The horrendous death tolls in Iraq, mainly of Moslem Sunnis and Moslem Shiites, should not have come as a surprise. Here is a list of the majority of wars in only the last 100 years. In every case, the opponent was of another religion or of a different sect: India-Pakistan; Timor; Sri Lanka; Kosova; Israel-Palestine; Northern Ireland; Algeria; Nigeria; Sudan; Cyprus; Bosnia and now Iraq.

I'm sure that rational persons (most of us, I'd like to believe) realize that war and religion have been intimately intertwined since the advent of organized religion, even if we would like not to believe it. We remain quite ignorant as to why this is so. An Israeli psychologist, George Tamarin, decided to investigate. He presented to 1,000 Israeli children (ages from 8 to14) the account of the Battle of Jericho from the Book of Joshua. You may recall that Joshua led the Israelites in the destruction of Jericho, along with the killing of all the men, women and children therein.

Then Tamarin asked the children: "Do you think that Joshua and the Israelites acted morally rightly or wrongly?" Sixty-six percent said they totally approved; 26 percent totally disapproved.

As a control, Tamarin gave another group of the equivalent ages the same biblical text, but with Joshua's name replaced by "General Lin" and "Israel" replaced by "a Chinese kingdom 3,000 years ago." Only 7 percent approved and 75 percent disapproved. In other words, if loyalty to Judaism was removed from the equation, the vast majority of the children agreed with the moral judgment that most of us would arrive at.

Chaim Potak, a famous Israeli historian, pointed out that prior to the one-God theory the world had very little problem with religion. Gods were very numerous so that when two groups intertwined a few more gods more or less was no big deal. However, once the One-God religions came into being the horrific antagonisms began.

Theodore Theodorsen