#79: For Non-Divisive Diversity (PART 1)

【Religion】
Japan is one of the rare countries in the world where people tend to have less familiarity with adhering to any particular religion. So, one step off the islands, many are often baffled by the large presence of religion almost everywhere else.
 
As a matter of fact, of the roughly 7.8 billion people across the world:

• 2.4 billion adhere to Christianity
• 1.9 billion Islam
• 1.2 billion Hinduism
• 0.5 billion Buddhism

These big-four religions boast in total 6 billion adherents, comprising 77% of global population.
 
And one other large block of people belongs to the Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist category, accounting for nearly 1.2 billion people worldwide.

Nonreligious refers to people who are religiously unaffiliated with any particular religion.
Agnosticism is the view that existence of God is not known or knowable with any certainty.
​On the other hand, atheism is a belief that rejects the existence of God.
 
That said, it’s essential to acknowledge that most people in our world identify with a religion.
 
(Note: Within Christianity, the largest branches are Catholic with roughly 1.3 billion adherents, followed by Protestant with 0.9 billion adherents. Also, Judaism, one of the three Abrahamic religions along with Christianity and Islam, is relatively small in size with 15 million adherents.)
 
These facts bring us to an important point: for religion to expand and penetrate our society in such significant way, it seems reasonable to recognize of its contribution to humanity’s happiness, at least to a certain degree.
 
For example, Christianity preaches to "Care for others as yourself" and "Repentance of sins is essential."
 
Also, Islam teaches to "Help the people in need" through its core belief of giving called Zakat.
 
In this way, what underlies all religion appears to be the core value of "Contributing to humanity’s happiness by caring and helping others." And if religion makes this world a better place for everyone, then any one of them is meaningful.
 
On the contrary, it’s estimated that in the last thousand years, 40 million people have been killed in the name of religion.
 
For example, the French Wars of Religion in the 1500s were a series of war fought between Catholics and Protestants in France that killed approximately 3 million people. Catholics and Protestants both belong to Christianity, but their quarrels at times get uglier than those against other religions.
 
Considered the deadliest religious war in history, the Thirty Years’ War in the 1600s was also fought between Catholics and Protestants in Europe across multiple countries that killed an estimated 8 million people.
 
In the early 1900s, the Ottoman Empire led by Muslims committed genocide against Greek and Armenian Christians, killing an estimated 2 million people.
 
The Holocaust during World War II unfolded Nazi Germany killing an estimated 6 million Jewish people.
 
And even today, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict between Jews and Muslims, as well as a series of human rights crimes by the government of China against the Uyghur Muslims. The murders committed in the name of religion seem endless.
 
Truth be told, war is what rulers deliberately wage to preserve their own power, by peddling fear and hate in people’s minds. To do so, those who wage a war will justify any means no matter how dirty, inhumane, or dishonorable, for their desired end.

It’s victory at any cost; violence, discrimination, threats, lies, cover-ups, destroying evidence--you name it, they’ll use it. They’ll justify taking away freedom, livelihood, the human rights, and life of innocent people.
 
Under such condition, killing fellow humans becomes an honorable deed, and refusing to kill becomes a criminal act. And just like that, war topples the human morality upside down. We must repudiate war because it forces us to kill and praise killers.
 
With atrocities of war unfolding in front of our own eyes, what was deliberately waged can’t be rewound no matter how bitterly we cry, “I didn’t think this could happen to us.” And the grudge leads to a vow for retaliation. Our enemy will do likewise, as hatred will only escalate into more attacks.

There’s no true ending to the acts of violence.
 
Wars can produce short-term victories, but never a permanent solution. It’s because wars breed extreme hatred through unbearable downpour of injustice. And the hatred keeps multiplying and spinning out of control.

A long-term, lasting world peace can’t be attained through a mass murder called war. It’s because moral ends can’t be reached through immoral means.
 
Consequently, if any religion finds itself as a source of tension breeding people’s despair through war/violence, then we can’t help but make a regrettable observation that it evidently contradicts religion’s underlying core value of "Contributing to humanity’s happiness by caring and helping others."

Read Next: For Non-Divisive Diversity (2)【Perspective】
 
Complete Series: For Non-Divisive Diversity (1)～(7)
[1]   [2]   [3]   [4]   [5]   [6]   [7]   
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Read Theme: Inclusive Diversity