WHY DO ATHEIST PHILOSOPHIES THAT DIFFER NEVER GO TO WAR WHILE RELIGIOUS ONES DO?

A thought: You never hear of atheists making bitter factions among themselves and persecuting one another. Religionists though are infamous for doing these things.

Another thought: Tolerance is a big virtue these days. It is insulting for it implies putting up with something undesirable. Religious tolerance means one religion merely stomaching the others that disagree with it. There should be no religion as there is enough around to test our tolerance without it adding to the problems. Religion, like a lot of things that are going around, is inherently sectarian. Intolerance always starts with repressed hatred as signified by tolerance. Ecumenism is just snow over the manure heap. Its good effects cannot last.

Christian doctrine says we are all connected in Jesus so if somebody murders we are all part of the problem, we are all to blame and we are all sinners. The terrorists and the political movements that support them adore this message for it makes them feel good about what they do.

Steven Weinberg, 1999, in Washington, D.C. said, "With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion. "

Freeman Dyson countered this with: "And for bad people to do good things—that takes religion."

Weinberg, one of the greatest minds of all time, was right. If we can behave well without religion and if religion gets good people to do evil then religion should be scrapped. To belong to it is to uphold a machine that opens the way for good people to start doing evil.
 
Dyson's reply is worthless. It is not true that religion gets bad people to do good things. It is not true that religion is ever essential for doing that. Bad people doing good because of a religion means they are still bad inside. If that is the greatest compliment Dyson can cough up then it's really an argument against religion. Also, the impulse to do good for if we are evil we will invite destruction and be targets of hate needs to be seen as the prime or ultimate reason why bad people become "good".

Religionists say problems such as hypocrisy, hatred, violence and intolerance are human problems and should not be labelled as religious problems. That implies society can be bad but religion is never bad. That is nonsense for religion claims to be a kind of society and community.
 
The big fact about pacifism is that it is intending to die and let others die at the hands of human monsters to let them rule the earth. Not surprisingly, most people are not pacifists. So it is plain that war is necessary. But nothing that encourages the divisions and suspicions and quest for power that causes war should be tolerated. War then is a hateful necessity. It is to be avoided at all costs except when there is no other way. God religion admits that it seeks world domination and wants everybody converted to its tenets so this automatically makes it dangerous. It carries the seeds of war. Even if this were not the case, people have far too many excuses to wage war and look down on other nations as it is, never mind with religion making an input. You cannot be a member of religion without intending to contribute to division and provoking others to disparage you in some degree so to join a religion is to make fertiliser for war.
 
The clergy of religion are exempt from fighting in war. They cause war by serving religion and causing people’s faith in it and they are the ones who don’t have to go and fight. They embody the worst of pacifism and warmongering.

Benevolent genocide?

There are stories that godless tyrants raged in anger against God before they died. But what if they felt they were better off killing people than letting them live under such a God? It does not matter if a tyrant is forced to permit evil and suffering or wills them positively. The tyrant is still a tyrant. So it is with God.

If one thinks one has lost everything and has nothing left to lose that can lead to extremist actions - particularly when you are an aging demagogue.
 
Latent faith and war
 
Some people hope their religion is true. They may not realise that they barely believe. Some don't believe but keep trying to. Hope always drives warmongers but it also drives people of peace. People of peace know that it is better to work for peace than war. It takes more hope to drive warmongers than people of peace. Such hope would need to arise from a latent or internalised and undetected feeling that the supernatural is on their side.
 
Nobody wants war - even the belligerent don't want it but think it is needed. In terms of commonsense, war is so scary and mad that deep down you would only wage it if you thought some supernatural force maybe a god wants it and sanctions it and will bring good from it. You think the odds of winning with divine help are sufficient. War and faith are inseparable. You would not fight in war unless you thought - even if you claimed to be atheist - that somehow you will be safe even if you die and that a Heaven awaits then if not for you then for your people.
 
Religion says that your faith is shown by your works. James in the Bible says that faith without works is dead and useless and that faith works and its presence is detected by good works. If an allegedly atheist regime wages war and acts like it has strong faith that it will triumph and the bloodshed will be worth it then it is showing its faith in God by its works. There is a difference between atheist in your deeds and in your theory. Many atheists are probably latent believers in God. If they feel something will protect them and lead them to triumph in war then they are an example of the dangers of belief in God. They are not an example of real atheists.

Peace as the mere lack of war

Christianity will see war as the absence of peace in the light of the doctrine that God is so good that evil is not real but is just good in the wrong place and time.  Evil is just good that lacks something.  Evil is the absence of good.  Health is not just the absence of sickness.  What use is having no sickness?  You want to feel wonderful as well!  Health is both the lack of sickness and on the positive side, a sense of wellbeing.  Peace is more than just a condition of non-violence or the absence of war. It is more than just not being at war. Seeing peace that way means that even when violence happens it is only a symptom of an illness that is there. It is not the problem but the sign of the problem.  This prevents diagnosis and softens the opposition to war that it deserves.  It's subtle permission.  It's lacking hope of real peace.  That sense of war being inevitable is too negative and hinders real peacemaking and conditions society and the next thing predictably it ends up at war.  It prevents proper healing in the aftermath of war.  We see now why any peaceful believers in God must be held to blame in some way for bloodshed.  They add to the problem and denying makes them a thousand times more culpable.
 
Finally
 
Christianity and Islam and Judaism are the biggest offenders in the religious war-mongering stakes both in terms of their history and what they call divine revelation.  They war-monger in the retrospective sense by approving of how their God commanded violence and war in the holy books.  Find the exit door.