Why are Abrahamic religions so violent? It's the blood.

[Sand Dancer]

Why are Abrahamic Religions so Violent?

Interesting.

All the way from Animal sacrifice to human subjugation, all Abrahamic religions revolve around blood. Actual blood.

It's a blood based religion.

Agree disagree?

Violent times and minds create violent religions.

 

[sun rise]

No true Scotsman fallacy, dear oh dear...

So you are claiming fallacy on my note, based on some evidence, that people have modified/mistranslated the Bible (to use one example). Oh dear, oh dear.

I suggest you doing research, as in searching and reading before casting aspersions.

 

[firedragon]

Agree. History is witness.

Agree with research, science and study or with something else?

 

[firedragon]

Violent times and minds create violent religions.

It creates war, not any kind of religions. The most violent act in my mind that has happened so far is bombing innocent people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was not religion.

And in history, only 7 out of 100 wars were fought due to religion.

So this whole OP is null and void. Pure conjecture based on a bias, not any valuable thinking or study.

 

[Glaurung]

It's a blood based religion.

A certain 'dharmic' religion burned widows alive on their husbands' funeral pyres unto well into the 19th century.

 

[Mark Charles Compton]

Could you define more comfortable?

Pardon me if I'm misremembering, but I want to say the anthropologist theory was that there was likely more communal sharing of goods and resources, making those resources more available, therefore freeing up time to spend on things such as hobbies or familial bonds of both inter and intrarelationship strengths.

 

[Aupmanyav]

Given history is also witness to the Romans, Persians, Mongols, Greeks, Scythians, Egyptians, Hittites, Babylonians, Chinese, Japanese, Vikings, and so forth, I don't see any evidence that the Abrahamic cultures stand out as being more violent than the average.

Yeah, accept the verdict of history. Term those who were violent as 'violent'.

 

[Aupmanyav]

Agree with research, science and study or with something else?

Agree with all those who provide evidence.

 

[Aupmanyav]

A certain 'dharmic' religion burned widows alive on their husbands' funeral pyres unto well into the 19th century.

Many a times, the widows chose to go with their spouses, sometimes it was for the fear of being dishonored by Muslim invaders. RigVeda mentions of a brother of a deceased person exhorting the wife to leave the pyre and return to world. In early British rule in Eastern India, especially in Bengal, widows were pushed into the pyre to usurp the property of the deceased. This was the effect of British laws and consequent materialism. The old traditions had broken up.

"Between 1815 and 1818, the number of incidents of sati in Bengal doubled from 378 to 839. ..
The archaeologist Elena Efimovna Kuzmina has listed several parallels between the burial practices of the ancient Asiatic steppe Andronovo cultures (fl. 1800–1400 BCE) and the Vedic Age. She considers sati to be a largely symbolic double burial or a double cremation, a feature she argues is to be found in both cultures, with neither culture observing it strictly. ..
According to Romila Thapar, in the Vedic period, when "mores of the clan gave way to the norms of caste," wives were obliged to join in quite a few rituals but without much authority. A ritual with support in a Vedic text was a "symbolic self-immolation" which it is believed a widow of status needed to perform at the death of her husband, the widow subsequently marrying her husband's (eligible) brother.
According to Ashis Nandy, the practice became prevalent from the 7th century onward and declined to its elimination in the 17th century to gain resurgence in Bengal in the 18th century.

Colonial era revival:
Sati practice resumed during the colonial era, particularly in significant numbers in colonial Bengal Presidency. Three factors may have contributed this revival: sati was believed to be supported by Hindu scriptures by the 19th century; sati was encouraged by unscrupulous neighbours as it was a means of property annexation from a widow who had the right to inherit her dead husband's property under Hindu law, and sati helped eliminate the inheritor; poverty was so extreme during the 19th century that sati was a means of escape for a woman with no means or hope of survival.

Daniel Grey states that the understanding of origins and spread of sati were distorted in the colonial era because of a concerted effort to push "problem Hindu" theories in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Lata Mani wrote that all of the parties during the British colonial era that debated the issue, prescribed to the belief in a "golden age" of Indian women followed by a decline in concurrence to the Muslim conquests. This discourse also resulted in promotion of a view of British missionaries rescuing "Hindu India from Islamic tyranny". Several British missionaries who had studied classical Indian literature attempted to employ Hindu scriptural interpretations in their missionary work to convince their followers that Sati was not mandated by Hinduism."
Sati (practice) - Wikipedia

This in present age is known as 'chadar dalna' and was prevalent in North India till very recently. Of course, now the law permits the marriage of a widow freely.

 

[Augustus]

Yeah, accept the verdict of history. Term those who were violent as 'violent'.

The verdict of history is that humans are violent.

