"Religion is not basically responsible for war, but the people who are responsible for war recognize that if they can push the right buttons, and get religious people on board, that once a person's emotions are involved in it, and they believe they're doing the right thing that just thing, they will kill and be killed in the name of what they believe to be their faith.

In reality, they're doing something that is on behalf of the collective group they come from, and in particular, in a class society in which we live today, the particular class that is deciding on the war."

"...the sacrifice [in war] has to be for a purpose and it somehow has to be a just purpose. Religion then end up trying to give some meaning, justification, and moral purpose to death. Religion really can't be separated from war because it's always in a certain sense, I won't say necessarily drug into war, but it's very closely connected with it.

people continue to believe that they they're witnessing to the truth of their faith and that that the truth of their faith is a universal faith. But what they don't recognize easily, and that they don't want to recognize, is that they are at the same working or fighting and dying on behalf of their collective group, the well be the well-being of their collective group."

"What's going on behind the scenes that leads all of these major world religions at one time or another even though in peacetime they talked peace peace peace in wartime they usually talk war war war... that's the background to my current interest in the universal characteristics of holy war."

"the Methodist Church knows that if I were to drink alcohol that I can't be a good Christian and, they didn't quite say it, but it meant that I couldn't go to heaven when I died. So they understood about alcohol, tobacco, or premarital sex but when it comes to it a question of should I as a Christian rightfully kill hundreds thousands of my fellow human beings or should I not as a Christian, they said either one is okay." Brian