Why do "religions" often lead to violence?

[RichardP]

It seems that religion is at the heart of most of the large scale violence and vigilantism around the world. Why? The rules that the religions profess seem to be pretty good. Take the Ten Commandments as an example:

Blah, blah.

I don't think religion is "at the heart" of "most" large scale violence. For example, religion is IHMO incidental to Napoleonic War, American Civil War, Franco-Prussian War, Russo-Japanese war, WWI, WWII, Korean War, Vietnam War, Cambodean Pol Pot holocaust, the Hutu-Tutsi genocide.

Religion in many cases become involved in large scale violence only as a incidental trait of the participants of the violence, ie Religionist group A fought religionist group B not because religions A and B. Rather group A fought group B and in the endeavor each enlisted their respective religions.

I made too broad of a statement. However there were definitely religious elements to some of the conflicts you talk about.

Here is a link to "Religion in the Vietnam War". The primary religions in Vietnam were Catholicism and Buddhism. North Vietnam was primarily Catholic and South Vietnam was primarily Buddhist.

And different religious groups jockeying for power are the source of the Middle Eastern conflict. The Jews, Christians, Muslims..

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I guess what I am really asking and musing about is if there is a connection between restrictive beliefs and crime. For example the Catholic priests who take a vow of celibacy -- also have a problem with molesting boys.

And the argument that overly repressive beliefs -- lead to rebellious behavior -- doesn't seem to be totally false. Take a look at the number of violent crimes towards women, and the number rapes committed in Utah. Arguably these are "power trips" and the Mormon religion is a VERY controlling religion. Utah also has the highest porn sales per population, and the oldest whorehouse in the country is "Donna's" in Wells Nevada -- which gets most of its business from Salt Lake City. The customers are almost all married with wives and families in Utah.

Are people more respectful of one another when they personally have more liberty and freedom in their lives??