It's not religion..believe me. It's something else

[Belacqua]

Hell, you know very well that when people fought, it usually is for money or land. 

This is certainly correct, and bears repeating. 

Wars labelled as religious have very seldom been fought over what religion will be practiced. Religion becomes an excuse or a rallying point, or a recruiting tool for soldiers, but the goals of the leaders are power and money.

For example people will still point to the Thirty Years' War. At the beginning there was some religious motivation there. Politically powerful Protestants were fighting politically powerful Catholics for political control. So lines were divided by religion, and it caused political regions to divide, but that wouldn't have happened without unsustainable inheritance practices in German-speaking areas. More importantly, the war was sustained and dragged on because Catholic France, under Richelieu, saw it as an opportunity to undermine the Catholic Habsburgs. So for most of the time it was in essence two Catholic powers fighting for dominance in Europe. To call it a religious war is oversimplification to the point of error. 

And the same is true in the Middle East, of course. Since Jimmy Carter started arming and training Islamists to oppose the Soviet Union it's the power and money people who cause chaos, and religious alliances provide useful tools. This is clear when we see Israel allied with extreme Islamists in opposing more secular government (though of course not good government) in Syria. 

Here is where atheists, and particularly anti-religion type atheists, have to be more careful. By blaming violence on religion we may overlook the more proximate causes: usually our own governments and our own desire for resources. If we blame evil religion, we take the blame off ourselves. We can say it's the irrationality of those crazy believers, when most of the trouble is the rationality of capitalism.

Christopher Hitchens supported the evil Iraq war. His Christian brother opposed it. The brother was right. 

World War 1 was the next huge war, followed by World War 2. and non of them were waged because of religion.

Here I can speak from experience: if you get a historical detail like this wrong, people will focus on the detail and miss the point that your main argument is correct. [/quote]