It's clear from the slew of historical events of violence, oppression, and other negative things that religious people have been violent in some cases. Our most recent violent religion has been Islam, though I do have my doubts about Afghanistan and Iraq and the idea that America thinks they're fighting a holy war, especially in light of eschatological beliefs surrounding the general area of the middle east. Anyhow. What, if any, correlation between violence and general religion is there? I mean, I had a discussion with a guy for a while and the best I had was the idea that in cases of violence, religion was the explicit cause. While it is a good argument that religion was the cause of violence at a number of instances, it doesn't make religion a violent thing. I also have heard the argument that inherent in exclusive claims to eternal life there is an idea of superiority that can lead to violence or something like that, but it seemed like a bit of a weak argument. But violence such as this still occurs to this day as a direct result of religious beliefs that hold certain people ought to be treated such as this.

Thing is, I've been on a sort of mental sabbatical, after college I was finished with reading things that weren't sci-fi and fun... Now I sorta want to get back into debating, and logic, and other things but I've lost quite a bit. So I'm working my way back into it. I made a mess of the debate with my cousin, so what I'm trying to do is figure out where I went wrong. Thing is, I made such a mess that the best way to get constructive criticism (to post the whole conversation) would make me quite embarrassed so I'm attempting to do so without doing that... I'm hoping this works well enough. Anyhow, I'm looking forward to any interesting responses, and I'm hoping to develop my reasoning and logic here, and learn from you folks. I'm in.