Hate, a civilized emotion....

I have to wonder is way back when... huddling in our caves.. if we hated the guys in the cave on the other side of town?

Seems to me we've spent most of our time and our killing, on the grounds of territory, food and mates....

Then we moved out of caves.. we started living in larger groups.. slowly life got easier and gave us more time to talk amonst ourselves. In our attempt to understand everything around us, and in the absence of science, everything was a miracle, or at least something that some unseen entity must be providing for us.

We started to worship things unseen or grant life to those we could see in the sky. We banged our heads together trying to think of ways to keep our gods happy.. and we created religions and rules, or divine text. If everyone followed the rules the gods would be happy, and the people would be happy.. if someone broke the rules he was punished as it could hurt the whole community, if the god(s) were angered.

This went on everywhere and as it was meant to be some groups found other groups.. and their gods were alien to one another. So they fought... to appease the god that must be angered by these other peoples false gods.

Thousands of years later we are still doing the same thing...

Violence is commited in the name of a god.. more then any other type of violence commited.

Even racial violence is usualy based on a belief that your race is better in the eyes of god.

One person who hates, gets life in prison...
10,000 people that hate get tax exempt status...

Why are people so willing to kill over their religion..? It seems they have such an easy time doing it.. and then sleeping at night..how??

I don't think believing in a god is a bad thing... I think believing everything written down in a book about god and his "rules" is a bad thing.

god and blind hatered were created at the same time

That about sums it up........

....but what if some was to camp in your backyard, would you be happy for them do so, even without you granting permission..?

Mate. Kill. Feed . Repeat.

Easy process to remember.

Actually, Earthtone, it's better if you Kill, Feed, then Mate. I don't know about you, but I'm rarely in the mood for post-coital hunter/scavenger behaviour.

Unusualme, I think you make good points - religion hasn't added anything to our development. Sure, there have been some artistic and cultural benefits - cathedrals, stirring symphonies, the visceral pleasure of shouting at TV evangelists - but the story of man's progress is the story of our denial of religion and superstition.

Religion may not be the sole font of hatred, but it's the only framework in which hatred is routinely encouraged.

Cue a bunch of Christians protesting that it's "all about the love, man"...

indeed starnge lands post-coital hunting is hardly ideal is it ?
Religion has to be one of the largest causes of hatred on the planet. It's ironic becuase they are supposed to be about being good yet they encourage wars. Hate is not a civilized emotion and can only be used to fight evil. Nobody should hate anyone, just like love it is a blinding emotion.

Firstly, religion has never caused a single death, so forget about it. Humans caused all of it. If not for religion, we would've just found another reason. Blaming it on religion is just passing the resposibility to something else. It's like someone saying they shouldn't go to jail because they were high at the time the crime was commited.

Humans are slaves to their own instincts. To produce a superior bloodline, the elimination of competion takes first priority. Religion, patriotism, politics, these are all just smokescreens to disguise the true reason.

THAT WE ARE KILLERS

Animals kill each other all the time for three reasons: food, territory, and breeding. They can't deny their nature any more than we can. It all comes back to producing the best possible offspring. Humans have an ecological duty to go to war.
Think about it. If all the wars that had ever been fought never happened. If all the people who had died in these wars had lived, humans would not exist. We would have all starved because we would have eaten every possible resource. We would have died from disease or pestilence. Such is the price of overcrowding. When a population gets too large to support itself on the natural resources of the planet, one of three things happen: war, mass famine, or disease.( Ironically, these are three of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, the fourth is death itself.) All of the these things have the same goal; to reduce the population back to healthy, sustainable levels.
You can't deny nature, people. murderous hate is the single most necessary trait of human existance.

Remember, NATURE IS NOT YOUR FRIEND. It's been trying to kill you since day one.

Blaming hate, murder, war, oppression, racism on religion is just stupid. Humans have an inborn need to kill each other. All our technological, social, and medical advancements have come about because of a war. There is no advancement without conflict. Peace is stagnation. Stagnation produces disease. So the next time you here about some massive war, remember, a new, more advanced world awaits.(unless of course we completely destroy ourselves in said war, but hey, life sucks.)

Blaming our atrocities on religion is just a way for us to not be held fully responsible for our own actions.

good question i would think we would , like little nations

Firstly, religion has never caused a single death, so forget about it. Humans caused all of it.

Yes, thats true, well the last bit anyway.

People have been killing in the name of their faith, since their faith came into existence, but the real killer is something which lays behind all violence, "Tribalisation".

It stems from agruments about who's side of the bedroom you are on to my God is bigger than yours.

Religion is a tool of war, not the cause of it.
Cause of war is power, money, teritory, conquest, desire to possess what others have.

It starts at very early age. Ever watched little kids playing with toys? Within minutes one of the kids will start crying because some other kid took their toy. No matter how many toys lie around, kids will fight over toys which are already in somebody's hands. A desire to possess what others have. Those kids dont know about God, Allah, faith, religion.
It is inside us, it is part of us and it can be controled by inteligence. We can learn not to act upon this desire.

All your post are really on the truth but somebody forgot to mention that we are humans, yes, but lets not forget that we are also animals and even when we are civilized in a way or the way we are told we are, we still have those animal instincts we still tribal and we gather and live in crowds like herds and we still perform rituals, we still mate and reproduce all this maybe civilized now in our eyes but it still part of our animal nature.

Hate and anger may fall in the survival instinct.

Originally posted by UnusualMe
I have to wonder is way back when... huddling in our caves.. if we hated the guys in the cave on the other side of town?

Not only hated them, we exterminated them and sometimes even cannibalized them. There's evidence of this going back to the times BEFORE hominids evolved into homo sapiens.

Seems to me we've spent most of our time and our killing, on the grounds of territory, food and mates....

That would about cover it. In some cases the wars developed into ritualized ceremonies where only one person would end up being killed or where the killing was strictly symbolic (Maori, and many of the other cultures that are made up of small groups.)

This went on everywhere and as it was meant to be some groups found other groups.. and their gods were alien to one another. So they fought... to appease the god that must be angered by these other peoples false gods.

Actually, few wars were fought on strictly religious terms until around the last thousand years or so. In the cases where competing people came into contact with each other, the pantheon of the loser (either through trade/absorption or wars) culture became incorporated into the pantheon of the winner culture. What's a few more gods between allies and friends, anyway?

Violence is commited in the name of a god.. more then any other type of violence commited. Even racial violence is usualy based on a belief that your race is better in the eyes of god.

Yes to the first, but "not really" to the second. You don't need a deity to think that "we" is better than "them."

Maybe you're right, without religion we would have come up with some other reason.....

If however this is such an "instinct" we possess why are the streets of most countries not ablaze with firebombs.. of one group waging war on another.

Most people I know are completly fine with the fact that the person sitting next to them is a different religion or race.

If it's such an instinct then why did a study by the military conclude that 80% of soldiers did not fire then guns while in combat?

If it's just an instint, then shouldn't we set all the murders free.. if in fact that couldn't help killing any more then they could help scrating an itch.

[edit on 22-6-2004 by UnusualMe]