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Religion has existed on earth for a very long time, originating from thousands of years ago. It has become one of the pillars of society itself and has a foundational grip on almost every individual. Faith is one thing that the free world has given to be chosen at free will but they are those who view religion as a problem and there are those who view it as a solution. Although it is difficult for a neutral grounded person to take a side on the matter what many who are interested in this topic want to know is if it has created more violence or peace in human history.
Wikipedia defines Religion as a cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, world views, texts, sanctified places, prophesies, ethics, or organizations, that claims to relate humanity to supernatural, transcendental, or spiritual elements.
Our believes are always said to be the back bone of who we are ,which portrays our values and virtues. When religion is related to violence one could easily say it his brought a lot of death and destruction, a few examples are most of the wars that have occurred over the last few centuries.
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The crusades.
The crusades were a series of of wars which were approved by the Latin church in the Midevial times. The most popularly know crusades were those which were carried out on the eastern Mediterranean lands, these crusades were carried out in order to recover the Holy land from Muslim rule, but the term "Crusades" is also applied to other church-approved campaigns, such as the crusade against the Cathars and the Baltic Crusades. These were fought for different reasons including the suppression of paganism and heresy, the resolution of conflict among rival Roman Catholic groups, or for political and territorial advantage. At the time of the early Crusades the word did not exist, only becoming the leading descriptive term around the 1760's.
World War II and III
The Ottoman Empire joined World War 1 on the side of the Central Powers by declaring a Jihad on the British Empire. Of course, It's arguable that religion Was the reason behind their declaration of war, but they used religious language as a cloak for those motives.
In World War 2 a large part that played a big role in the antisemitism directed at the German Jews was partly derived from Christianity. Mainly because Jews were considered "Christ killers".
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They are many other conflicts relating to religion such as Religious extremities and Terrorism but when it comes to the side of religion and peace, there are also a lot points to draw from it.
General world peace.
Over the last few centuries religion has thought good values, virtues and spiritual Uplifting which has brought humanity closer to each other more than we can realize. If one looks closely, most of the laws in many countries have religious backgrounds, for example killing and stealing for unnecessary reasons. They have been improvement in the aspects of charity and love. Religion has given many reasons to live and help others by showing and sharing love in the world.
It is difficult to truly state if religion has helped us or caused damage but one thing is for sure and that is religion is has been around for a long time and is not likely to go away any time soon.