A Little Historical Truth

Sometimes I get tired of the bumpersticker psudophilosophical nonsense that passes for 'deep thought' when fact actually disputes the nonsense quite plainly. Take the highly popular fallacy "religion is the #1 cause of violence and wars", I've also heard "religion causes all wars" and another favorite "more people have died because of religion than any other cause..." Unfortunately for the purveyors of such hate-speech none of this is true. I'm not sure why this fallacy is repeated so often when just the barest effort at research shows something else (in this case quite the opposite) to be true

The often painfully wrong Richard Dawkins is quoted as saying "Religion causes wars by generating certainty." Actually the opposite is true, Religion prevents wars by generating certainty. If you know your planned actions are wrong you don't do them, or you do everything you can to avoid doing it. While adherents of atheist morality insist that atheist morality is not a fairy tale, in reality it is 'situational ethics' at best. In this illustration those millions of people listed dead beneath their atheist leader died because they were in the way. Stalin alone killed 32,000,000 to 38,000,000 people just in the Ukraine before WWII just to show the Ukraine his political power, no other reason. Mao allowed 10s of millions of people to die just to advance his socialist ideals.

Religion tells us that murder is wrong, and the old testament is replete with examples of how God's anger was invoked because of the infanticide going on, even among his chosen people, so from religion we learn that murdering babies is evil. Take away religion and situational ethics kick in and you get 1,450 abortions every day in the US, 98% simply because it was inconvenient for someone if that child was alive. 

The further away you move from religion the weaker morallity gets. Atheist China's one child policy means that every woman who bears a second child becomes a murder. Atheist North Korea forces women to drown their children. California allows abortion based solely on the sex of the child. Morally these are perfectly acceptable choices if you have no moral rudder like the Word of God. However to a moral people none of these choices are acceptable. Ever.

20 My son, observe the commandment of your father And do not forsake the teaching of your mother; 21 Bind them continually on your heart; Tie them around your neck. 22 When you walk about, they will guide you; When you sleep, they will watch over you; And when you awake, they will talk to you. 23 For the commandment is a lamp and the teaching is light; And reproofs for discipline are the way of life (Proverbs 6:20-23)