Religion
Related: About this forumWhich comes first, violence or religion?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2012/sep/21/religious-tension-on-the-riseA Buddhist monk ties a blessed string on the hand of a Sri Lankan government soldier in 2000. 'Buddhism is thought of as a religion of peace, but it has been on the persecuting side in two of the most vicious recent conflicts in south-east Asia.' Photograph: Sena Vidanagama/EPA
The Pew Foundation study showing that religious tension is on the rise all around the world has some very odd features. Britain, for example, ranks above Burma for "social hostility" between religions, even though in Burma there is a very nasty military campaign mounted by the Buddhist government against the Muslim Rohingya minority. But it is difficult to argue that religious tension and hostility isn't increasing around the world today.
The question is which came first the hostility, or the religion: would people with less religion be less violent. There is a strong tendency throughout the Pew study to assume that the American model of secularism is the aim to which the whole world should be tending. Restrictions on religion do correlate with violence or hostility between religious groups. Pew says:
"Sectarian or communal violence between religious groups has the strongest association with government restrictions on religion. The average level of government restrictions among the countries with sectarian violence (GRI = 5.0) is much higher than among countries without such violence (2.4), as shown in the chart on page 21."
But there is again the question of chicken and egg. Those governments that have imposed restrictions on religious display, as the British have in Northern Ireland, have often done so to limit the damage to intercommunal relations as much as to assert their own religious identities. When the survey says that "religion-related terrorist violence [is] strongly associated with government restrictions" this really isn't terribly surprising.
leveymg
(36,418 posts)Stanford anthropology professor Rene Girard posits that people have developed religious rites to reinforce social stratification and violence. He identifies certain types of behaviors as being basic to all religious practice and a cornerstone of how states are organized, in particular "mimetic envy", which is scapegoating rituals that propagate the violent taking of desired attributes and possessions from outsider groups.
Makes a strong case that religion acculturates conquest and that these behaviors are rooted in powerful, ancient instincts. Available free on Googlebooks:
Violence and the Sacred - René Girard - Google Books
books.google.com Religion General
Rating: 4 - 20 reviews
This brilliant study of good and evil examines the presence of ritual violence in sacred ceremony.
Coyotl
(15,262 posts)Then the answer is simple enough, false reasoning underlays violence.
Governments do not do anything ever. They are organizations of individuals working in concert. So, blame the people who have agency, that is who take actions and make decisions. That goes right back to delusional thinking, like believing a metaphysical world exists in parallel with reality and that world sets rules for conduct.
leveymg
(36,418 posts)Please see my comment about Girard's theories, and take a look at the Google Book.
Coyotl
(15,262 posts)but persons do. Religion is a mental concept, not an actor.
humblebum
(5,881 posts)much more than that. It is obviously designed to equate religion with violence. An extremely biased mindset and potentially dangerous one at that.
leveymg
(36,418 posts)methodological individualism, social phenomenology, interactionism and ethnomethodology that hold individual consciousness to be a self-developing phenomenon.
AlbertCat
(17,505 posts)There's no separating the two in the ancient world.
Separating "governments" from the people who act within them is ridiculous. Can you have a government with no people in it? Can you have a religion without people practicing it? No people.... no government or religion. Both are concepts made up by people.
Coyotl
(15,262 posts)Especially for non-historic cultures.
humblebum
(5,881 posts)I find your question rather leading. "Which comes first, violence or religion?" implies that religion is violent in itself and clearly that is not the case.
However, since history proves that violence has occurred to promote both religion and atheism, violence would appear to be a product of humanity and not of religion nor atheism.
ProgressiveProfessor
(22,144 posts)Maslow is your friend here...
muriel_volestrangler
(101,361 posts)which tries to put in 2 different "which came first" questions. I withdraw my earlier claim that it was all about only one of them.
DetlefK
(16,423 posts)I've read a theory by the SF-author Stephen Baxter that belief in the supernatural evolved because it gave hope where others would have resigned.
dimbear
(6,271 posts)ways, which I understand was around 5 million years ago.
okasha
(11,573 posts)Goodall's and others' observations have shown that chimpanzees wage territorial war against neighboring bands, kidnap and kill infants and commit what in a human context would be first degree murder.
No one, so far, has observed chimpanzees going to Mass or teaching religion to their offspring.
cbayer
(146,218 posts)Great book about this.
okasha
(11,573 posts)For those interested, Amazon has several used copies for 10-12 cents plus shipping.
cbayer
(146,218 posts)I think you will enjoy it. It was quite an eye opener for me.
Jim__
(14,083 posts)We evolved from violent ancestral species. I doubt they were religious.
Marrah_G
(28,581 posts)Religion provides easy definitions of us and them. I think that without religion different ways would be found to separate us into us and them.