I definitely think Religion is a MAIN cause of most Wars and Conflict.
Killing/Fighting IN THE NAME OF GOD is happening now, everywhere and has been happening throughout history.
i.e. I will kill/die for my beliefs, my God says you are wrong/a sinner and I’m going to hurt/kill you.
Can you prove this, or is this just what you believe because you’ve heard it stated often enough (without backup)?
The 20th century alone proves otherwise, with its hundreds of millions of deaths attributed to non-religious conflict and oppression (and also more slavery than any other period in history, in absolute numbers, if only merely because of population size). The atheistic movements of Communism, National Socialism, Fascism, and other materialistic and relativistic philosophies wrought the worst wars, greatest death and destruction in world history, dwarfing all other wars up to that point (combined, I think). WWI, WWII, the Korean War, Vietnam War, and the internal death wrought by the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, fascist Italy and Spain (in echoes of the “enlightenment” French Reign of Terror a century previous) etc.
Of the other great, high-ranking campaigns of death and destruction, one could easily look to the Mongolian conquests and their successors (Huns, Tartars, etc), who saw themselves (starting with Genghis Khan) as the “Scourge of God.” Ancient empires who fought great wars usually did so for (like most wars) reasons of power, politics, wealth, resources (think Persia, Greece, Rome, Carthage).
“Ethnic cleansing” in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere is, like a great many more wars, tribalism/tribal hatred. It sometimes uses religion as an excuse, but religion is rarely the primary motivating factor, just something used occasionally by leaders as a secondary means to motivate the populace.
In our American experience, none of our wars, including our most destructive by far (to ourselves–the Civil War) were started because of or motivated primarily by religion.
And even if we are going to impugn “religion,” or even “philosophy” (as opposed to simple politics, power, wealth, resources, ethnic hatred, nationalism), shouldn’t we ask “what kind” and “why” before linking the two or accusing all with a broad brush?
And what effects were intended versus what were not? (for instance, settlement of the Americas brought European diseases to the continents, which killed millions of natives, but this was not really intended, and certainly not for religious reasons; so that accident of biology and geography would be inadmissable in such an examination).
In the latter instance, you’d have to examine the motivating factors of a religion’s or philosophy’s tenets to see what they produce and why. Here I think you’ll quickly find that, even of those few conflicts that are truly attributable primarily to religion (rather than the usual suspects of causes listed above), you’ll find them linked to specific religious expressions. Some will certainly come out more favorably than others.
So please, feel free to do some actual research and see if you can find more than a small fraction of wars primarily motivated by religion, and of those, more than an even smaller fraction motivated by Christianity in general (or Catholicism in particular).