Wars between theists and atheists( P.S.)

[Bob's World]

The religion or lack there of between combatants is really a bit of a silly debate.

Certainly religion is a common motivational tool employed by leaders to rally the people, and offers a source of support to those who are in the fight; but the fight itself is typcially about wealth, power or revenge in some combination. Those are the ugly whores of war that lie beneath the pretty makeup of religion.

[DVC]

BUF(Bias Up Front) - I'm a committed Christian and believe the Bible is the inerrant Word of God.


That said, one question:

Just because you can't prove something does that mean it's not true?

[M-A Lagrange]

I personnaly think that Bob is right.

The problematic of religion in war in mainly a political question and has very little to see with what combattants do or not.
Looking at war laws (1907) and humanitarian laws (1949), they all tend to be secular with a "religious" base as they tend to bring moral and good behaviour in war. (Early laws or code of conduct from ancient India and Mesopotamian in particular.) But the fact that you believe or not does not really matter in their application nowadays except at individual/personal level.

[marct]

Interesting points, folks. I tend to agree with Bob with one reservation: it is much easier to stir up emotions if the "sides" have different religions (and I'm using that in the Geertzian definition which, BTW, includes Atheism as a "religion"). Part of the reason for this, I suspect, is that religions, as a class of social groups, tend to apply deductive logic based on untestable assumptions which are circularly justified (love the napkin example !). Since the assumptions are not testable, what tests are run are inherently biased in two main areas:

1. they are tests of "purity" (i.e. the application of deductive logic) of thought or practice based on the system itself with only limited contacts with objective "reality".
2. they are tests of "personal experience" which are biased because the interpretive framework for validating and understanding that experience is produced by the same, untestable system. NB: it is a categorical error to confuse an interpretation / explanation with an experience or, in other words, the validity of having the experience does not validate the interpretive framework (it merely does not disprove it).

One point I would like to pick up on is this:

Just because you can't prove something does that mean it's not true?

Well, being a scientist in the older, Baconian sense, I would argue that you can never prove anything, only disprove things. This, IMHO, is especially so when it comes to dealing with anything that is not part of the "material world" (I'm using that term in the sense of that part of reality that does not [appear] to be able to exercise any form of free will). "Proving" something is another form of "purity test" (cf point 1 above).

Not being able to "prove" something is a whole different kettle of fish, in that it begs the question of whether or not I can disprove that something and, if so, how? If I can't disprove it, then it is beyond the current reach of science, either because I don't have the right tools to set up tests or my explanatory mechanism can't generate hypotheses that are testable.

One point I will make is that it is, actually, very easy to disprove many religious claims of exclusivity where those claims tie in to replicable experiences. This sub-set of claims, however, is what justifies power, status and the general ordering of social reality that Bob points towards.

Cheers,

Marc