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== I suggest a closer look into the claim that "Religion is a western concept" ==
== This article seems heavily religiously biased. ==


The sources cited are not definitive proof of this claim. Instead it should read something like "Religion is considered by some to be a western concept"
It seems to me as though this article is trying hard to not upset religious people.
But this niceness comes in the way of being direct and articulate and causes the article to be unnecessarily very long.
I am sure we can be respectful to religious people while also being direct.


I feel like there is some kind of anti-western bias in this statement, as though the west invented the concept of religion just to subjugate non-Christian/non-Jewish religions which is a very dishonest thing considering there are only two sources here that citing shaky opinions and nothing resembling fact. <!-- Template:Unsigned IP --><small class="autosigned">—&nbsp;Preceding [[Wikipedia:Signatures|unsigned]] comment added by [[Special:Contributions/2604:3D08:127F:5000:C520:FE15:230A:757E|2604:3D08:127F:5000:C520:FE15:230A:757E]] ([[User talk:2604:3D08:127F:5000:C520:FE15:230A:757E#top|talk]]) 08:05, 13 November 2023 (UTC)</small> <!--Autosigned by SineBot-->
(some example phrases (paraphrased)-
:The sources state that religion is a western concept. There are no equivalent terms sacred texts for such a concept either. For example, Judaism see Harvard intro, [https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/files/rpl/files/judaism_pluralism_project_harvard_university_religious_literacy_project_harvard_divinity_school_march_24_2015.pdf?m=1660591091#:~:text=In%20the%20English%2Dspeaking%20Western,and%20practices%20associated%20with%20a]. In fact, many religions were conceived in the 19th century to fit a Western concept called religion. Many more sources on this in the "History of the concept of religion" section of the article.[[User:Ramos1990|&#32;Ramos1990]] ([[User talk:Ramos1990|talk]]) 10:22, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
"violence is difficult to define"
:"'Religion' is a complex modern Western concept" is absolute nonsense. South Asia is riddled with religions that are as systemic as European ones, and is not what is meant by western according to [[Western world]]. Furthermore "the middle east" (a.k.a. west Asia) is also not part of what is meant by western according to [[Western world]]. Furthermore [[Western world]] includes literally every continent except south Asia and Africa, i.o.w. 4/6 continents, this makes the word "western" a bit meaningless. Seems European is really meant here? [[User:Wallby|Wallby]] ([[User talk:Wallby|talk]]) 14:05, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
"there is no consensus over what a religion is"
"oversimplification leads to misguided understanding"
"concept of religion is modern"
"religious violence is a modern myth"
"secularism is more violent than religion"
.
.
.
)


== No mention of boarding schools nor stolen generations ==
It also seems as though if this article is trying to show Christianity as less violent than other religions.
While sections for other religions start without much explanation, the section of Christianity starts by trying to explain why Christians were violent.


How can this page that is by now +-8 years old be titled "Religious violence" but not include [[American Indian boarding schools]] nor [[Stolen generations]]. This is a gross violation of [[WP:WEIGHT]]. [[User:Wallby|Wallby]] ([[User talk:Wallby|talk]]) 14:00, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
I hope I didn't offend any person with this thread.


== No mention of psychological violence ==
[[User:James Goner|James Goner]] ([[User talk:James Goner|talk]]) 05:34, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
::All of the quotes you mentioned are actual points in academic sources by experts on the topics and are found almost verbatim per the sources cited. The reality being that religion and violence are not simple things, but incredibly complex. I don't think that the article length is an issue since many religions have complex histories with violence and nonviolence. This just gets a gist of it.


::The history of Christianity sections have sources which detail the diversity of views that Christians have held over the years. It fluctuates.[[User:Ramos1990|Ramos1990]] ([[User talk:Ramos1990|talk]]) 05:45, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
No mention of psychological violence even though there is an entire heading about psychological violence on [[Religious abuse]]. [[User:Wallby|Wallby]] ([[User talk:Wallby|talk]]) 14:11, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
::This article really does have an extreme pro-religion bias to it. The article is comparing violence caused by religion and violence that occurs in a secular state. This would be like arguing that guns don't cause deaths in a country where people die of guns and car crashes because in gun-free states people also die in car crashes. The comparison that should be made would be people who die due to religion (millions) vs. people who die because of a lack of religion (zero). [[User:Of 19|Of 19]] ([[User talk:Of 19|talk]]) 17:39, 9 May 2020 (UTC)
:::Wikipedia is not a forum [[WP:NOTAFORUM]]. But either way your numbers are completely incorrect. Violence that has nothing to do with religion is the overwhelming majority of violence from violence in war to domestic violence to gang violence to drug related violence to sports related violence to racial violence to cop relate violence to military violence and so on. More chances of being beaten by a robber than for Islamic or Moron based reasons.[[User:Ramos1990|Ramos1990]] ([[User talk:Ramos1990|talk]]) 18:02, 9 May 2020 (UTC)
{{u|Ramos1990}}, are you claiming that violence due to gangs, police, race, robbery, &c, are all '''''a result of'' a ''lack of religion''''? If not, I suggest you read what the poster wrote more carefully: zero people die ''because of a lack of religion''. His point was that - as you correctly stated - those other causes of violence have ''nothing to do with'' religion, therefore they're totally irrelevant to this article. And those quotes that are allegedly from "academic sources" and (self proclaimed?) "experts": ''wherever'' they're from or ''whoever'' wrote them, they are unencyclopaedic at best and foolishness at worst ("secularism is more violent than religion" - as noted, secular violence isn't CAUSED by secularism! but religious violence IS CAUSED by religion! and many, manumy of Europe's most violent wars in the last 1000 years were religious wars) [[User:Firejuggler86|Firejuggler86]] ([[User talk:Firejuggler86|talk]]) 20:20, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

