Religion: The Scapegoat of Conflicts, Part II: The Axial Age Religions

INDEX

Part I: Introduction

Part II: The Axial Age Religions

Part III: Religion as a Casus Belli

Part IV: The Extremists

Part V: Conclusion

The large religions as we know them today has their roots during the Axial Age (c. 8th-3rd century BC). As its name implies, this age is pivotal to the development of human beliefs as it gives a moral essence to the preexisting rituals. Before the Axial Age, human beliefs are mostly comprised of sacrificial rituals for gods that symbolize the forces or nature, such as the gods of Ancient Egypt and China, or the animistic religions of many secluded tribes. Those gods and forces are stagnant, subject to cosmic law, and even difficult to be reached by the peasants, where only priests and kings could raise their prayers.

Once again, religion was central to the human belief as people always search meaning in life. Without a foundation for their lives, people look away to newer forces of change, such as gods of war. This lack of foundation and morals would form a bloodthirsty, 'barbaric' culture, and so skirmishes and pillaging grow prevalent.

At its heart, religion and belief is something malleable, always being adapted to the need of humans. Philosophers across the world see this degradation of human morals, and thus they construct and spread word of these new beliefs--the Axial Age religions--which remind people of their conscience, by inserting the lost values from before. Across the world, the same background compelled people to spread the main belief, "Do not do to others what you do not want  to be done to yourself." Certainly, this idea is one that support peaceful coexistence.

One, or rather two examples of this axial age religions are Hinduism and Buddhism, two very closely related religions in India in terms of history and beliefs. Hinduism was a very early religion, more than a thousand years BC, formed during the fusion of cultures of the Dravidians of India and the invading Indo-Aryans. At the beginning, the religion existed mostly for the political reason to categorize the Dravidians on the lower castes, thus they would not revolt against the Aryans. Meanwhile, Buddhism was the teachings of Siddharta Gautama, the Buddha, as a protest to the caste system.

Both Axial Age religions have the same core belief, the Dharma (or Dhamma), which governs the relation between living beings and their surroundings. In Hinduism, every person must do Dharma according to their caste, to ensure order and peace. In Buddhism, the caste system is removed; as the goal of every life is to escape suffering, then Dharma must be done to everyone (and everything) to break the chain of reincarnation, according to their karma.

These core teachings remain unchanged through the millennia. Certainly, looking from those teachings and the background for it, both religions certainly have a common goal in mind: social order and peace, by treating humans as human beings. Most, if not all religions today have their foundations during the Axial Age, and were formed based on those principles and morals of keeping the peace.

Thus we return to the case at hand, where religion is considered as the source of conflicts. After looking at their history, we could conclude that religion is not the one to blame for those conflicts, as no religion ever justifies war, due to their goal of creating a peaceful society. Basically, religion and conflict has mutually exclusive ideals, as conflict is the very thing religion sought to eradicate.

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Next, I shall discuss why there are still wars which involve religion.

As a disclaimer, I acknowledge that this is a very sensitive matter, which I think is important to be discussed. If anyone is uncomfortable or offended with this, please do comment and discuss.