> Religion has been a major source of soothing and a major source of suffering for all of humanity's past
The idea that religion is such a big source of suffering throughout all of our history is one I stopped believing once I took a closer look at the actual nature of war, particulary how a country's elite is moving closer to war and how "religious" said elite actually is.
IMO the amounts of blood shed over millenia would have been the same under atheists.
And because today most of us are Atheists/Agnostics, and because most of these millenias' rulers weren't, it is our "agnostic hindsight" which follies us into believing that this suffering was all just caused by religion.
To be fair, the good things that happened in the past might also have been the same under atheists.
The thing that's puzzling to me is that religion is supposed to have such a profound effect on society, but is utterly innocent of involvement in anything bad that happens. Granted it's very hard to pin historical events on specific root causes.
Yep, war has always been about resources and the fights of the elites. Religion is only ever an excuse, just like WMDs or whatever; a convenient lie to mislead the populous into believing there's a legitimate casus belli.
You've posted a ton of flamewar comments to this thread—not just religious flamewar but nationalistic flamewar too. This is badly breaking the site guidelines and we ban such accounts.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it. And please, no more flamewar comments of any kind and certainly not these kinds!
The idea that religion is such a big source of suffering throughout all of our history is one I stopped believing once I took a closer look at the actual nature of war, particulary how a country's elite is moving closer to war and how "religious" said elite actually is.
IMO the amounts of blood shed over millenia would have been the same under atheists.
And because today most of us are Atheists/Agnostics, and because most of these millenias' rulers weren't, it is our "agnostic hindsight" which follies us into believing that this suffering was all just caused by religion.