Religion Equals War

Right now, the West is at war with the Muslim world because the two cultures practice different religions. However, this is not the first time that such bloodshed has taken place.

The first large scale confrontation took place in the eighth century when Arab armies invaded Spain and Portugal. That war went on for almost 800 years until the last Muslims were expelled from the Iberian Peninsula in 1492. On this occasion the Muslims were convinced that their God was commanding them to spread their faith throughout the world, and doing it by the sword was the best method.

The second took place during The Crusades, which lasted from the late eleventh century (1096) to the mid thirteenth century, as Christian armies invaded the Near East. On this occasion there was a growing penetration of Muslim armies into the fringes of southeastern Europe, which presented a number of financial and political problems for the Vatican. To counter that threat, the Pope mobilized the military forces of Europe into action.

The third took place from the sixteenth century to the eighteenth as the Ottoman Turks conquered much of southeastern Europe. Once again the Muslims were convinced that their God wanted them to spread His message into those regions and the Christians were certain that their God did not want any of that.

The fourth took place in the nineteenth and twentieth century, as Europe subdued most of the Muslim world. On this occasion, the West had grown smarter and was no longer basing every decision on the word of God, but Europeans nonetheless evangelized the conquered cultures with their gospel.

And now in the twenty-first century, we are it again in many parts of the globe such as New York in 2001, Afghanistan and Iraq.

In each one of those conflicts there have been thousands, if not millions of dead soldiers, raped women, crippled combatants, injured civilians, and traumatized children.

The current war between Muslims and Christians is not the only religious confrontation which is at present inflicting suffering on countless people. There is the on-and-off conflict between Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan that started since the partition of British India in 1947 and has delivered three wars. There is also the civil war in Sri Lanka between Buddhist and Hindus, the one in Palestine between Muslims and Jews, as well as many others. Not to mention the warring among people of the same creed as in Sunni Muslims against Shiite Muslims and as in Protestants against Catholics.

The truth of the matter is that all of those people died and suffered for nothing. If there would be a God like the one that those religions claim, none of those wars would have ever taken place and nobody would have ever suffered.

What history shows is that either God is evil and is incessantly driving people into war by deliberate manipulation, or he wishes the best for everybody but he is incompetent and can not do a thing right. Either way, it is clear that it is irrational to believe in such a being or to fight for Him.

There is of course, a third possibility and it is that God does not exist and people should therefore stop wasting their energies and lives in fighting for religions that are full of lies.

There is not the slightest shred of scientific or historic credibility in any of those religions. Nothing gives credence to the claim that Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, or any other of those so called prophets or sons of God had a divine mandate.

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