rid the world of dangerous Muslims, but my CO will direct me otherwise. And regardless of what some indig dude in a dirt hut believes... America is not trying to kill off his people. Are you "Goin' Rogue" on me, Will?

Call me naive, but I believe that we have enough sane and educated people in power that we're not declaring war for insane reasons anymore... today it's just based on bad intel or to distract a nation from domestic issues. Nobody really believes the Axis of Evil is actually in cahoots with Teh Debbil.

Just because you believe a thing is one way... doesn't make it such. This is especially true when others disagree. And when people have forgotten.

This reminds me of that dumbass thread I did a while back where I started out with the premise that violence is the root of all power. That was fun.

Replace "believed in God" with "received college money" and you'll have yourself a helluva debate.

Sorry for the threadjack, but that made me laugh my ass off. Reminds me of Boondocks on adult swim.

I guarantee you are wrong there, sir. If my baptist grandfather can believe that catholics are idol worshipping heathens*, I'm pretty damn sure there are people in nearly every state below the mason-dixon that believe that muslims are devil worshiping heathen radical freakazoids. People in general don't think for themselves, they just read or hear "evil" and assume the countries in question are somehow in league with Beelzebub, and that GWB really did hear God talking to him and has a direct line to the Almighty.


*I married a catholic, so I got the speech before I told him to buzz off.

Naw, war is contributed about equally by both secular and religious people (these days overall, not so much in history.) Poor people who join up because they can't afford college are the primary source of soldiers, therefore we should kill all poor people and everyone can be rich. /south park

I like the way you think! We can all sit around smoking cigars and eating Irish babies!

Explain that to the Iraq's that awoke one morning to see "Jesus killed Mohammad" written on the side of an American tank.

Army: "Oh that? Those are just some misguided soldiers and they're being punished."
Iraqis: "What about the system that's enabling these beliefs?"
Army: "You mean Christianity?"
Iraqis: "No, believe in whatever god you want, but what about the crusade mentality?"
Army: "There's not much we can do about that. If we start teaching soldiers to understand and respect the beliefs of the enemy instead of hating some archetypal caricature we create, we're going to undo a lot of the brainwashing that makes them effective killers."
Iraqis: "If an enemy truly needs killing, you shouldn't have to dehumanize them to do so.
Army: "Yeah, but then basically all war would stop."
Iraqis: "Um, yeah."
Army: "..."

That was where I was ultimately going with my point.

Respectfully, I think you're making a lot of assumptions about our servicemen. Some units are taught specifically to respect the beliefs of the indigenous. To top it off, there's a difference between disagreeing with people's beliefs versus killing someone who's trying to kill you.

That wasn't meant to be a blanket statement of all service men and women, but it does describe the ones that meet at the intersection of god and war. And there are quite a few of those.

Well, I notice the most virulent responses to this question come from people who do self-identify as religious.

There are many people who feel that if they lay down their life for something just, then they will be rewarded in heaven. That brings some comfort to their sacrifices.

Use of religion to manipulate people into armed combat has been a primary motivational tool for all of humanity. Aztecs and Incas and Mayans all killing each other. The crusades. The Ottoman Empire. All led by religion.

Somewhere between a 1% and 99%, right? You're killing me here.

What about racists who believe that this is a way to kill off "them damn darkies" or other such bullshit?

Fast forward to the United States in 2009... God has been killed off and replaced by cold hard cash, fake tits, and TeeVee.

This thread addresses a single symptom and not the disease: powerful people behaving badly and their henchmen, at whatever scale and of whatever knowledge, doing their bidding. War doesn't change even if the flavor-of-the-conflict motivation does.

I would argue that Stalin and Mao were effectively religious figures, as a cult of personality. I mean, Lenin is on display and what, his body doesn't decompose? He is ready to come back. Kim Il Sung is still the leader of North Korea, his son is just holding the position for now.

Maybe atheists are willing to fight and die to help protect others from religious tyranny. At least in America we don't execute and legally discriminate against atheists, unlike many other places in the world. I mean, if someone comes around and tries to force me to convert to whatever crackpot beliefs they have, I say "fuck you, the flying spaghetti monster is going to sauce your ass!"

Seriously. We don't fuck with the Pastafarians, bro. Ragu is thicker than blood.

god is alive and well in America, otherwise we would not have so many people arguing creationism, prayer in schools, "intelligent design" and all that. Look how many asshole preachers are on teevee asking for money. Palin stood in church a few years back and said that god wanted alaska to build a natural gas pipeline. Bush said that god put him in the oval office. Reagan was the first president to allow the vatican city to build an embassy in DC. thousands of children were systematically raped by priests and how many of those assholes are sitting in jail? Very few. Their religious status protected them from prosecution. If you owned a series of day care centers that raped one hundredth of the children that the church raped, do you think that you would not be sitting in jail? But do it under the guise of religion and you walk away. That is the power of religion in America.

