Religious Wars and the Fallacies of Fundamentalism

Probably for as long as religion has existed, there have been religious wars. At least they have been constantly waged as long as written history has been in existence. The hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt are filled with records of thousands of years of battles and conquest. This is true of almost every known civilization.

One of the primary functions of all religions should be to assist the leaders of any society in creating peace and harmony by teaching peaceful coexistence and communal moral values. Historically, tribal leaders and priests have cooperated for the purpose of controlling human behavior within the group. Tribes were the common social group before the development of agriculture. Every society and every religion has some type of prohibition against killing people. If all moral teachings proclaim that love is good and murder is bad, why do religions violate their own teachings? Are not wars, human sacrifice, suicide bombings and capital punishment murder? While there are a few pacifist religions, the majority not only support wars, they actually are responsible for most of them. Flag waving religious patriots cheer the young soldiers as they proudly march off to war.

Throughout Europe during the Middle Ages, bloody wars were almost non-stop and most of them were over trivial disagreements over minor differences of opinion about religious dogmas. Since the end of World War II all of the conflicts in the Middle East have been religiously motivated. The present ongoing hostilities are primarily a conflict between Judaism and Islam. Even though western historians who have chronicled World War II have deliberately downplayed the role of religion (primarily to divert blame), there remains the real undeniable fact that the Germans were Christians and their primary goal was the destruction of Judaism. World War II at least began as a religious war. (It is an unfortunate fact that those who win a war are the same ones who get to write the history books, thus giving a biased viewpoint to the events.)

The present conflicts in the Middle East have their roots in the Middle Ages. Three of the major religions, Christianity, Judaism and Islam are totally unable to coexist because each has fundamental beliefs that are uncompromising. During the Middle Ages, Europe was dominated by Christian theocracies controlled by priests who formed alliances with the monarchies. These theocracies ruled by kings and priests eliminated all opposition and criticism by physical force. The Inquisition and Holy Crusades lasted for centuries and exterminated an unknown number of unfortunate victims. Simultaneously in the Middle East, the Muslim religion had established Islamic theocracies. These were just as intolerant as the Christian theocracies. In Europe, because Judaism was a minority religion, it was unable to acquire secular power and did not produce any theocratic states. Consequently the Jews were the victims of both the European Christian and Middle Eastern Islamic theocracies. The German discontent with the Jews before and during World War II, was not unique. The antagonism existed throughout the predominately Christian nations of Europe. Since the Age of Reason in the 18th century, most of the European nations had become somewhat tolerant of Judaism. In most European nations, religions lost political power and many theocracies and feudalistic monarchies were replaced by more democratic secular governments. However there still existed strong religious discrimination and the antagonism toward Judaism continued. The militant German government had a more violent resolution of the problem. The Islamic nations of the Middle East and north Africa, primarily because of their isolation, were not effected by the Age of Reason in Europe and never changed their theocracies or their antagonism toward other religions.

For the past century, several European nations were in control of the Middle East. Their primary reason for this colonial control was to exploit the oil resources. It was during this time that Britain produced the Balfour Declaration. This was a formal statement on November 2, 1917, by the British government that essentially created the state of Israel in Palestine. This was the European solution to the antagonism that continued to exist between the European Christians and Jews. The intention was to create a Jewish state that would allow the relocation of the European Jews. There was nothing wrong with giving the Jewish people this choice. However the tragic mistake of the Balfour Declaration was the location chosen for the new Jewish state. It took the land of Palestine which was occupied primarily by Muslims and gave it back to the Jews. During Biblical times, Palestine was the Jewish homeland but it has since then been occupied by Romans, the Arabs and the Ottoman Turks. Europe had been primarily dominated by Christian theocracies and the Middle East was ruled solely by Islamic theocracies. To attempt to establish (or re-establish) a Jewish state in Palestine, whether it was democratic or theocratic, adjacent to so many Islamic theocracies was far from wise. The consequences of this choice of location are the unending wars between Israel and it’s Muslim neighbors. The Palestinians continue to resent the fact that their land was taken from them. All of the decades of conflict in the Middle East could have been avoided if the Balfour Declaration had chosen a different location for the Jewish state, or not even issued the declaration at all. Most of the nations of northern Africa are also Islamic theocracies and the population of Judaism is relatively small compared to the large number of Muslims. Re-establishing Israel as the Jewish homeland has not been successful. Today the state of Israel is more like a well armed fortress surrounded by angry terrorists. After World War II ended, the Jewish population of Israel might have been better off if they had migrated to Europe or America.

Isolation of course, cannot solve the continuing problem of establishing peaceful coexistence between fundamentalists of each religion.