The "why is religion/group/race X violent" type arguments are usually just a narrative fallacy trying to explain average human behaviour as if it were special, hence the OP.

 

[Aupmanyav]

The way Christianity acted to promote itself everywhere in the world and Islam in India and elsewhere was certainly violent, accept or we kill.

 

[Augustus]

The way Christianity acted to promote itself everywhere in the world and Islam in India and elsewhere was certainly violent, accept or we kill.

All pre-modern state rulers had some form of "accept or we kill", you had to accept their legitimacy to rule and jump through a certain number of hoops to prove this. There is nothing uniquely religious about this. They weren't modern liberal democracies after all.

Anyway, the Mughals et al relied on Hindu elites and soldiers to be able to rule. Minority rulers always rely on majority groups.

That's not exactly "accept Islam or we kill". Most violence was even carried out by Hindus, albeit acting on the orders of Muslim rulers.

People at various levels of society used or promoted violence to further their own interests, Hindu and Muslim alike.

 

[PureX]

Much of it driven by religion

Religion, like politics, commerce, and everything else we humans do, reflects our nature. Which is inherently violent, selfish, and counter-productive.

 

[Aupmanyav]

All pre-modern state rulers had some form of "accept or we kill", you had to accept their legitimacy to rule and jump through a certain number of hoops to prove this.
Anyway, the Mughals et al relied on Hindu elites and soldiers to be able to rule. Minority rulers always rely on majority groups.
Most violence was even carried out by Hindus, albeit acting on the orders of Muslim rulers.
People at various levels of society used or promoted violence to further their own interests, Hindu and Muslim alike.

Much of the atrocities were conducted by the waves of Muslims when they invaded territories in India.
Hindus were not the only component of Muslim armies. Destruction of temples and conversions took place at the command of the Muslim rulers and by the Muslim component in the army. The Hindu rulers acquiesced.
Hindus in the army were used to defeat Hindu rulers, just as it happened in the British times.
Hindus never promoted violence. Even when Muslims were not around, territorial wars never affected commoners. Only the soldiers fought each other.

 

[ChristineM]

Religion, like politics, commerce, and everything else we humans do, reflects our nature. Which is inherently violent, selfish, and counter-productive.

And that makes everything all right.

It is discussed in anthropological circles that humanity could not have developed if we were so violent to each other. Apparently the trait only developed, or amplifed after civilisation began to grow with land requirements and religion.

So perhaps not in our nature but a learned behaviour

 

[PureX]

And that makes everything all right.

It is discussed in anthropological circles that humanity could not have developed if we were so violent to each other. Apparently the trait only developed, or amplifed after civilisation began to grow with land requirements and religion.

So perhaps not in our nature but a learned behaviour

We responded to the situation with violence. We have always done so. It simply became more noticeable the more of us there were in proximity to each other.

 

[Augustus]

Hindus never promoted violence. Even when Muslims were not around, territorial wars never affected commoners. Only the soldiers fought each other.

You don't seriously believe that surely?

Hindus Empires conquered vast territories and held them for many centuries, they didn't do this by promoting peace and mutual understanding. Empires aren't created for the benefit of the conquered after all.

Just like any other imperial conquerors, they killed or enslaved many civilians, it was the nature of ancient warfare. It was pretty much a necessity, for a variety of reasons (to reduce chance of revolt, to pay soldiers, to act as a warning so others would submit quickly, etc.

They also destroyed and looted some of the temples, just as the Muslims did. There was lots of wealth to be extracted after all, and the soldiers needed paying.

Also if you need to feed tens of thousands of soldiers, you generally do that by stealing it from the people you are conquering (or even those who are nominally on your own side).

So the idea that Hindus "nobly" conquered much of South/South East Asia without inconveniencing the masses is just a feel good myth.

All cultures, including Hindus, have been violent and committed atrocities: raped, thieved, looted, killed and destroyed. Those that have been victims could easily have been oppressors had a few battles turned out differently.

Violence was never the problem, the problem was being less good at it and consequently ending up on the losing side.

 

[ChristineM]

We responded to the situation with violence. We have always done so. It simply became more noticeable the more of us there were in proximity to each other.

Can you provide evidence of this?

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Disagree. Peace and good behavior are the teachings.

Only if you ignore all the violent, intolerant teachings.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Why are Abrahamic Religions so Violent?

Interesting.

All the way from Animal sacrifice to human subjugation, all Abrahamic religions revolve around blood. Actual blood.

It's a blood based religion.

Agree disagree?

For mostly the same reason football fans get violent.
One (primitive) word: Tribalism.

Off course, the fact that some religions also teach pretty gruesome commands / morals, doesn't help.
It only makes matters worse, as in that instance, the religion actually preys on this weakness in human psychology. Most all organized atrocities have come about this way. Nothing binds people together more then a common enemy.