Agnosticism IS the most dishonest position

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I think the demonstration can be made with the letter B.

OK, Hitchens claims that the troubles in Belfast were religious in origin. So do some of the posters here, though they are unwilling to write anything other than pronouncements and insults, and don't make an argument for their claim. I say they are wrong.

The combatants in Belfast took sides along Protestant/Catholic divides. But their quarrels had nothing to do with Protestantism or Catholicism. Their fight was about political issues. 

If anyone were willing to have a conversation about this, there are a number of points I can make in support of this. No fights were had concerning theology. The two sides' members were not divided by religious belief, they were divided along the lines of the traditional dominant religion of the political faction. If one member of the Orangemen, for example, stopped believing in God, he would no longer be a Christian, but he would still be a Protestant, as the political battles labelled him. 

This is from the Wikipedia page on "The Troubles":

The conflict was primarily political and nationalistic, fuelled by historical events.[31] It also had an ethnicor sectarian dimension,[32] although it was not a religious conflict.[13][33] A key issue was the constitutional status of Northern Ireland. Unionists/loyalists, who were mostly Protestants, wanted Northern Ireland to remain within the United Kingdom. Irish nationalists/republicans, who were mostly Catholics, wanted Northern Ireland to leave the United Kingdom and join a .

As I've been saying, religious labels were useful as an identity and a rallying point, but the fight was not a religious fight. 

This is from the Wikipedia page on the Good Friday Agreement:

Issues relating to sovereignty, civil and cultural rights, , demilitarisation, justice and policing were central to the agreement.

All of these issues were political. None was religious. 

Your original claim was that no one in NI was killing people over theological disputes.

Boru