God and Terror

Given what we have said about "God and Political Science" and "God and Democratic Diplomacy," we should note the downsides to global religion. Religion is a great source of war and violence in the world. Indeed, both religious terrorism and religious civil war have increased markedly during the same forty-year period in which religious democratizers expanded. Here, too, the religious were empowered by globalization, technology, and, in general, modernity. This may seem to be a concession to the secularization thesis. After all, the folks known as the "neo-atheists," Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, claim that where religion persists, it is violent and irrational. But things are more complex than that.