Are religions the source of most of todays problems in the world?
See when people use this pat question I just think they aren’t looking at the problems in depth. Even if you don’t think man is a fallen creature it’s obvious that MAN is greedy power seeking and will use any means to get it. So I think you need to reassess your question and come back with a more in depth look at mans place in the world and manipulation.
Yes, violent, oppressive men have hijacked and twisted various religions to gain power, justify their actions, and attract and manipulate naive followers. This does not make religion itself intrinsically evil. Non sequitur, sir. Furthermore, the absence of religion has actually resulted in more death and oppression than its presence. Cases in point: – The killing fields of Pol Pot’s Cambodia – Josef Stalin’s slaughter of millions in the Soviet gulags – Ceauşescu’s Romania – Mao’s “Cultural Revolution” – Kim Jong Il’s North Korea – …and many, many more. Modern-day Islamists notwithstanding, atheist/communist regimes have imposed far more death and misery upon mankind than any act of misplaced religious fervor had before them. I haven’t looked up the numbers lately, but I’d bet you lunch that atheists killed more people in the 20th century than the entire world population existing at the time of the Crusades. How easily and conveniently atheists forget their own legacy of horror. .
No, religion is not the cause of the majority of the problems in the world. The major cause is the greed and ambition in the individual heart. I don’t care what the religion is, if there is trouble look for an individual preacher, priest or mullah who is inflaming the people to advance his own agenda. If there were no religions, those with ambition would just find some other way to inflame passions.
No. And it’s never been the source of most of the problems of the world. The reason why I can say that is that people are screwed up. Sometimes those screwed up people are Christian, or Muslim, or whatever. When those screwed up people find themselves in power, they screw up any adherence to basic decency. Often this leads to persecutions of various types. But sometimes religion is not even a factor. In fact, it’s shunned. The Soviet Union being a prime example. The lack of religion in the Soviet Union didn’t stop the killing of thousand of Jews, and the persecution of other faiths as well. So I would postulate that the problem isn’t religion, but something more basic. The Bible says that we have a tendency to go our own way, to lean upon our own understanding. Not seeking after him. I think that going away from God is the basic choice we make that brings us ruin, not religion per se, but our tendency to wander away from God– religious or not.
