Does Religion Cause Violence?

The term “religion” refers to a set of ideas and practices distinguishable from other sets by their relation, either directly or indirectly, to agents with some counter-intuitive properties.   While ideas of any kind do not cause behavior they surely seem to be implicated in either facilitating or inhibiting various forms of behavior.  This certainly applies to religious ideas.  The term “violence” refers to a set of practices, also facilitated by ideas.  Loosely, to argue that religious ideas either facilitates or inhibits violence requires, therefore, that we study the conditions for such facilitation or inhibition...<READ MORE>