Religion, Faith-Based Thinking, and the Causes of War

Introduction: Religion as a Cause of War

Religion has been, and will continue to be, a cause of war. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how religion — and more precisely, faith-based thinking — has been used to foment violence and cause war. To understand the role that religion has played in sparking violence and causing nations, tribes, and other groups to go to war, one must first understand what exactly war is. One of the best frameworks for understanding war and its components was articulated by Carl Von Clausewitz in his seminal work On War.

Clausewitz's Trinity and the Nature of War

In his book, Clausewitz defines his trinity model of war, also known as the "remarkable trinity." He argues that war consists of three distinct forces: (1) primordial violence, hatred, and enmity; (2) the play of chance and probability; and (3) war's element of subordination to rational policy (Bassford, 2011). One can notice the Hegelian dialectical format at work here: we have a thesis — war is a combination of irrational forces such as enmity, hatred, and violence; an antithesis — war is a rational activity that falls in accordance with coherent, logical policy; and a synthesis — war is non-rational (neither purely irrational nor purely rational) and is a product of chance and probability.

The result of this analysis is an accurate rendering of war. War is a combination of trilateral forces — the rational, irrational, and non-rational — which together create the chaotic and unpredictable reality of armed conflict. The key to understanding war, or to developing a sensible theory of it, is to, as Clausewitz says, "maintain a balance between these three tendencies, like an object suspended between three magnets" (Clausewitz, On War).

When considering how religion fits within the Clausewitzian framework, one can argue that religion functions as an irrational, catalytic force alongside primordial violence, hatred, and enmity. Religion can be categorized this way because, in its essence, it operates irrationally. Biologist and author of The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins, has said, "Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakable truth through the power of institutions and the passage of time" (2006). He further argues that "Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence" (2006). These observations underscore that in order to accept religious dogma — such as transubstantiation or papal infallibility — one must reject empirical evidence to the contrary. In short, one must reject reality.

Religion as an Irrational Catalytic Force

If a person is capable of rejecting reality, he or she becomes far more willing to accept the horrors of war. As Steven Weinberg once said, "Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion" (1999). In other words, those who would otherwise be moral may be convinced to commit atrocities in the name of religion or faith. For example, the notion that it is socially acceptable to stone a woman to death for betraying her husband is an act of violence unthinkable in most modern societies, yet it becomes an accepted practice in theocratic states such as Saudi Arabia or Iran.

It should be noted that religion, as it has traditionally been defined — linked to monotheistic faiths such as Christianity, Islam, and Judaism — may be too narrow a lens through which to understand its relationship to war. Rather than arguing that Christianity was a primary cause of the Crusades, or the so-called "holy wars," it may be more useful to suggest that "faith-based thinking" was a primary cause. This distinction matters because faith-based thinking — that is, irrational cognition — lies at the heart of all religion. It therefore does not matter which religion is involved, so long as that religion promotes faith-based thinking.

Moreover, faith-based thinking is not only limited to religion; it also includes fervent nationalism and modes of political extremism such as communism, Nazism, and fascism. The current debate between anti-theists like Dawkins and Hitchens and religious figures like N.T. Wright focuses on whether religion is or is not the cause of war. In doing so, the argument is confined to traditional monotheistic religions and does not account for other modes of faith-based thinking. The reality is that people living under Stalin's communism and Hitler's Nazism experienced the same subversion of rational and empirical thinking. They underwent a kind of "religious" conversion of a different sort — rather than being indoctrinated with religious dogma, they were indoctrinated with nationalistic dogma and statist propaganda that led them to reject reality. The result was World War II.

Conclusion

Weinberg, S. (1999). Address at the Conference on Cosmic Design. American Association for the Advancement of Science. Washington, D.C.