When I am asked Why I have a problem with Religion, Its hard to come out with a single answer.

[Faith No More]

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I think these here are horrible acts and no doubt many can be attributed to religion to some degree. However, it is ignoring the fact that more are also killed in the name of various other reasons. State Atheism as made famous by the Cult of Reason back during the French Revolution period. While it only attempted to destroy churches and replace them with Goddess of Reason worship a belief born out of the philosophical stance known as atheos or atheism. Or the Albanian governments state sanctioned atheism, or castration of religion in USSR, or the Chinese cultural revolution. This only shows the fact that humanity at is simplest will use any ideology to its ends if it can. To justify whatever agenda usually caused by an underlying psychological disorder, mental illness, delusional irrational thought process, or inability to emotionally cope with something they rather not believe.

If you dig deep most mainstream religious the doctrines at their core do not condone such behavior. Islam might be different because of their Kadif(sp?) methodology however I am not educated fully on their theology concerning the Kadifs. However dogmatism, radicalism, and zeal are found with any philosophical system or world view. I believe focusing on one segment of violence will only distract from the root of the problem. Keep in mind more have died for political ideologies and pride of leaders than all people dead from religions combined. Heck all the deaths in WWII 60,000,000 to 80,000,000 Total deaths (Compton’s Guide to World War Two.) vastly eclipse all religious wars prior to that date. Those are from mere political ideologies. So you get the picture here a simple observation here is that homo sapiens are still tribal, and very territorial.

The question many will pose is if religion is abolished will religious violence end? Yes "Religious" violence will end however it will not end violence. Religion will simply be replaced by some other philosophy. Let us look at North Korea, the Political "religion" as it has been deemed has kill thousands, maybe millions. That is purely of a monarchal and political nature. So in short, these evil deeds and like many others show an illness in the human mind, of which we are just now realizing this. Alot of our psychological issues steam from emotional and physical needs are not being met. It is going to be a long time before we fully mature as a species if we last this long. In conclusion we must understand the human condition as most are too prideful and zealous to an ideology to work towards such healing. Sooner realize most of these violent acts have a root in either neurological disorders, emotional disorders, or pure psychological/mental issues. The sooner recognize the root cause faster we can heal ourselves and grow as a species.

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Yes, the underlying issues of the human condition are what causes these problems, not religion. The problem is, however, that religion gives humanity carte blanche to unleash those underlying issues on each other.