People kill for many reasons, blaming religion is like blaming gender.
Rubbish. nobody is blaming religion, we are merely positing it up as one of the main culprits.
Abrahamic religions, put a god up as the ultimate, i.e., the highest good. Abrahamic prophets insist that we should worship god, while Asian religious yogis and sages invite us to meditate, and contemplate. It is oddly ironic that people who worshipped the highest good would tend to commit more violence and be more intolerant than those who do not have such a moral focus. Jews, Christians, and Moslem's all claim to have received a linguistic revelation, ie, direct words of God. Moses claimed to have talked to God "as a friend," and the angel Gabriel's first command to Mohammed was Read!
Abrahamic religions are primarily religions of obedience, they are concerned with maintaining the purity of their divine revelations. Even though they have been altered, and the integrity of each has been compromised. Their followers find it very difficult to believe that their faith, is wrong or another is right.
Violence also, may be due to the way in which religions view evil. A recent study of the world-view of Muslim terrorists found that they divided the world into the forces of light(good) and the forces of darkness(evil).
Whereas the Asians view evil as a matter of imbalance. Yin is dark, female, and negative and Yang is light, male, and positive, but rarely ever is Yin called evil. literally it equals balance and harmony.
"I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth." The initial words give prominence of divine power in Christian theology. Placing omnipotence first, even before divine goodness and wisdom, is the preference not only of Christianity but also Judaism and Islam. Power becomes a paraphrase of the divine names, a kind of euphemism for God.
In these Abrahamic religions, divine power has been conceived in terms of political power. In Islam, Judaism, and Christianity God is seen as a cosmic king, exerting absolute and uncontested rule over the universe and everything in it.
In the Abrahamic religions God's power is externally applied, When the Abrahamic man stands opposed to self, giving god absolute power. violence can proceed. If man is seen as self, non-violence can prevail. for man to move from violence, he must detach himself from elitism (my god is better than your god) to compassion and non-violence. A case in point is when Jerry Falwell's made his outrageous claim that God does not answer the prayers of Jews. he did two things here, he incites the Jew to retaliate, and he endows his brethren with there elitist attitude.
The religious person seeks certain goals for himself and his god, such is his faith. Even if those goals are detrimental to somebody else.
Yes man can be elitist, in other things, but most don't empower him with righteousness. most he may be elitist to his own skills. But with the my god is better than your god mentality it brings with it violence.
