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Originally Posted by Ledgem
I think that the point Vexx was making here was that war or other acts that resulted in human suffering have been caused by religion. War is war, but a war caused by religion is very unfortunate. It seemingly goes against what religion in general was created for (unless you're a skeptic who claims that religion was made to enslave the minds of people). When a religion declares that all non-believers are free to be hunted and killed, it's essentially declaring that these non-believers aren't human. I think it's a very important piece of history to make note of. Understanding the values of the religion is one thing, but understanding how a religion can be twisted for such horrible acts is something that many people fail to see. Unfortunately that's clearly obvious given modern world events. The Christian Crusades may be hundreds of years old by now, but today we're witnessing the Islamic Jihad. In both cases, the actions that are occurring were not sanctioned by the religion itself.
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That's all well and good, but not the point I was making. Ancient Judaism was never set up to where one could go around slaughtering innocents because they were declared "infidels." They moved in and conquered Canaan, yes, and you can argue their reasons for that, but after they acquired their nation, they did little slaughter outside of the wars that all nations are subject to over the decades.
If you read the Law of the Hebrews, one of the chief commandments is to treat aliens with respect and love, specifically because "you were once aliens in Egypt." (That's paraphrased, mind you) My point is that, as a religion, Judaism (which eventually offshot into Christianity) was a religion whose commandments taught kindness to those unlike yourself, not to slaughter them like animals.
As I said, war is war. People die in war for whatever the reason, but Judaism never taught to go on random raiding sprees to kill off non-believers.