You're using specific incidents, such as Catholic-priest-touchy-no-no-spot, Palin, and Prez Reagan to color a whole institution.

It doesn't work like that. Down the street from here there is a Lutheran church full of retired nobodies that enjoy singing songs.

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It's easy to go back and forth based on our own experiences and beliefs. Nobody is offering up any facts, statistics, etc. It's conjecture pong. Yay.

Based on my limited experience serving in the US military... religion is pretty impotent today amongst the ranks of those that fill US sandbags.

The biggest disconnect between this thread and reality is that most serving in the military realize that is often just a job and not an adventure.

I gave specific examples to counter your blanket assertion that god is dead in america. That's why every dollar says "in god we trust".

Tell you what, after you go to that lutheran church of old nobodies, go cross into Md. Get on New Hampshire Ave heading north. Cross Randolph road in Colesville. Once you pass the entrance to Stonegate community (where I grew up), then drive another half mile and turn your gaze left to the Muslim Community Center where Major Nidal Malik Hasan worshipped while attending at Walter Reed. You know what, the lutherans are going to burn it down on Christmas Eve.

Harpers had an article about this a couple months back that was outstanding. Here's a small excerpt (it's kinda long):
In short, there's a reason their beliefs count: they're in the military and they're more than willing to act on their beliefs. Even if it's a very vocal 1% of radical evangelicals—which is highly doubtful—that 1% can create quite the clusterfuck.

New man: The "In God We Trust" written on currency is about as powerful today as "Chevrolet: Like A Rock." It's a slogan. It could have very well been something else. "In Tuna We Trust" perhaps. Fun fact: Did you know that our national bird could have been the wild turkey instead of a bald eagle?

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Will: I concur with the 1% part, but not the clusterfuck part. And your article? Okay, so Dan Brown has more material for another best-seller... but what have these dangerous head honchos done aside from spew their rhetoric while fighting a kneejerk war that would have occurred with or without our lord-'n-enslaver Jeebus Christy? A comment on the baptism of 700 soldiers out of the ~1,454,515 on active duty alone... Not Really A Big Deal. And Senior Level Dickheads using their uniform inappropriately at nutty functions? Often a result of dedicating your entire life to a military command existence. Power junkies. They don't know how to take the uniform off because their personal identity and military service have become one and the same.

For all that are pushing it... I'm really not seeing the evil here.

Also: If someone dickhead junior enlisted guy puts a "Jeebus Killed Moho" sign on the side of his vehicle... it's the team leader, squad leader, platoon sergeant, platoon leader and unit commander's fault if it doesn't get taken down immediately. This isn't a climate of religious douchebaggery, it's just an example of bad leadership in general. I've seen this kinda stuff before and someone with +1 on their collar fixes it right quick.

Hell, most of the brass over yonder wouldn't let me fly the 3'x5' pirate flag on my MPCV because they felt it was unprofessional.

Yeah, we all know Ben wanted the noble turkey as our national symbol. Which has nothing to do with god. How about this; people would have bitched and moaned if Chevrolet was allowed to die, but it would have happened. Try actually removing "in god we trust" from our currency and see what happens. Try restoring our Pledge of allegiance to it's original phrasing as it was for 100 years. I think you will then see how deeply engrained god is to 'mericans.

And subsequent Ron Howard/Tom Hanks vehicle! Go on...
The problem is the way the occupied are perceiving their occupation. Every time some asshat tries to force a Bible down a Afghani's throat, or "Jesus killed Mohammed" appears on the side of a US tank, they're contributing to the idea this isn't the occupation of a secular nation to deal with militant extremism but an occupation of traditionally Muslim lands by a powerful Christian empire. Which frankly isn't so far off the mark when you think about it... do you think the US would invade and occupy a Christian theocracy run by extremists, even if they did harbor 9/11 terrorists? Think about it.
They're teaching the "troops" that it's okay to mix business and pleasure (business being waging war and pleasure being getting happy with Jesus). We're supposed to have a secular military. If you need religion, we've got chaplains from many different faiths, but that's where it stops. The UCMJ didn't come down from Mt. Sinai.

So big men in the Military are mixing their religious beliefs with war. (Did you see the GQ article where SecDef Rumsfeld's briefings had bible verses on their cover page?) Does not change the fact that this war should be secular, and the insurgents are doing a damn good job of framing this war as a religious battle. The higher ups in the military should be cognizant that their religious behavior (insomuch as it is inappropriately public) gives ammo for insurgents and al-jazeera to convince misled youths to sign up for the insurgents' cause.

Wow, what a threadjack.

Anyway, this war should be secular, and on one hand you have professionals who treat it as such, and you have misbehaving soldiers. I'm not a service-member yet, so I'll defer to those who've been in to comment on to what extent religious doctrine permeates the military.

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It's not just the religion of those serving that matters or makes religion a part of the war:

Among Religious Groups, Jewish Americans Most Strongly Oppose War

You just described virtually every post you've ever made on TFP. That's pretty funny.