Book reviews 4/28
My goodness have I been slow reading books lately, even after significantly slowing down watching movies. Where does the time go?
The Gods of War: Is Religion the Primary Cause of Violent Conflict? (Meic Pearse)
Rating: 
I really can’t recommend anyone else waste their time with this book. There is certainly some more random info floating around in my head now (T would say “STOP, YOU ALREADY HAVE ENOUGH USELESS INFORMATION IN THERE!!!). However, in the end, the book simply didn’t arm me with any killer arguments for or against the question posed in the title of the book. All I can really determine after reading the book is that Meic basically believes the causes of violent conflicts are simply too complex to ever fully understand. In other words, he never really answers the question, other than with a shrug of his shoulders and an implied comment: “Guess we’ll never know.” Maybe that’s true, but it really annoys me to weed through 200+ pages of argument on an issue, which only ends up being commentary with an indecisive conclusion.
Just for an example of what I’m talking about, I’ll leave you with an excerpt part way through the book. Sorry about the length, but remember… I’m saving you from 200+ pages of this stuff.
In practice, all the examples of religious-national myths that we have selected for discussion here have demonstrably been guilty of fostering belligerence and exceptionally warlike qualities in the populations that have imbibed them. These exceptionalist cases stand guilty of the secularist’s accusation against religion: that it is a principal cause of war.
Even here, however, it should be said that religious-national myths are idolatrous; they function by co-opting religion for collective self-worship. That this is utterly unbiblical and foreign to genuine Christianity goes, or should go, without saying. Even so, the religious skeptic will hardly be impressed by this since, form a skeptical viewpoint, the distinction between orthodox (or genuine) faith and heresy is arbitrary or even self-serving for the person making such distinctions. Even the skeptic must allow, however, that it is by no means evident that the wars that religious-national myths foment would disappear if the illusory religious legitimation were taken away. The religion is manufactured and co-opted precisely for purposes of serving as “moral combat gear.” The combat came first; the religious myth to legitimate it, afterward.
That being so, the complicity of religious myths in warfare demonstrates little more than what is apparent anyway: religion, as the ultimate source of moral and spiritual authority and justification, is irresistible as a court of appeal for those who wish to use it for selfish or self-justificatory ends. And this is as true in ordinary social and political life as it is in international relations or the conduct of warfare. At its most mundane level, the misuse of religious or pious-sounding arguments for personal ends is familiar to every reader of this book. Whether or not such human abuses of religion thereby discredit religious faith itself is, of course, an entirely different matter.
Follow that? Here are the takeaways… (1) perhaps religious basis for conflict comes after as justification by the participants, who really had a different reason to fight in the beginning (so, religion was not the original cause… it’s a scapegoat), (2) it’s pretty hard to argue something like that with a skeptic. Wow, that was enlightening. Aren’t you glad I saved you from the book? ;)
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