The idea of asking a question on a forum is to stimulate discussion.

@WilliamFleming I get that. I was just thrown off for a minute by the question itself. I had a brain fart and it looked like you were asking for an answer instead of opinions.

Yet from the article we have this:

“In their recently published book, "Encyclopedia of Wars," authors Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod document the history of recorded warfare, and from their list of 1763 wars only 123 have been classified to involve a religious cause, accounting for less than 7 percent of all wars and less than 2 percent of all people killed in warfare.”

Of course 7% is still a lot of wars.

@WilliamFleming Most wars I can think of were fought over resources, territorial disputes, money, and/or political ideologies.

I agree.

Well, yes, but there are peoples, cultures, and civilizations that weren't warlike at all. And the "Imperial Disease" as I call it, nations that are into conquering their neighbors, is actually very rare. So I would say humans are easily incited to violence, but aren't inherently violent. The fact that throughout history huge numbers of soldiers had to be FORCED to fight certainly argues against humans being inherently violent. I've often thought if the draft age was 30 most wars would end quickly because people with spouses, kids, and lives are far more likely to say "Eff this, I'm going home."

@Druvius I've never understood why those "conscripted" just didn't turn on those who were forcing them to wage war.
I still believe humans are inherently violent.
Sure, some aren't, but the fact remains.

@KKGator I think that most of those 'conscripts' like the already enlisted, permanent soldiers, etc, simply fell for the " God and Country" propaganda that was force fed to them.
Young Aussies signed up hand over fist to fight in W.W. I and W.W.II simply because of that propaganda in my opinion, plus the fear mongering spread about in the media, etc.

@KKGator They do far more often than we here about. I go by the 10-80-10 rule. 10% of people are inherently evil, violent, etc. 80% can be easily induced into accepting, if not actually participating in evil, and 10% pretty much are good people. There were freaking Nazis who saved as many Jews as they could, Japan had a few war resistors in WW2, people like that give me hope.

@Druvius I have zero hope for the extended survival of the human race.
Unless it's some sort of unexpected galactic catastrophe, I don't expect mass human extinction will happen in my lifetime.
Which kind of disappoints me, to be honest.

@KKGator Yeah, I think intelligence like ours is an evolutionary dead end. If mass stupidity like Climate Change Denial doesn't do us in, in a few decades at the current pace of technological development, it will be possible for a lone nut to build a doomsday device in their garage. The end won't be far behind.

No, I'm sorry, but you are very wrong. Humans are not an inherently violent species. Humans lived peaceably on this planet for a very very very long time.

I think the point that you're missing is that it isn't humans that are inherently violent. It's Western culture or as Daniel Quinn calls it, the Taker culture that is inherently violent.

By the way, to forestall an argument, some 95% of the world lives under western or taker culture.

@Metahuman You can disagree all you like. Asia has had plenty of warfare throughout history. Quite a bit of it without "benefit" of any hint of "western culture".
It's also been in human nature to "take". It's not remotely a western culture thing.
Western culture has just perfected it.

@KKGator no that's not right. Perhaps I misled with the use of the term Western culture. Asia was then and is now every bit as much a western culture in the sense that I mean it.

So for clarity sake let's throw out that term and instead use Quinn's term. Taker culture. This is a metaphor for something that has deep meaning if you understand it. Once again 95% of the world is taker culture and has been for somewhere around eight to ten thousand years.

To repeat myself, humanity lived every bit as peaceably as a lion or a wombat or any other creature for many many thousands of years. The advent of taker culture, was the branching off into an unnatural perverse and vicious state of being for most of humanity.

@KKGator one of the mistakes you're making is in thinking that humanity began when human history as you know it did. Do you not realize that humans were on this planet for hundreds of thousands or even millions of years before the history that you're quoting began?

@Metahuman you’re destroying your own argument by saying 95% of the world belongs to a taker culture. If humans were as docile and peaceful as you think 95% of the people in the world would belong to peaceful cultures. Culture didn’t make people violent, violent people (95% of us by your reckoning) made culture.

I never said humans are docile and peaceful. Humans are enacting the story of the culture they live in which is violent and warlike.

What I said is that humans are not inherently violent. In other words they're not predisposed toward violence any more than any other animal . Currently the world is quite violent because of the culture that we live in.

No, people don't sit around and invent culture. Culture is evolutionary.

By the way, your second statement is a non sequitur fallacy.

@KKGator I can hear my religious cousin saying the reason for this is that we live in a fallen world, lol.

@greyeyed123 Of course.

@Metahuman The world has always been violent. I don't understand why you're arguing it hasn't been.

@KKGator I'm arguing that people are not inherently violent. Although our culture is. Once again the problem I have is youre saying things have always been this way. This simply isn't true. You're judging based on ten thousand years or so of history and that's a drop in the bucket compared to how long humanity has actually been here

@Metahuman You keep assuming you know how I'm "judging" anything.
Please stop.
You are wrong, and making a fool of yourself.

@KKGator I'm not assuming anything. I'm basing what I say on what you said which is in black and white above.

@Metahuman I never mentioned timelines. You started making assumptions fairly immediately in your responses.
You're basing what you've been saying on your own opinions.

@KKGator you gave an example which estabished a timeline.

@K9Kohle789 Politics too. And human nature.