Religion and conflict

In recent book (The God Delusion), Richard Dawson takes a hard line as not just an atheist but as an anti-theist.  He regards religious beliefs as dangerous in themselves for a variety of reasons which need not be considered here.

He seems to think the world would be a better place without religion.  He would regard religion as a source of the worst conflicts, the poorest quality of thinking and the cause of the prevalence of non-humanist values.  He might well think we would have fewer conflicts in a more skeptical world.   I think he is an optimist.  As a psychologist I understand that conflicts between groups, sometimes in the name of religion, result in widespread conflict and war.  I don't agree with him that religion causes these phenomena.

Instead I think intergroup conflicts are an essential part of human group conduct.  Religion, like politics or race, can be enlisted in the aid of group formation and inter-group conflict. In my opinion we would have precisely the same conflicts without religion, under different heading and flying different flags.  Conflict is what we humans do to establish our membership in our group.  The existence of other groups is necessary so that ours can have conflicts to strengthen our boundaries.  We use religion to justify this set of boundary operations, but we can and do use lots of other justifications.

In my opinion, the presence or absence of religion has little effect on intergroup conflict, which is part of the human condition, at least in this stage of our development.  Religion, in fact, is essentially irrelevant even though it sometimes promulgates benevolent ideas.  It's unfortunate that the majority of people professing religious beliefs don't act on or embody those beliefs, so their religion is just something to make them feel more comfortable personally. The people who talk the loudest about the religious life and religious values don't seem to have any better moral sense than non-religious people.  From my standpoint religion is pretty silly, and I'm sorry to see money wasted on religious items (such as churches) when such funds could be put to much better use helping the poor or improving medical treatment or research.

If we didn't kill each other in the name of religion, we'd just find some other excuse. Nothing seems to appeal as much as being "right" at someone else's expense and then proving it by killing them.