Without religion, there would be less war.

Reconstruction: "War and conflict is the inherent nature of man" I'm sorry, I thought you were a intelligent human being and didn't think men were going around making hearts out of macramï¿½ and singing Kumbayah at around the same time you were lucky to live to the age of 30. Allow me to humor Pro and give references to that claim: Ancient history (the very beginning of recorded history)[1] began about 5000 years ago. The first recorded war took place 4700 years ago.[2][3] So either that was the very first war ever, or they had been fighting before that. I can't prove, of course, that they were fighting before recorded history because, well, it was pre-historic. I guess I appeal to logic or any sort common sense when I say I believe that there was war prior to history. Otherwise, spears, created 400,000 years ago[4] were just large toothpicks. "Religion is used as an excuse to wage war" Forgive me if I have trouble deciphering this butchering of the English language, I'll do my best. I'm going to go ahead and use Pro's definition for "war": "War: noun 1. a conflict carried on by force of arms, as between nations or between parties within a nation; warfare, as by land, sea, or air." Pro no doubt realises that the Cold War wasn't a war by this definition so I have no idea why it's relevant. The Cold War was just a time of great tension and fear but no soldier was ever killed by the opposing side.[5] Not a war so you can't cite anything that lead to it regarding "causes of war". "Religion has set up a system that causes its followers to blindly follow the commands of the deity, but since no deity communicates with them" Oh geez, I didn't know I'd have to prove the absence of God. Funny that I happen to know the name of what Pro is doing. It is known as 'argumentum ad ignorantiam'. It's the belief that something is true because you can't prove it's false. For example, if I said, "There's a unicorn playing drums with Godzilla on the dark side of Pluto, and I know this because you can't prove there isn't". True, I can't prove that there isn't a God, but I also can't prove that you're not really a clone made from Adolph Hitler's DNA. Are we to proceed with the debate with that ridiculous notion? Of course not. The nonexistence of proof is proof of nonexistence until proven otherwise, we all know this. "What he says about resources is true but irrelevant to the resolution, and so he continues after his points about resources as points of conflict throughout history." I accept your apology. Also, there's a little spell check option to the right of the REVIEW button. Click it once in a while. What you continue to say, "What I said about resources is related to this argument because if you simply take out religion from the whole idea of war, you are only left with wars that are fought over rescoure[sic] locations", I believe I said that when I said in Point 3. I'm glad that we agree that if you remove religion from war, there would still be war fought over any number of the other valid reasons such as resources. Pro has demonstrated that he agrees with me and I cannot wait to see him backpedal his way out of this one. "If two different groups of people are willing to go to war over the petty details of dead man who claimed to have communicated with God..." I love how Pro rebutted the setup to my point but not the actual point itself. The point was two groups of people, one from Iran and the other from Iraq, who were ready to kill each other even over something as illogical as a difference in religion, would have just as easily went to war over ideology, philosophy or a different way of life. Heck, what is a religion if not an ideology and way of life? And if they wouldn't have gone to war over those two, maybe they would over Pro's reason, resources. "Thousands did not die for God, thousands died so Roman would expand their empire" Sorry, I meant to say Rome, but Roman as in Roman Catholic works too, I think. You're inferring I meant that the catholic church was an empire. He goes on from this misinterpreted preposition to rebut a point I didn't make, so I don't see any need to reconstruct said rhetoric. Re: Pro Conclusion First of all, "he or she has no factual evidence to prove his points"? I could be a she and you say "he" anyways? Secondly, I didn't provide factualy evidence to support my points for two reasons: One, you did that for me in your argument so I didn't see the need and two, I didn't think I needed to prove that there are trees in the forrest for people to recognise it as basic, univerasally agreed upon fact, such as you demanded regarding violence being a natural state of man. Third, I DO recognise life at those times was surrounded by faith, but it was also surrounded by grass, so just because there's alot of something doesn't mean it's a cause for war. Lastly, argumentum ad ignorantiam. My conclusion: Unfortunatly, because of my opponent's poor deconstruction of my own points, my conclusion in this round is similar to the conclusion I gave in the second round. My opponent has said that if you take religion out of the equation, any war imaginable (as my opponent has demonstrated with Alexandre's Conquests, World War II and the Mongolian Conquests,) would still likely have taken place for reasons such as resources, ideology, territory, et cetera. I agree with that and that idea that both Pro and Con agree on, is the reason why there would be an equal amount if not more war without religion. Such is the preposition that will decide this debate, and it is why I win this debate, barring something incredible by Pro in round 3. As I stated in th beginning of Round 2, "I feel the need to mention that as the Affirmative in this debate, my opponent has the Burden of Proof, and it is his responsibility to convince the voters that there would be less war without religion. If I can prove that there would be an equal amount of wars or even more wars without religion, I win." Since we both agree that there would be an equal amount, I win. P.S. If you prove God exists, I'll forfeit. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org... [2]http://ancienthistory.about.com... [3]http://forums.about.com... [4]http://en.wikipedia.org... [5]http://www.3ad.org...