"In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion."
-- Carl Sagan
In general, religions are not more violent than other aspects of human culture. The exceptions are Islam and Christianity
When India was partitioned, Sikhs slaughtered trainloads of Moslems who were trying to flee to Pakistan and Bangladesh. More recently, Hindus have murdered thousands of Indian Moslems in dozens of separate incidents. Christians and Moslems are definitely not alone in their violent barbarity.
@Flyingsaucesir One could argue that Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Buddhists have lived quite peacefully in India for many centuries. I am unaware of religious wars on this continent. In my opinion, it was less religion but the tribal instincts triggered by the partition of the continent which are to blame for the violence in 1947. And recent violence is due to the special Hindu-nationalism of Modi and his BJP. Again, it's less religion per se but tribalism.
Unlike Christanity and Islam there is no concept of "holy war" in Hinduism, as far as I know.
@Thibaud70 OK, you don't want to call mass murder that occurred precisely along religious lines religious war; you prefer the term "tribalism." Fine. But in the Indian examples I gave, what is the defining feature of each tribe? Hmmmm, let's see.... Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism.
Note that Moslems only account for 14% of the Indian population; far too few to go toe-to-toe with the Hindus and Sikhs. Maybe that's why what goes on there doesn't qualify as religious war.
Instead of playing semantic games, why don't you just admit that your original assertion that Islam and Christianity stand out as particularly violent from other religions is not supported by the facts?
@Flyingsaucesir I'm not playing semantic games, but I am able to differentiate. Some religions are inherently violent, which shows in their history (some spread by violence, like Islam, others are full of religious wars, crusades, sectarian violence - Protestants against Catholics; Shi'ites against Sunnites).
But In other cases religion affiliation serves as a social marker of Us versus Them (other markers are ethnicity, language, skin color... you name it). A case in point were the wars in Ex-Yougoslavia in the 1990, where Orthodox Serbs fought against Muslim Bosnians, but nobody with some knowledge of the situation described it as a religious war, because it was obvious that the driving force behind the conflict was NOT religion but ethnic nationalism + lust for power of leaders like Milosevic.
But sure... if you prefer the simplistic picture (see the stupid picture in the OP), if you want to call Hinduism an inherently violent religion, that's okay, I don't care.
I'm off.
@Thibaud70 I don't claim that any of the aforementioned religions are inherently violent. But they all offer extremists whatever justification they might need to act out, if that's what they want to do. It's not so much what is written in the scriptures; it's how people interpret them. What all the religions have in common is a get-out-of-reason-free card; they all value faith over fact-based reasoning. That's the slippery slope that dumps them all in the same infamous camp.
Last week, an entire Argentinian family was massacred in the Gaza Strip.
Islam in particular seems to encourage violence and radical Islam is one of the main threats to peace worldwide today.
And Hinduism.
All religion promote violence. More crimes have been committed "on the name of religion" than on account of other issues.
christians aren't smart enough to fly an airplane.
christians use explosives and guns instead. Mosques, synagogues, abortion clinics, people of color ... christians target them all.
@AtheistInNC You are so full of crap!