There are naturally, other causes of war such as territorial disagreements. Biologists tell us that territorial defense is the most basic instinct for almost all groups of animals. Defending a territory is essential to defending the available food supply and insuring species survival. Civilization now has the ability to feed all of the people on our planet, if we choose to, and to control population growth, so territorial conflict should not exist for human societies. Since all boundaries between nations are just imaginary lines on the surface of the Earth, there will always be arguments over territory. The surface of the Earth is finite and human populations are increasing exponentially. This situation will inevitably lead to more future conflicts over territory. Human beings should not kill each other over imaginary lines.

It is the statistically high number of religious wars throughout history and the tragically astronomically high numbers of casualties that they have produced that should alarm every rationally thinking person. How can religions that teach love be responsible for the deaths of millions of people?

The root cause of religious wars seems to be inherent in the nature of religious beliefs. Every religion has rigid dogmas and creeds which define their philosophy and their theories about the universe and the meaning of life. Problems arise because these dogmas are so inflexible that they allow no criticism, no difference of opinion and zero tolerance for any other theories. The beliefs are so demanding that no other opinion can be allowed to exist. To question any dogma is to question the authority of the priesthood who supposedly represents the Deity. To question the priesthood is equivalent to questioning the authority of the Deity, which is heresy. Millions of skeptics have lost their heads or been roasted alive by pious priests. When anyone speaks of the common characteristics of different religions, they are speaking only of the moral values that are held in common. (It should also be noted that non-religious people also have these same moral values.) They are not referring to the dogmas, which are all different. Logic and common sense implies that if there are many different conflicting assumptions, that only one of these can be true. Unfortunately, every religion believes that theirs is the absolute truth and all the others are errors. This is the fallacy of fundamentalism in every religion, which is little more than naïve prejudice. This is the result of a biased point of view that each person has developed because of living in a particular environment. It has been said that religion is a function of geography. What a person believes depends on where they were born. If you were born in Mexico City, you are probably Catholic. If you were born in Baghdad, you are probably Muslim. The overwhelming majority of people have the same religion as their parents, because those are the ideas that they were taught since childhood. Each religion believes and teaches that they alone have absolute truth and they alone represent the will of the Deity. Since their Deity is believed to be infallible and cannot make mistakes, in their logic, it follows that all other religions must be in error and therefore should be eliminated. Many religions believe that it is their duty to kill the enemies of their Deity, which is anyone who disagrees with them. Religious wars are about differences of opinion of unverifiable dogmas and not about universally accepted moral values. It is foolish for humans to kill each other over differences of opinion about what happened or did not happen thousands of years ago. Moral values exist to create happy cooperative communities. The way to be happy is to make others happy. All wars do the opposite.

The fundamental differences in religious dogmas seems to be an insurmountable problem as long as the primary teachings of religions are focused on questionable assumptions and oral traditions and not on moral values. The problem with dogmas is that they are basically opinions about supernatural phenomenon and past and future events that are beyond the ability of anyone to verify. They are opinions based on gossip passed down orally from our ancestors. Ancestors that had almost no knowledge of the real universe. Ancestors that believed the Earth was flat. This is the fallacy of basing a religious creed on unverifiable ancient testimonials and selected beliefs which are little more than wishes. It is true of every so-called holy text in every religion today that no one has the slightest idea of who wrote them or even when they were written. If only religions could focus more on the primary function of creating peace and happiness in the world and focus less on the dogmas, myths and superstitions which are creating the disagreements and wars. Most religions don’t own an observatory and should leave the theories about the universe to the astronomers. Most religions don’t own biology laboratories and should leave the study of the life sciences to the professional biologists. The same is true for environmental studies, geology, chemistry, genetics and archaeology. The goal of science is to understand nature, not to teach moral values. Religion and science have different goals and different functions. Religions do not disagree on all of the primary moral beliefs. These moral beliefs have been developed by all societies for as long as humans have lived together in civilized or tribal states. The so-called Ten Commandments are essentially the same in all of the religions that have ever existed. They were completely contained in the Egyptian ’Negative Confession’ thousands of years before Moses taught them. Every religion has taught its followers not to kill, not to lie, not to steal, to love one another, to care for those who are sick or in need, to respect parents and civil authority and local traditions and mores. These are the humanistic values that exist in all societies. They should not be applied solely to one’s own group, but applied universally to all the people on our planet. These are the minimum behavioral standards that are necessary for any group or species to survive. Any society that teaches its members to kill one another would rapidly become extinct. These rules are just common sense. These are the most important teachings that every religion should value and they should make them their primary universal doctrines. They should also recognize that these are the same in all other religions and that a different religion is not an enemy but a friend.