Eradicating Religion Won’t Eradicate War
I’m not religious. So please don’t take this as a defense of religion. It really isn’t.
There’s a school of thought among the anti-religious that says religion is the primary (if not sole) cause of war in human society. The theory goes something like this:
Claims of divinely revealed truth cannot be subjected to the scientific method, and therefore can be resolved only by force, which leads to war. If we would all just realize that there’s nothing outside this universe (or at least nothing relevant to our lives here), then we could resolve all disputes peacefully, via scientific tests. Then war would virtually disappear.
This thinking is wrong on multiple levels. First, I see no clear evidence that war is caused by conflicting religious claims. War occurs whenever one party is unwilling to peacefully coexist with others of differing beliefs (or others at all, for that matter). Religious differences can be peacefully discussed, or resolved with armed combat. Likewise, deep science questions (e.g. how many types of fundamental particle are there in this universe?) can be answered by experimentation and peaceful discussion of what the results mean, or they can be resolved by force, escalating all the way up to war if necessary.
And of course, the anti-religious generally have no problem with the idea of getting their way by force, whenever and wherever possible. They’re all for it. The peace they seek is not non-violent coexistence of atheists and religious in the same society. It’s the old, Soviet-style “peace” — the total victory of atheism over religion. Once that victory is complete there will be no war because there will be no need for war — no further need to eradicate religion.
Mutations
Some small level of war in the world is, I think, a necessary evil of human society. Dreams of utterly eradicating it are in the same league as dreams of eradicating money or eradicating hate.
But, I also believe, the frequency and severity of war is massively worsened by detrimental mutations that create individuals unwilling to peacefully coexist with others; individuals who want to war against others and cannot be peacefully persuaded to refrain. If you’re an atheist (or not), and you honestly want to diminish war in the world (not just win it), I would recommend that you donate not to atheism-promoting organizations (or to religious ones), but instead to genetic research foundations.
If we can cure the genetic glitches that create incorrigibly uncooperative individuals, we can win the war against war without ever firing a shot. And that might be the only way to win it.
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