User talk:SouthWriter/sandbox/An atheist's objections/@comment-1375165-20100706223537

As wonderful as it is to see that you know that, my point was that the religion of Islam is not inherently violent, or even inherently antagonistic. As you had earlier said that the religion thinks to kill Unbelievers. You were talking as if the religion required that the Muslims oppose other beliefs.

As for your statement that religions are guilty of having people "kill in their name". The case has usually been that the religious unity of a group has been used as a precept to further some kind of political goal.

For instance, take the First Crusade, called by Pope Urban II. He, and anyone with knowledge of even a few events of that time period, knew that the Islamic kingdoms were making every attempt to expand into Europe (due to their political leaders' obvious desire to have more territory, something which they themselves "blamed" on religion). The Pope saw that the fragmentary European kingdoms could never hope to stand against this threat individually, and the Old Roman Empire in Greece had requested already for help as the nation was about to be overrun. Although I can't attest to Urban II's thoughts, since I know nothing about them, it makes a good deal of sense that he wanted to defend Europe itself and so using his power as Pope, called the Christians together for a "crusade" to push back the Arabs.

The point is, it was to solve a political goal, that of "saving" Europe, rather than some kind of religion vs religion fight. People don't fight to defend someone else unless they have a really good reason, religion, always having been a unifying force, has by incidence allowed for people to unify to fight.

If you really want to stick to that statement, you could take the other side of the coin and say that a lot of people have been killed in the name of stamping out religion, with the goal of making them non-believers (atheists). Examples of this are the Jews killed by Stalin, or Buddhists and Christians killed by the Communist Chinese and other East-Asian nations. Considering these deaths number in the millions, you have to consider it if you want to stand by that argument. Personally, I don't think either atheism or religion should be "to blame" for those deaths. The point is moot.

Sorry for the tirade, It's just always bothered me to hear people talk about how "religion causes mass murder and war" and the like.