Some thoughts on conflict

[Philosopher_at_large]

I’ve often heard it said, most recently in my last reading of “The God Delusion”, something to the effect of “No, religion is not the cause of all violence in the world, but in some parts of the world, religious disputes are the only disputes that exist.”

Something about this always had the ring of error to my ears.

I would go so far as to say that, generally speaking, we are never all that aware of what motivates us to do extreme things when we do them, and the reasons that we give for doing them are usually motives that we “ascribe” our behavior to, rather than being the actual motive for them.

The East/West schism had absolutely nothing to do with whether the Holy spirit proceeded “From” or “Through” the Son, it had absolutely everything to do with who got to say that it did. It was nothing more than the Bishop of Rome claiming primacy and the Eastern Church dissenting.

Indeed, To say that "In some parts of the world, the 'only' reason for the continued violence that exists are religious differences", is akin to saying "In some parts of the united states, the only reason for continued gang violence are the directions 'north', 'south' 'east' and 'west'”.

[Aspie]

This is consistent with psychology in that our minds work to process self-serving narratives rather than explain our actions - choices are made before even reaching the logic part of the brain, eyewitness testimonies often reflect personal bias and information received after the fact, and, in split-brain cases, reasoning behind actions can be demonstrable bunk. There is certainly something to be said for the power of appeals to religion to justify and rationalize anything - particularly in highly religious cultures. Of course it is the fact that religion can be used as a political vehicle so readily which can be used to argue an inherent danger to it.