Religious Growing Pains

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I heard on the news that Shi'ite and Sunnis are all over each other in Iraq, burning each others' mosques, killing each other, and otherwise being rabid psychos. I was given to think about the vicious wars that were fought in Europe between Protestant and Catholic nations -- wars that often were (on the surface at least) fuelled by issues such as prayer books, use of icons or statuary, or the language used to praise God in the Churches. At least one such war is still on low boil (Northern Ireland and England). It occurs to me that this sort of clashing is not uncommon historically, but that it CAN be grown out of.

Take Canada and the US. Protestants, Catholics and Orthodox churches may still disagree a great deal on matters of Christian theology, but there is VERY little physical clashing between these groups. Mosques and Temples are occasionally vandalized, but 99.99% of the population treats the vandals as criminals.

I believe that Western society is strong enough, flexible enough and otherwise advanced enough that we can deal with these issues of religious and cultural differences without the bloodshed that is marking many other countries in their efforts to deal with fundamental differences. The West will succeed if they stick to the principle of equal rights for all and special priviledges for none.

 

The west has gotten to the point where it can deal with religious differences pretty well. But then again, the west has become quite secular in recent history. Compared to the religious devotion (And often fervor) in the Muslim world, the west is quite low on the religion scale. I mean, if you talk to christian fundamentalists, they will still denounce other sects of christianity. But they are not a large enough part of the poulation to wield considerable influence, not to mention that a lot of western society just isn't religious enough anymore (or at least christian enough anymore) to put up with any violent or extreme actions of hate from the fundamentalists.

 

Maybe I get too philosophical for my own good, but when I read about things like this I think that it is something that is simply ingrained in our DNA.

We will always look for differences and similarities in our fellow humans and we will always have the desire to live/work/marry and hang out with people we see as similar to us and we will have a dislike for people who we see as being different from us. This dislike can sometimes escalate into outright violence and war.

When you look at the history of conflict you often see that wars are fought over silly, trivial, arbitrary things: it might be land, it might be religion, it might be skin color, it might be one group of Sneeches has stars on its bellies while the other group has circles.

I suspect this behavior is there for a reason. One billion years of evolution can't be wrong. All life is always looking for a reason to wipe out competitors and this desire, ultimately, creates stronger life forms that are better able to survive in this harsh universe.

So this notion that we humans will someday "evolve" away from religious wars or war in general is probably a false notion. Sure, protestants and catholics in Canada and the US (and Europe, for that matter) don't kill each other anymore but don't worry, we'll find something to fight about soon enough. 150 years ago it was the North vs. the South. Maybe in 100 years it will be the Red states vs. the Blue states. Who knows, but we'll always fight over something. The day that desire "evolves" out of us is the day we de-evolve back into pond slime.

 

I agree with Sir Fink, in that we as humans cannot "evole" out of our prejudice against those who are differant from us. But just because we cannot outgrow that aspect of our DNA, doesn't mean we can't overcome it. We can educate ourselves and our children as to how fighting over differences is wrong, as to how with concious effort we can master these primal impulses.

 

But my point is that these primal impulses are there for a reason and are a good thing. If they were bad we'd have evolved out of them long ago. To "overcome" such urges would be an evolutionary mistake and doom the race to extinction. War is ugly but so is that hungry lion hiding in the brush waiting to devour that little baby antilope and so is that meteor heading straight for us.

 

The lack of religious violence in Western society is directly related to secularisation of said society. If for example the US continues on its path of de-secularisation I am confident we will start seeing religious violence again. Give religous nutjobs power and they will start killing other religious nutjobs before they turn on the sane and rational people.

 

The problem with approach to religion is that religion is not the same as what people make of it. Come on, slaughtering people in the name of a religion of peace, be it Christianity or Islam (in its own perception and the minds of the peacable believers, if not universally regarded as such)... Some people will always want to fight and destroy those who are different and they will always come up with a justification, be it religion or ethnicity or political views or whatever.

 

I must say I disagree with this statement. Sectarianism is rife here in the secular British Isles. Only today, violence broke out in Dublin at a unionist rally to remember the victims of republican violence. Sectarian violence north of border is well documented and infamous throughout the world. And, although the IRA bombing campaign has ended hate crimes and punishment beatings are, in fact, on the rise. Similarly, sectarianism in Scotland is still very much alive today. And, in football when Protestant Rangers fans meet Catholic Celtic supporters, the venomous and malignant atmosphere is nothing less than the public face of Scotland's old sectarian problem on display for all the world to see.

Though it seems that with racism, the boundary could not be morally clearer; There is a indistinct no-man's-land in the arguments around racism's nasty little blood brother. Sectarianism, like racism, is just a violent expression of a bigoted society. Though the participants of sectarianism are themselves not always religious, they are always bigoted. Here in London, over half the population are immigrants and we have representatives of just about every denomination on the planet. However, rather than this being a recipe for civil strife, sectarianism in London is almost non-existent. Rather than fanning sectarian flames, clerics have been instrumental in creating this environment. Similarly, the non-religious and the secular can sometimes be the perpetrators of sectarianism and bigotry. Moreover, one only need look at the history books and see the likes of Mao Zedong inciting his revolutionary vanguard to desecrate holy site and murder innocent practitioners, to know that religion does not have a monopoly on violence. The tragedy was that in China there existed an eclectic mix of many foreign and indigenous religions that existed in harmony until a violent secular state crushed this equilibrium.

 

But you have to remember that for most of the time humans lived as primitive tribes of hunters/gatherers. In such a case, it makes sense to eliminate rival tribes (competing for the same resources, and such). However, things have changed somewhat. What served them well for that period might not work now. One can argue that in the modern society, the ability to interact (politely) with other humans/culture groups is essential (especially if it happens that those other groups have nuclear weapons).