Are Most Wars Fought Over Religion?

When I was just a little tot back in the 1960's, my grandfather told me that most wars were fought over or better stated in the name of religion. As I have grown older, I believe my grandfather was right as daily killings continue in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine. Even the September 11th, 2001 attacks on the United States were conducted with religious overtones and the resulting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are publicly being conducted as wars against radical Islam. In the words of Rodney King, 'why can't we just all get along'? My opinions about this subject are different from most people that live either in the United States or in some far away Muslim country.

To me there is a huge difference between a persons belief in God and organized religion. Years ago, the faith that I was born into, Baptist, turned me off of that religion because of their never ending need to control the lives not only of other members of the church, but also the lives of people in other counties that did not share the same belief system. When Ronald Reagan become the first conservative and religious leaning President of the United States - at first I thought that having a US government that was based on Christian principles would be a good thing. In hind sight I was completely wrong. Most organized religions are completely based on controlling the behavior of others and in the end all of the worlds major religions have at one time or another consider killing as a justifiable means to a religious end.

Do I believe in God? Most certainly yes. Do I believe that most of the worlds major religions serve God? Most definitely no. Maybe it has always been this way and the United States is just now seeing the world from the eyes of people that do not share our same Christian belief system? From my years of watching people from all religious backgrounds justify sinful behavior in order to advance a religious cause, I have started to see organized religion is a completely different way. Whether a person be a Baptist, like me, or following another mainstream religion - all of us are in one way or another controlled into believing that our religion had all the right answers while other religions were completely off base.

Even during the early days of the United States of America - our founding fathers knew what a state sponsored religion could do to citizens that did not agree with it. While the separation of church and state is not written into our nations original documents, there is no doubt that even hundreds of years ago our founding fathers also knew the dark side of organized religion within a free government structure. As the old biblical saying goes, 'there will always be wars and rumors of wars' in the world. The sad truth is that the very words of God are sometimes used by man to force control on other people that do not see religion in the same way as the majority.