Comment by Fezzik | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Fezzik | Hacker News Reader

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While I wish this were true, do you not think the primary impetus is (likely) religious? I would wager these people are not crazy in any clinical sense; they have been deluded by a religious upbringing and culturally supported religious fervor. It is disingenuous to say that religion is not a contributing factor, if not the primary factor.

It is like Steven Weinberg summarized: With or without [religion] you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

Recognizing this is important for assessing the situation and how to counter the problem – this is not a circumstance where more mental health services will make the tiniest difference. It requires intelligent debate about education, philosophy (including religion), and how to convey to people that any religious beliefs that cause the deaths of others are simply wrong.

Religion is not per se horrible – obviously the super-majority of religious people are fully functional contributing members of society and should be protected just like everyone else - but it has been used throughout history to conduct a huge number of atrocities.

> While I wish this were true, do you not think the primary impetus is (likely) religious?

Not really; religious identity politics are often used by leaders (whose motivation seems to be more power-seeking than genuinely religious) to connect with foot-soldiers (whose real impetus seems often to be desperation to improve conditions for their family, or themselves, or to redress wrongs they feel have been done to their family or themselves, or to feel connected to a group and gain meaning.)

And you see the same thing done in other places with racial identity politics, economic class identity politics, national identity politics, etc. (And, in many cases, many of these are at play in the same movement.)

I probably ascribe to much influence to religion alone on its adherents, especially in the middle-east. That said, it seems the sheer number of crazy wars people have fought in the name of religion - the 30 Years' War, The Crusades, the Sudanese War, etc... - would indicate that at least some number of the participants are involved purely because they think Heaven/Jannah/something else awaits and a god is being pleased.

Desperation, poverty, redress of (centuries long) wrongs, and seeing no other option than to join the movement do make sense as motives though.

Religion is simply a very powerful button to press, especially when pressed by someone the person under discussion sees as a person of authority or power figure. Aiming to please is very strongly embedded in human nature, combined with religion it can be powerful enough to make people do the most horrific and stupid things.

> the 30 Years' War, The Crusades, the Sudanese War, etc... - would indicate that at least some number of the participants are involved purely because they think Heaven/Jannah/something else awaits and a god is being pleased.

I haven't studied all of those wars, but my understanding has been that behind every religious explanation for war is a political power struggle.

Religion is used to get ordinary people to go to war, certainly. If it wasn't religion, it would be something else that speaks to people's emotions and desire to belong to a group. (Patriotism, 'Duty', 'Honor', etc.)

For two of your examples:

The crusades cemented the power of the Papacy and Holy Roman Empire in Europe, partly by sending a lot of armed powerful people to fight elsewhere. It also was an attempt to reunite Catholicism under the Roman Pope (i.e. it was a massive land/tax/power grab by the Pope at the time). Fighting other faiths occurred, and was certainly used as a reason for people to leave their homes and travel hundreds of miles to fight foreigners. (I'm pretty convinced very few people do that willingly.)

The whole Protestant reformation taking off at all (Luther was not the first person to rail against the perceived hypocrisies of the Catholic church) and subsequent 30 years war was generally driven by a desire of the various princes and kings involved to remove themselves from Catholicism. The 30 years war also quickly devolved past Protestants vs. Catholics and largely into various factions jostling for power.

If you go down that route you'll have a hard time explaining 'Jihad John' and the many western youths (including some that are extremely pale skinned) and that suddenly feel the need to join IS or do something else that is profoundly stupid and against their self-interests in every way.

That doesn't have anything to do with religion.

Everyone has an existential crisis in their life, and desires to become a part of something greater than themselves.

The traditional institutions in Western society that promoted this sense of belonging have been eroded in the recent decade, which could explain the trend toward joining organizations like ISIS and their ilk.

That is much closer to the root cause than most analysis I read in the media. But it's a much harder problem to tackle and does not make for infotainment and so will get a lot less airtime.

There are apparently some driving elements behind that: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/26/cage-campaigner...

At the larger scale, religious justifications are no more relevant than socialism's role in turning some rural Cambodians into ruthless killers (as opposed to the state-terrorism): http://johnpilger.com/articles/from-pol-pot-to-isis-anything...

"Jihad John" was from Kuwait and lived outside of UK most of his adult life.

Jihad John gets an excuse to rape random women and kill people. It gets him outside the social structures that would not condone these sorts of aggressive activities. I don't think it's against self-interests for messed up people.

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