(March 15, 2020 at 6:16 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:(March 15, 2020 at 5:25 am)Belacqua Wrote: 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":
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:
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
What theological dispute were people being killed over?