:In fact, it could be argued that the authoritarian and totalitarian ideologies of the 20th century were more akin to religions.''*'' While I do agree that many of religious war were also equally, if not more, motivated by political, social, and economic factors, and I've nothing against religious people or non-extremist and fundamentalist religions (I especially appreciate the more liberal and progressive branches), I find it absurd the argument for secular violence by citing the 20th century when such ideologies and movements acted as religions''*''—blindly following the ideology, dismissing critics as heretics, the right-wing criticism of Communism as a religion, the totalitarian concept itself that matches well with the fundamentalism of religions, making fun of "it wasn't real Communism" but then doing the same by saying "it wasn't real [religion]", etc.).
:Secular violence''*'' is better seen as a response to religion, and of course ''some'' religious violence could also be seen as a response to secularism and its increased popularity, or when becoming an authoritarian or extremist form of religion itself as in the 20th century. While secularism violence has been committed by extremists, religious violence has also been committed by what could be considered the mainstream of said religion, religious texts may be understood to contain violence or incitement to violence (where is the secularist equivalent?), and of course also by fundamentalist and extremist views of religion. After all, it's not atheists or agnostics saying people are going to burn for eternity if they don't behave or that they should be punished by capital punishment simply for being atheists, agnostic, or non-comformists. In the end, more than religion or secularism, the real issue is authoritarianism and being blinded to ideologies and beliefs in a fundamentalist and literalist reading and way.
:''* Definitions apply'' — [[User:Davide King|Davide King]] ([[User talk:Davide King|talk]]) 14:41, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
::Reliable sources are already cited which make different arguments than the views you hold including the fact that religion is a modern invention, not a historical concept or an idea found in ancient/medieval cultures or holy texts; and that religious beliefs and behaviors are not correlated ("fundamentalist and literalist readings" does not make sense because of this). This is not a forum to discuss how wikieditors see the topic. Rather the sources should speak for themselves.[[User:Ramos1990|Ramos1990]] ([[User talk:Ramos1990|talk]]) 02:38, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

== I would suggest creation of two different wikis, one for "Violence Caused by Religion", and the other for "Violence Caused Against Religion". ==


I previously created a thread stating my opinion that this article seems to be religiously biased, and people replied that I was wrong. I do admit to failing to understand that this wiki talks both about violence caused by religion and violence caused against religion.

However, it seems as to me as if there's a tendency not only to compare these two different but related topics, but also to compare violence that has nothing to do with religion with violence caused by religion specifically to diminish the effect of violence caused by religion. Phrases used in this wiki such as "religious violence is a modern myth" or "secularism is more violent than religion" support my opinion. Secularism, according to it's own wiki page, most commonly refers to "separation of religion from civic affairs and the state".

I think creating two independent wiki for each of these two related topics might reduce the incentive for bias.

This thread was written in good faith and I do not mean to be disrespectful of anyone and please forgive me if I sounded as such.
[[User:James Goner|James Goner]] ([[User talk:James Goner|talk]]) 11:49, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

