Quick quiz: How many wars have been fought in the name of some god or other throughout the course of history? Don't know? Me, neither. No one does. There are too many to count.
Humankind has always fought wars over religion, many of them being Crusade-type wars, the ultimate goal of which was to convert the infidels to the religion of the attackers. Even today, on the threshold of the 21st century, we still fight wars over our myths.
But have you noticed that there are never any wars fought in the name of atheism? Nowhere will you see records of wars being fought in order to rid the enemy of their religious beliefs.
Some may argue that this is not true. Many point to the Soviet regime of Stalin as being an atheist army. While true that the "official" stance of that government was to be atheistic, they did not make war over the issue. Yes, they tried to control religion, but only because they knew that religion was very powerful. They didn't care what people believed. They only cared about being able to control them, and controlling their religion was the way to control them. It was just a means to an end. Theirs were wars of power and politics, not of religion or the lack thereof.
Probably the most reviled warmonger in history is Hitler. To my amazement, many theists claim that the man was an atheist, despite plenty of evidence that he was a devout Catholic. In fact, there is evidence that Hitler had formed an agreement with the Vatican that actually provided the Nazi party with funds throughout the entire war, and also helped a huge number of Nazi war criminals to escape Germany.
Hitler's extermination of millions of people was religiously motivated. What many people don't realize is that he not only sought out and murdered Jewish people, but also homosexuals and, yes, atheists.
Is it any wonder that so many religious wars have been fought in the world? So many religious texts are loaded with examples of people killing because their deity told them to, hating others because their deity told them to, and all sorts of other negative behaviors, because their deity acts the same way.
How much more peaceful, how much saner, would the world be without the religious impetus to wage war? Indeed, how much more peaceful would the world be without religion at all?
