No doubt, because they are states. All it takes to establish that is to observe that Islamic minorities in non-Islamic states do not kill all of those people. In other words, statehood is a requirement for those killings; Islam isn't.

A religion is more violent in proportion to its entanglement with the state, given that the state has the monopoly on [so-called legitimate] violence. In the Islamic tradition (which is not to say that there are no Muslims nowadays who disagree with that tradition), the state is supposed to be "Islamic".

If we focus on the contrast between Christianity and Islam, this is one of the main distinctions between the Christian and the Islamic worldview (I'm comparing the traditional views here). Christianity took some centuries to develop political thought and to explore the interaction between the Church and the State, since the founding documents (Gospel + Epistles) are very neutral on the subject of "what the state should look like". Islamic founding documents are not neutral in that regard.

If we look at the matter from a more universal viewpoint, looking at other religions as well as C+I, we see the correlation doing well -- the more entangled the religious institutions and the state institutions, the more violent the religion (i.e., the more willing it is to use the power of the state to enforce its tenets), and the more violent are the reactions to that religion. We can look at Hindus x Buddhists in India, or at Communism x Islam+Christianity in China, for example.

The real problem with violence is at the level of the state, not of religions.

The expression "Proof of God" refers to some literary productions, the most famous of them being the arguments for the Prime Mover (Aristotle's "Metaphysics") and Aquinas' Five Ways (Summa Theologica). Whether one calls these items proofs, arguments, demonstrations, or something else is a secondary point.

Taking Aquinas' versions as the most well-developed example, let me meditate a bit on the "proofs of God":

1. They are not "proofs of the divine" -- they attempt to prove One God, not the existence of gods.
2. This means that they are an elaboration, a development of a prior experience, one which is not conveyed by the proof itself.
3. In other words, the goal of the proof is to effect a change in the interpretation of an experience. The proof does not and cannot work if the experience itself is not acknowledged, and much less if it is absent.

Another way to say this: proofs of God, if taken as instruments to "demonstrate to an unbeliever the existence of God", are clearly circular, since they start from premises which take for granted the numinous experience, which is precisely what is absent from the unbeliever (either because he never experienced it, or because he does not acknowledge it, or because his interpretation of it is so much at odds with the language of the proof that the work of translation remains undone).

The best possible result (and it is a clearly possible result) in a dialogue between a proponent of a Proof and an unbeliever is the demonstration that the rejection of the numinous experience leads to incongruence, in the intellectual level, and to very problematic consequences in the pragmatic level. In effect, the rejection of the core premises of the Proofs (such as, the idea that we can derive conclusions about distant causes from present effects; the idea that observation is reliable; the idea that infinite regress in its many forms is irrational) leads to problematic philosophical stances.

That is a good job for a Proof of X. But it is not the same as proving the existence of God. At best, it proves (by reductio, in a convoluted way) the existence of the numinous.

It also can be said that the most competent proponents of Proofs (incluing A & A) clearly knew about all of this.

Yes, but we still can distinguish between fiction and history; there is some ingredient that is present in one and missing in the other (and, or, vice versa).

I'm still using you guys, shamelessly, as the fuel for my reflections on the topic. Right now I've reached the following conclusions:

1. The "common trait" between all histories involves the sense of consubstantiality of being ("everything is interlocked").
2. That said, histories are different (compared to one another) because of the freedom of the historian to pick and filter subjects, events, data, all of the stuff he uses when writing his history.
3. In other words, a history is a creation of a historian who, being limited in being (he was born, he will die, he is not omnipresent, he has to carry the burden of his ethnicity/upringing/culture/politics/etc.), will always present a subjectively distorted viewpoint.

(3) is not a criticism. (I'm all for subjectivity). In a strange way, there is a great affinity between history and the "hard sciences" in that both are forced to slice up reality in pre-defined ways, according to the intention of the historian/scientist. And both are similar in that this slicing of reality often obscures itself, and then the thinker (and, often enough, many of his readers) becomes mystified by his own efforts, concluding that his product is "reality" (or, close enough to "reality" that the distinction makes no difference). In both cases, this is clearly mistaken because it ascribes some omni-trait to a limited being.

There remains the question of why should a historian ever decide to write a history.

Well, productivity is swell, of course, and nowadays we have much less to fear from wild animals, the occasional thunderstorm, etc. But there are still tremendous superhuman forces lurking around (many of them have been created by the advancement of technology), and much more than 99% of all humans still need some shelter. It's not just a Rolling Stones' song.

Nations and other social constructs (such as -- to take the discussion into a completely different direction -- monasteries) will be required as long as people need shelter. The dream of the bios theoretikos among like-minded friends, good family, in an affluent position, is nothing more than a limit towards which our most intelligent members aim at. And it will be so for some centuries at least, in my appraisal.

Take a look at the old Stoic conception of the cosmopolis (the universal polis). That was the first conception of a citizen detached from local political entities. However, in my not humble opinion, the last 2,000 years of history have shown that universal citizenship is a concept for the very, very few. Most of mankind requires, in an absolutely necessary way, some kind of shelter from the superhuman forces (cosmic, social, political, historical, economic, psychological) governing human life as we know it. The detachment of cosmopolitarianism is inaccessible for that enormous majority of people. Is this bad? I'm not in the business of judging the workings of the universe, but I lean towards answering "no" on account of my natural optimism.

There are two meanings to the expression "the history of X":

1. The series of events
2. The [literary -- though we may imagine a day in which it will be cinematic, or use some other medium] product presenting the series of events.

We call both of these meanings "the history of": "Have you read the history of X?" "in the history of X, R and S happened before we got where we are".

Microhistories are a good hook. StreetlightX mentioned the history of salt. What is "the history of salt"? It is a series of events, and a book. What links both meanings is the intent of an author; someone saw a reason to write a book about the history of salt. (I haven't read it, but I have little doubt that it must be interesting!).

As discoii mentions, there can be no objective account of history, for many reasons. One of them is that the selection of facts (the so called "series of events") proceeds according to biased viewpoints. Another is that the presentation of these facts is also biased. And even the reader is biased. But the concern here is not bias, it is about the identification of what it is about. The history of salt is not about salt; it is about our interest in salt. As Borges would say, there are infinite histories which have not been written and which will never be written, because no one -- not a single human being -- will identify that particular series of events as being meaningful to the extent that it spurs the writing of a history.

So, to sharpen up the concern that led me to the OP: what is it that leads people to write histories of X? This is a personal decision; in theory, the historian has absolute freedom. But there must be some common trait or traits between salt, clothing, mammals, France, science, the West, the Universe and childhood; these are the stuff about which histories are written of.

The answer certainly points up to some movement of the historian's being towards the preservation (or, the bolstering up) of something cherished. People write histories because (a) they thing the subject is meaningful, (b), they want other people to know about it, and (c) they think that, by telling other people about it, they are participating in the life of the subject. The historian creates and enters the history he writes.

There is more to be said, but I'm not sure what. It's a meditation in process around here (in my mind). I don't know where it will lead.

Howdy, at least here I can be Mariner.