:We already discussed this in the discussion above. This article is generic and braodly covers violence by religion and violence done against religion because they are both the same phenomenon - committing violence based on belief systems. There are already some more specific articles on both in wikipedia such as [[Religious persecution in the Roman Empire]] and [[USSR anti-religious campaign (1928–1941)]] to name a simple example. Religion and the secular are also directly intertwined since secular views tend to be directly linked on views on religion. Both are one side of the same coin (e.g. violence against religious people in the Soviet union, Cambodia, China, etc). The quotes you mentioned ("religious violence is a modern myth" or "secularism is more violent than religion") are actually almost verbatim from academic sources by experts on the topic. But to your point on secularism, it is incredibly obvious that the overwhelming amounts of violence is secular not religious. Most wars, violence, and abuse have been about mundane matters (gangs, drugs, relationships, race, ethnicity, economics, politics, family, etc), not about divine matters. Certainly most religious people have coexisted with people of other religions for centuries and have not been prone to violence over theological matters. And since "religion" is only about 300 to 400 years old (the concept did not exist throughout most of human history - it is not found in any holy texts like the Bible or Quran - and only emerged in the 1600s and above in the European West) it is why scholars are questioning the classification of religious violence as being a modern distortion of the complexities of the past. [[User:Ramos1990|Ramos1990]] ([[User talk:Ramos1990|talk]]) 23:22, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
::There are several problems with this interpretation, and with much of the information of the page which is often cherry-picked to support a specific contention. Firstly, as to "it is incredibly obvious that the overwhelming amounts of violence is secular not religious", I would disagree. Not only is this not incredibly obvious, but it also disregards the way in which many supposedly "secular" states and governments are often built upon religious foundations, are populated almost exclusively by religious people, and use the framework of religion (even if by another name) to gain and maintain power. This is the type of complexity that is often present in the sources, but omitted from the sections that are cited or quoted in this article. Secondly, as to "Certainly most religious people have coexisted with people of other religions for centuries and have not been prone to violence over theological matters", this is far from "certain". Quite the contrary, the incredibly well detailed history of both inter- and intra-religious violence belies this. Are we to now view the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition as peaceful cohabitation between religions? What of the persecution of Jews as "god-killers" by Christians? Or the persecution of the early Christians by Jews? What of sectarian violence between the Sunni and Shia since the latter half of the 7th century? I would also take issue with the idea that "religion" is only 300-400 years old, and I would be incredibly interested to see where you sourced that information. Religions have existed since the beginning of recorded history, and evidence of religion can be found in the archeological study of the earliest civilizations. Quite the contrary, it is "secularism" that has only recently emerged as a defined concept and term, and it did so to describe the movement away from the previously ubiquitous entwinement of government and religion. If a government was founded by religious people, modeled after religious hierarchies, and populated by religious citizens, how does one decide which actions they take are unequivocally "secular"? Is the violence committed in the name of Manifest Destiny (a concept that cannot exist in a purely secular worldview) to be considered secular simply because the USA is nominally a secular state? These are no unstudied concepts, they are present in many of the sources already used in this article, they have simply been left out. Perhaps due to their complexity, perhaps due to their clouding the waters of what many people view as clearly delineated concepts, perhaps due simply to confirmation bias. [[User:NonReproBlue|NonReproBlue]] ([[User talk:NonReproBlue|talk]]) 10:30, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

== My edit on the "Palestinain-Israeli conflict" section shouldn't have been reverted ==

In the "Palestinian-Israeli conflict" section says "Zionist leaders sometimes used religious references as a justification for the violent treatment of Arabs in Palestine." and I feel like that seems to have a little anti-Zionist bias, I changed "Zionist leaders" to "Extremist Zionists" and to me, it sounds a little less anti-Zionist, but I tried to make it not sound pro-Zionist, does anyone else agree that that section sounds anti-Zionist?

[[User:RowanJ LP|RowanJ LP]] ([[User talk:RowanJ LP|talk]]) 17:07, 20 May 2022 (UTC).

== Why isn’t this a protected article? ==

Anyway, considered the controversial nature of many topics discussed here, I’m going to nominate it for protected status. [[User:Atomic putty? Rien!|Atomic putty? Rien! (talk) ]] ([[User talk:Atomic putty? Rien!|talk]]) 02:01, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Latest revision as of 16:47, 10 July 2024

I suggest a closer look into the claim that "Religion is a western concept"

[edit]

The sources cited are not definitive proof of this claim. Instead it should read something like "Religion is considered by some to be a western concept"

I feel like there is some kind of anti-western bias in this statement, as though the west invented the concept of religion just to subjugate non-Christian/non-Jewish religions which is a very dishonest thing considering there are only two sources here that citing shaky opinions and nothing resembling fact. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2604:3D08:127F:5000:C520:FE15:230A:757E (talk) 08:05, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The sources state that religion is a western concept. There are no equivalent terms sacred texts for such a concept either. For example, Judaism see Harvard intro, [1]. In fact, many religions were conceived in the 19th century to fit a Western concept called religion. Many more sources on this in the "History of the concept of religion" section of the article. Ramos1990 (talk) 10:22, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"'Religion' is a complex modern Western concept" is absolute nonsense. South Asia is riddled with religions that are as systemic as European ones, and is not what is meant by western according to Western world. Furthermore "the middle east" (a.k.a. west Asia) is also not part of what is meant by western according to Western world. Furthermore Western world includes literally every continent except south Asia and Africa, i.o.w. 4/6 continents, this makes the word "western" a bit meaningless. Seems European is really meant here? Wallby (talk) 14:05, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

No mention of boarding schools nor stolen generations

[edit]

How can this page that is by now +-8 years old be titled "Religious violence" but not include American Indian boarding schools nor Stolen generations. This is a gross violation of WP:WEIGHT. Wallby (talk) 14:00, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

No mention of psychological violence

[edit]

No mention of psychological violence even though there is an entire heading about psychological violence on Religious abuse. Wallby (talk) 14:11, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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