Why does religion encourage some people to perform ethically and others to commit discriminatory and even violent acts?

Many people are motivated to adopt a religious faith out of a need for security in a dangerous world. When their religion is challenged, they react emotionally and sometimes violently.

Religion Has always Threatened our lives with some form of violence. Once it was believed you would burn in hell and be tortutured eternaly, if not we'll burn or beat you anyway! The fantasy of burning in hell is now fading as is the belief in santa as people mature & evolve. Now the non believer is threatened with violence in devastating proportions to make us conform to their insanity.

Religion has held man back for thousands of years. You don't agree with the doctrines of the church? You die! You do not follow our religion? You die...

Holy wars usually have three elements:

The achievement of a religious goal

Authorised by a religious leader

A spiritual reward for those who take part

Religious beliefs are largely based on faith rather than reason. This means that conflicts among religions cannot be easily settled through dialogue or compromise. Disagreements can often escalate, resulting usually in violence. Even the demise of the innocents can be seen as gods will.

Many people believe that there is only one "top-down" religion: i.e. there is only a single religion revealed by God to humanity. That sole religion is, of course, their own. Meanwhile they believe that all other religions are "bottom-up" faiths: i.e. religions created by humans to express their concept of God. It is difficult for a person to respect other religions if they "know" that their religion, alone, is the true one and only.

Many feel that they are God's only representatives on Earth; in effect, they are God's arms and legs. They feel a need to be God's defenders, in doing so the young are manipulated and brainwashed, abused and tortured, building the next generation of a virused culture, but of course religion dose not see it as such.

RELIGIOUS VIOLENCE

Violent attacks by Christians:
Although most expressions of intolerance (in recent time) by Christians have been verbal, there have been some instances of violence, There past has been plauged with violence with much evidence found on the the net including:

The 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, OK, by Timothy McVeigh killed 168, including 19 children.

The French Wars of Religion 1562-1598--Protestants and Catholics

Pacification of Ghent (quelling Protestant revolution) 1576

One lynching, one attempted mass murder by stoning, and numerous fire bombings, shootings, and assaults victimized Wiccans and other Neopagans in the U.S. during the late 20th century.

To our knowledge, all were perpetrated by Fundamentalist Christians. The increasing public awareness of, and knowledge about, Wicca, such attacks have reduced the frequency of these attacks to near zero over the past 25 years.

Fundamentalist Christians have attacked Jewish centers, attempted to poison municipal water supplies, bombed abortion clinics, and assassinated abortion providers.

Islam:

The most distressing feature of Islamic extremist terrorism is that that the perpetrators believe that they have the right to murder people in order to achieve religious and political goals.

It is especially the theological framework developed by the Egyptian writer Sayyid Qutb in the 1950s and 1960s that made the killings committed by terrorist groups seem reasonable and necessary. Sayyid Qutb himself was hanged in 1966. The assumed right to kill is an extension of traditional Islamic rules concerning apostasy, which historically called for the death penalty.

The religiously motivated bombings and attacks by terrorist Muslim groups are too numerous to be listed. Among them are:

2005: Delhi bombing (over 60 killed, over 180 injured); Sharm el-Sheikh bombing (64 killed).

2005: London Underground bombing (53 killed, nearly 700 injured).

2004: Beslan school occupation by Chechens (344 civilians killed, incl. 186 children).

2004: Madrid trains bombing (191 killed, 1,460 injured).

2002: Bali nightclub bombing (202 killed, 300 injured).

2001: World Trade Center and Pentagon crashed into (nearly 3,000 dead).

1998: U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania bombings (225 dead, over 400 injured);

1988: Lockerbie crash (killed 259 aboard the plane, 11 on the ground).

1983: U.S. Embassy in Beirut bombing (63 killed);

1983: Beirut U.S. military barracks suicide bombing (241 killed);

1983: Beirut French military barrack suicide bombing (58 killed).

Terrorist attacks also occur within predominately Islamic countries -- generally between the Sunni and the Shia in both Iraq and Pakistan.

Judaism:

Jewish terrorist actions are performed on a much smaller scale, and are limited to the Near East. (The Jews comprise only 0.2% of the world population.) However, the sentiment behind those actions appears to be similar to the sentiment governing the Islamist attacks:

Karen Armstrong notes that in 1980 Rabbi Israel Hess published an article entitled "Genocide: A Commandment of the Torah" in the official magazine of the Bar-Ilan University. In it he argued that:

"the Palestinians were to the Jews what darkness was to light, and that they deserved the same fate as the Amalekites". 3

And just what fate is that? According to 1 Samuel 15:3 the Hebrews were told:

"Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass."

Among the best known cases of Jewish terrorism is the 1994 machine-gunning of Moslem worshippers at a mosque in the town of Hebron. A single terrorist killed 29 people and wounded about 150 before being killed himself. The killer, Baruch Goldstein, was an American medical doctor and a devoted follower of Rabbi Meier Kahane. He became a hero to the extremists, and the marble plaque on his grave reads: "To the holy Baruch Goldstein, who gave his life for the Jewish people, the Torah, and the Nation of Israel".

Among the cases involving less loss of life are:

Unsuccessful attempts to destroy the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aksqa Mosque in Jerusalem, combined with the killing of Muslim worshipers at the site,

The killing of three and wounding of 33 students during a noon-time assault of Israeli terrorists on an Islamic college in Hebron in 1985. In the latter case, the terrorists had rabbinic dispensation.

The killing of the Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin by a Jewish religious fanatic Yigal Amir was motivated by the Israeli-Palestinian accords. Extremist rabbis had reportedly ruled that the Prime Minister deserved to die because of his role in these accords.

ABSTAIN FROM RELIGION