by David Adam

Created on: March 13, 2010   Last Updated: March 15, 2010

How Religion can Lead to Violence?

Religion leads to violence when it is based on false claims. Unfortunately, large and influential religions such as Christianity and Islam are based on false claims: each holds that it is the only truth. The fact is that there is no absolute religious truth. This untenable dogmatism and bigotry to elevate ones religion to the level of absolute truth and relegate other religions to the dustbin of falsehood breeds fanaticism and violence. Robert Pirsig captures the agony of those who overexert themselves to boost a relative truth up, to the throne of absolute truth: “No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogma or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.”

Another false claim by most religions that breeds violence is: life is not about the here and now but the afterlife. These religions instill in their followers teachings that greatly undervalue life on earth. For believers of these religions death means a birth to another glorious life. For example a fanatic Moslem committing suicide is winging into the embrace of 72 houris. Tantalizing incentives like this give religions an inexhaustible pool of believers who are more than willing to perpetrate violence.

Most religions misguided effort to bring unbelievers into the fold of their religion also occasions violence. Live and let live is unknown to them. They do not stop at their unwarranted conviction that their religion is the only true religion, but use everything at their disposal to ram it down the throat of all unbelievers. The meeting of this blind evangelization with resistance from unbelievers sparks violence.

The so-called holy books of most religions are replete with horrible acts which run the whole gamut from stoning to genocide. For example in the Holy Bible we read the stoning of a disobedient son, the mauling of innocent kids by bear on God’s order, and the extermination of  humanity by flood save a family. These outrageous horrors which reflect the lower morality and brutality of life during that time desensitize the religious and make them prone to violence.

Religion has also a culture of reveling in violence and gory in the name of saving the victims: the true believers are not killing the victims but saving their souls. These cheerful killers are doing a service to the victims and God. This is the ugliest manifestation of religion- a license to kill.

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