New Statesman | John Gray: is religion to blame for history’s bloodiest wars?

http://www.newstatesman.com/2014/09/lambs-slaughter

Conventional distinctions between religious and secular belief pass over the role that belief itself plays in our lives. "We are meaning-seeking creatures," Karen Armstrong writes wisely, "and, unlike other animals, fall very easily into despair if we fail to make sense of our lives." We are unlike our animal kin in another way. Only human beings kill and die for the sake of beliefs about themselves and the nature of the world. Looking for sense in their lives, they attack others who find meaning in beliefs different from their own. The violence of faith cannot be exorcised by demonising religion. It goes with being human.

---Steve