Causes of Religious Conflict
Since time immemorial, mothers have taught their children that polite people don't discuss religion in general conversation. If only we would listen to our mothers!
Why religion is the root of so much hostility is anyone's guess. My best guess is that religion is simply a "hot button". Play the religion card, and people get ticked.
For example, Adolph Hitler hated Jews for being successful (or stealing from Christians, from his point of view). That sounds like a pretty selfish reason to exterminate a nation, doesn't it? But holler, "They killed Jesus!" in righteous indignation, and killing a few Jews doesn't seem like anything to get too riled up about anymore. For people who practice religion in one fashion or another, those who do not believe as we do can fairly easily be construed to be evil.
In modern America, I think conflict arises because some people do seem to make up religious beliefs as they go along. No longer is there just God, Allah, Buddah and Muhammed to deal with; there are hundreds (thousands?) of legitimate religions practiced in the U.S. There are also those among us who claim religious reasons for unreasonable expectations. For instance, prisoners have filed suit against penal institutions for not allowing them to smoke marijuana during "religious ceremonies", or have argued that their religion requires them to eat steak daily, and so on.
Another situation which looks to me like religion beliefs gone too far was described in the Nov. 3 edition of the Wall Street Journal (front page). The administrators of Ukiah County Medical Center in California (a Seventh-Day Adventist hospital) have filed a case with the National Labor Relations Board arguing that negotiating with a newly-formed nurses union interferes with administrators' obligation to rely on divine guidance to settle disputes. Who am I to say this is not a valid argument? In all seriousness, I do wonder how administrators know that God did not guide the nurses to unionize.
Certainly, prisoners asking for special privileges and hospital administrators seeking exceptions to labor laws are not "atrocities", and it would be completely unfair to categorize them with the likes of Hitler and Josef Stalin. But both situations seem to me to be abuses of religious freedom.
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