The Myth That Religion Causes War

        It has been commonly charged by atheists that most wars throughout the history of mankind were enacted in the name of religion. In other words, it is argued that the greatest amount of lives lost in the pages of previous ages was due to zealous religious people attempting to conquer other nations for the sake of their own gods. Many atheists reason that if no religions existed, then the world would function peacefully because there would also cease to be controversy over the validity of contradictory sets of religions customs, traditions, and practices. The claim that religion is the number one cause of war has been advanced to give people the impression that a secular worldview is optimistically plausible. However, this idea is untenable as will be shown in this article.

        It is fallacious to paint all religions as being morally bankrupt at the same time or in the same way. Further, the claim of religion causing of most wars is contradicted by the witness of history itself. According to Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod's "Encyclopedia of Wars," which chronicles 1,763 wars, only 123, or 6.98%, are categorized as religious, a figure that drops to 3.23% after excluding those waged in the name of Islam. Some commentators, such as Andrew Holt, have noted that the actual count of religious wars in the Encyclopedia of Wars is 121, not 123, and that the 123 figure was popularized by Theodore Beale, also known as Vox Day.

        In his work titled Lethal Politics and Death by Government, Professor R. J. Rummel noted that death in battle was not usually inspired in the name of religion, but rather that naturalistic philosophies were the primary cause. Though religions may be used by governments to influence a large population of a people to wage war, that still does not make religion itself the cause of war. Logically speaking, wars can be fought among groups who adhere to the same religion. Consider, as an example, the American Civil War. Battles are, for the most part, conducted mainly for secular purposes, which can include but are not limited to controlling foreign territories or obtaining resources. Therefore, governments are the source of war, not religions.

        The idea of war is not limited to the scope of the human race. In other words, the notion of battle can even be found within the organizational ranks of the animal kingdom, from ants, to bees, and to monkeys. If religion is the cause of all wars, then would this not mean that animals have the intellectual and rational capacities to subscribe to a belief system? Moreover, there have been relatively few atheistic societies that have existed throughout history. That fact in and of itself speaks volumes against the claim that religion is the cause of all wars. It renders impossible the process of comparing religious and secular societies in any great detail.

         We cannot consistently affirm the existence of moral values without a supernatural Law Giver. If we choose to abide by the relativistic moral code presented by secularism, then it follows that truth can be self-contradictory and thereby self-refuting. If we cannot uphold objective morals, then neither can we uphold objective human rights. There would also be no such thing as value, certainty, or purpose. Nevertheless, we can never condone the establishment of atheistic governments in the twentieth century that treacherously usurped power and inhumanly murdered hundreds of millions of innocent people. So it is incumbent to understand why religion is an indispensable support for continual survival of the human race.

        The assertion that religion is the cause of all wars is historically inaccurate, as well as it is philosophically indefensible. Governments cause war, not Christianity. All quarrels originate from the inherently sinful nature of the human heart (James 4:1-2). In fact, secular societies are more guilty of taking innocent lives. Consider examples from the twentieth century of non-religious dictators such as Hitler (a moral relativist), Stalin, and Mao Zedong. The evidence clearly does not point in favor of the theory that most people throughout history have died in the name of spreading their religions.