For the Love of War

Love of money is the root of all evil ~ Loose translation of Christian Bible

Humans love to fight, we do it all the time. Through peace, war, in between those two, and if we survive long enough, in space. Some people would like to think that religion is the cause of most of our fights. Howbeit, if you were to take it out of the equation, you would still have fights. In a sense, it would be comforting to think that religion is to be blamed. If it was, it would make things much more simpler, and easier to fix the problems of the world. However, that is a false comfort, to hide how crazy humans are.

In life, people don't always fight over religion. Sometimes it's: Joe and Jerry fought over a banana. Joe was of this religion and Jerry was of that. When they fought, they asked for the courage to win this banana from their respective gods.

While they did that, Martha walked in. Martha is an atheist, this means that she believes that all the crazy unexplainable things in life, are explainable, and no one, so to speak, is pulling the strings. Seeing, Joe and Jerry fight, she heard them utter their gods to give them strength. Hearing this she believes that they war, not for the banana, but for their gods.

However, what really happened is that they are fighting over a banana and not over religion. Rather, that they so happen to be of different religions. The thing is, that banana is very tasty. If you were desperate to have a banana, it is only natural that you would evoke something very precious to you.

With Martha, she will walk away with a wrong analyst of the situation. Furthermore, Martha has a past with religion, she was raised with it. Whether it didn't sit well with her or she had a negative experience with it, it's hard to tell. Whatever it was, now she is biased to religion. She won't admit it, but it is there, rightly or wrongly. Will she see what is really going on with Joe and Jerry? Most likely not.

Ultimately, the problems of the world cannot be attributed to one factor, the world is not that simplistic. Additionally, wars are complicated things. Is religion to be blamed? Yes, no. Yes, because people have fought wars over religion. No, because money is not a religion, and that is why all wars are fought fundamentally. Does this excuse religion? No. However, what it does is, expose that human nature is to be blamed. Furthermore, if we credit war solely to religion, we will only try to solve one aspect of war. Leaving other problems very much at large. Overall, religion is a gun, whether it is in the hands of sweet loving grandma or the local serial killer, is to be seen.