What does religion matter when people, children, are dying?

[Chiwahwah]

I'm an atheist so struggle to understand but even if I was religious I feel that sanctity of life would be of the upmost importance?
How can anyone allow such atrocities in the name of religion?
Doesn't it go against the fabric of what religion should be?
I just don't understand at all. I feel so broken that this is happening, we're all just human.

Why aren't we capable of doing of living peacefully? :(

All over the world people are hurting each other.

Sometimes I feel like humans are just monsters.

It's so very shameful what is happening. I don't know what people can starve and bomb children. It's an awful situation and it needs to stop.

This isn’t good logic. Saying ‘religion causes conflict’. Is not saying ‘ all conflict is caused by religion’

Your ( false) argument is also trying to separate religion out as a stand-alone. And it’s not. It’s intertwined with all the other things humans care about. Religion will be acting in combination with other factors where it contributes to conflict.

It’s cultural not just religious. It’s wrapped up in every fibre of the people and their daily lives. If you are atheist or a non practising/lapsed Christian for example we just don’t understand. We are not surrounded by a society where the expectation is you act in a certain
way or you are in essence expelled from the community. If you lived in these communities you would also be acting in exactly the same way.

But it's never really religion, is it? It's tribal - about politics and history and revenge for wrongs of the past, on both sides.

Religion is just a banner or an excuse people do these things under. If it wasn't that, it would be something else. It's not religion which makes Islamic/IRA etc terrorists do what they do - it's hatred and resentment and a wish for revenge from people who perceive themselves as oppressed minorities, either fairly or not. None of these people are really following the tenets of their religion if they are prepared to slaughter others to achieve their aims.

Religion vs tribalism is a false dichotomy. Beliefs about politics, history, the morality of revenge, what God wants - those all shape people's behaviours, just as most of them shape yours on a daily basis.

You have no idea if they're following the tenets of their religion or not because you don't know anything about their religions. You simply assume, because you've been taught to, that the central point of all religions is morality, and that they all agree on something like love your neighbour or the Golden Rule as the highest value. It's completely false.

No.

Dawkins said;

"Without religion you have good people doing good things and bad doing bad. It's only with religion that you have good people doing evil things"

This is indeed saying that only with the presence of religion will certain awful things happen. Your first paragraph indicates that you haven't understood, because refuting this has nothing to do with what you wrote there.

It's not religion doing it people are doing it

I am not religious

None of these people are really following the tenets of their religion if they are prepared to slaughter others to achieve their aims

You are clearly not familiar with religious texts if you think this!

Religion vs tribalism is a false dichotomy. Beliefs about politics, history, the morality of revenge, what God wants - those all shape people's behaviours, just as most of them shape yours on a daily basis.

You have no idea if they're following the tenets of their religion or not because you don't know anything about their religions. You simply assume, because you've been taught to, that the central point of all religions is morality, and that they all agree on something like love your neighbour or the Golden Rule as the highest value. It's completely false.

Wow, Polly!

That's a LOT of assumptions, and some bizarre ones.

Full marks for confidence, though.

Religions, being abstract sets of ideas, can't kill people, this is true. That's not what we're discussing though. That would be a very short and boring discussion.

Ok, I was responding to a post where you were quoting and agreeing with someone who said it’s not about religion as wars happen where there is no religion.

I was responding to that, not the Dawkins quote.

What I wrote was about Dawkins being wrong on that point.

The Dawkins quote is a non starter as it's obvious that the same people do both good and bad things, and it's quite hard to identify who the "good" people are, especially in a war.