Religion has caused more violence and divide than would otherwise be without it

(1) I completely accept that religion has and can be skewed to favor an individual's personal interest, but this only demonstrates the nature of mankind and the extents to which people go through to attain their desires. If a pope is willing to fabricate and misguide others through religion by purposefully misinforming their followers on the word of god, what is to stop a head of state to fabricate and misguide their citizen's by misinforming their people on the findings of their military intelligence? This is exactly what had happened in Iraq, when Bush and Blair couldn't stress enough at the urgency of having to invade Iraq because Saddam was apparently building WMDs that were eventually never found. While the war on terror had used the threat of islamic fundamentalism as a rallying point, the fact of the matter is that Saddam was no extremist religious figure, but your average run-of-the-mill dictator; power-thirsty, ruthless, immoral, with your standard dose of racism to a number of demographics. Religion had no part to play in this conflict, rather it was resources (oil) and influence (geo-political advantage of replacing Saddam with a pro-western president) that was the driving point of the conflict. My point being: People can think up of all kinds of excuses to justifying conflicts, regardless of whether is present or not. If oil or influence is up for grabs, heads of states can think up of all kinds of lies to fool people into accepting the engagement. When you said "But in the matter of the people of Iraq, they did not seek revenge out of political or moral hurt - they were manipulated", I could not disagree more. The coalition had completely crumbled the infrastructure of the country as well as the social structure. What the west did not understand is that the regime that Saddam had constructed had meant that a huge portion of people who were working for Saddam's administration did so because it was so rewarding rather than because they believed or supported his regime. By making those who worked under Saddam illegitimate in the new government, it meant that those who had the most experience in running a fragile nation like Iraq due to tension between Sunnis, Shias and Kurds could not play any part in constructing a new Iraq. With the infrastructure destroyed and a very weak government, Iraqis were left completely war-torn by the invading forces and more deprived that ever with extremists using the instability as an opportunity to harbor and promote extremism. While they were manipulated no doubt, the reason to why they were manipulated was because the west provided them with the pretext to be manipulated so easily by giving the natives a reason to seek out revenge. Now you see ISIS, an extremist, fundamentalist, hostile, pariah state, a product of a conflict for influence and resources. (2) I don't have an astute knowledge of the USA's taxation system on religious foundations, but I do know that being irreligious does not equate being more forward minded. Oriental nations like China are relatively irreligious, yet homosexuality is still rampant just like in most parts of the world. So I would not say religion is as big a factor that divides people of different sexual orientations as people make it out to be. (3) A pessimist would say religion causes more divide between faiths, an optimist would say it induces more unity within the faith. As the globe becomes less religious, people tend to look at the bad side of religion, however what people don't consider how much unity it causes within faiths and how much it brings communities together. Religious communities are far more well connected within their communities because of how well it brings people together and the influence it has in promoting people to be kind or "christian". (4) Regarding Israel-Palestine, while I accept that religion plays a big part this conflict is rather unique since religion and ethnicity are intertwined, as well as the two groups having a history of mistreatment in recent times. The vast majority of Muslims are Arabs and pretty much all the Jews are either Hebrew or Yiddish. Tensions are as much about racism between ethnicities as it is about a divide between faiths. Racism is rampant in both groups for the opposing ethnicity. It is noteworthy to also point out that this racism and ethnic divide has exploded since world war 2 between the two groups. Historically, Jews and Muslims have had a relatively good relationship (especially in comparison to europeans and christians). While the Jews were either being banished by the Catalans in Spain or massacred by Hitler, Jews have always been living peacefully in the middle east until the British handed over the Mandate of Jordan and Palestine to the UN which was poorly handled and led to a conflict between the two sides as they were unhappy with how the land was divided. Racial hatred and religious discrimination was in fact brewed from a poorly handled situation that escalated and got way out of hand. The conflict was actually initially over land; the Palestinians were not happy that the Jews that made up only 25% of the population were handed 57% of the land, including 90% of the fertile land by the UN. So in fact the conflict originated over a dispute between land, religious divide and racial tension developed and grew over time, not just in the Levant but in the entire Muslim world. (5) In regards to your rebuttal of my point, the point i was making in that statement as i have already mentioned is that terrorist attacks are not half as fueled my religion as it is over the dissent caused by western troops.