Religion is such a touchy subject. Looking past the single biggest argument of real vs not real, just dissecting a religion itself, we can see that nobody will truly agree on everything. Arguments arise and lead to conflicts over holy land, and disagreements on the policy of other churches, and this can lead to war. Religion vs other religion - sometimes sub religions under the same name duke it out. For as long as there was religion, people have disagreed in their interpretations of it. Let's look at Christianity for example. I'll give a small crash-course and point out some of the differences.
Long ago there was a man named Jesus and he did some cool things. Some people say some things about his life, others say other things. Here are some examples of what people after Jesus said about his religion.
Let's start with somebody who did not know Jesus personally. Marcion was a Christian thinker who lived about 100 years after Jesus. He hated Jews. He believed that Paul was the greatest Christian thinker, that the Jewish God was evil who created earth to enslave humans, and that the Christian God sent Jesus to ablosh Judaism. His church didn't last very long, but that is one example of somebody back in the day who had a different view.
We can go even further back and look at the Gospels themselves; those rejected and those accepted within the New Testament. Even those accepted in the New Testament didn't fully agree with each other.
Side Note: it is true that Matthew/Mark/Luke's gospels were very similar, reffered to as the synoptic gospels. Fun fact, an explanation is attempted through the Two-Source Hypothesis (Luke and Matthew copied Mark's writing plus another source, the Q-gospel, which is now lost). They are almost word-for-word but they do differ in the following ways:
Matthew's began with a genealogy of Jesus, trying to trace him back to King David. It was written for the Jews, not explaining Jewish practice at all, written in Hebrew, and talked of the Torah. Matthew tried to prove that Jeses, THE MAN, fulfilled Jewish prophecy.
Mark's gospel tries to convince the reader that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah, saying that he completed this prophecy by being a spiritual leader of the people and "Son of God", but keep in mind that this noun refers to those who have an intimate relationship with God, not necessarily a literal son.
Luke was kind of anti-sematic. He said Jesus mission was for Jews and non-Jews, but that the Jews were to blame for Jesus death. (Side note, Marcion used his gospel lol). Jesus was a man yet again.
John's differed from the others; whereas he was previously portrayed as human, John said he was metaphysical - very similar to Paul's descriptions. He said Jesus was Incarnation - the divine becoming flesh.
(Also included in the New Testament are the Book of Paul and the Book of Acts, as well as the sci-fi epic that is the Book of Revelation. In the book of Revelation the "beast" is mentioned, whom has been named as Satan, Emperor Nero, Hitler, Stalin, Bin Laden etc through the ages).
Judas and Thomas' scriptures were not accepted within the New Testament for they were Gnostic - the belief that the Divine Spark is within everyone and is found through Gnosis (special knowledge passed down). The Snake first passed this knowledge to Adam and Eve from the Tree of Knowledge, as Jesus passed it down to his Apostles. Judas wrote that Jesus asked him to betray him.
But you see, out of all the Apostles and Peter and James the other leaders of The Way, it was Paul's vision that prevailed. Paul accepted gentiles (non-jews) into the church and this made Christianity its own religion, but Paul also believed that Jesus was to be worshipped as divine.
And then Constantine the Roman Emperor comes around, who converts to Christianity and tries to make it State Religion. (Fun fact: He combined Christianity and Paganism, likening the Roman sun god to God and giving him it's own holiday every week: Sunday). Before he died though, he created the Council of Nicea, which unified the religion under a common set of beliefs. This new refined religion is considered "official". Now what beliefs made it through after the others were snuffed? You know, despite Paul never actually seeing Jesus in person himself, you kinda wonder why his word is accepted. Same with Constantine. They are arguably the two people who shaped the religion of Christianity into what it is today, and even now people still disagree and create their subsects for different purposes. English Kings creating Anglicanism so they could divorce, Martin Luther having his own views, Joseph Smith etc.
Although Chirstianity isn't a good example that shows war within the religion itself - it does show a varied history. But Christians did have wars with other religions over disputed holy land (the crusades).
Other times in history in which disagreement over religion spouted conflicts: Jewish persecution several times over, persecution of any other religion by the Romans and Islamic Extremists, the fact itself that Jerusalem is split in two (which I'll admit, isn't entirely religious).
Don't even get me started on Islam. The splits within that religion are pretty bad. I covered ISIS and the various deviations from core Islame in a paper I wrote a while ago, but I already linked it here before and shan't again unless asked.
But if you ask me, it isn't so much that religion is the cause of all this conflict, it is the fact that humans can never universally agree on something. The fact that religion is taken so seriously, and a subject of disagreement, means that it can result in deadly conflict. But it's been that way forever. Whether or not religion is at the forefront of a country's political system does not matter, they will find other reasons to fight.
As for the other points you touched on, I'd argue that it is due to more misinterpretaion or differing interpretations. One thing I know for sure was that Jesus existed and he was a great man. It is a historical fact that is widely agreed upon. But so many people have come up with so many beliefs about a man that lived 2000 years ago it's insane.
BTW I'm a Christian, for that is how I was raised. I have my own views on the subject. Why I believe religion was created and what purpose it serves to me personally; those are topics for another day.
*sigh* that took longer than I though it would.
#1 Amb-ass-ador
