On War & Religion

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Inspired by a class I am taking on Ethics and Terrorism. A student mentioned that religious extremists could easily find their justification for war with their God based on St. Augustine’s identification of Just War. I just don’t get it, and above is my explanation why.

Got it!!

Got it too . But there is a much more sinister motivation behind religious extremism. The people who control the religious extremists don't care about religion at all. They aren't even religious.

I don't disagree, I just wish they would be honest about it. I don't know, maybe I'm just sentimental like that?

when has a tyrant ever been honest about their motives...lol

Humankind, just like a good number of other social animals, are by their nature tribalist. We love our own for no reason other than that they are our own and we despise the other for nothing but being the other also. If they speak another language, eat another fruit, wear another cloth, greet by another hand or are born with another shade of skin, we hate them, generally speaking. While those that fit this description have no excuse for it, it nonetheless takes a level of compassion and intellect to see yourself in the other's eyes and to welcome them beside your own and historically that sort of kindness turned out rather rare.
Religion is not a cause for most of it, and it is not the only cause for much of the rest of it, but it does stack another layer of division between people for no reason whatsoever. It breeds and begets hatred for other cultures regardless of how closely and seriously its supernatural claims are held. Whether we assume that the terrorist or tyrant leader actually believe the religion they employ to manipulate their subordinates, said subordinates can be certainly said to follow their leaders out of a sincere agreement with what they say, and there is nothing preaching religious intolerance louder than religions themselves. To create additional motives for hatred and violence is what they do, some more than others, some even designed with this in mind; to fall victim to the manipulations religions are made for the sake of is not a fundamental misunderstanding of the religion.