ABSTRACT
In Chapter 10 the relationship between religion and violence is discussed while a tentative answer is provided to the dilemma of whether belief in a divinity necessarily spawns incendiary human feelings. The chapter commences with the sacrifice of Iphigenia, the mythological self-destruction compensated by the divinities with victory and prosperity. Every tradition, as will be clarified, is inspired by a notion of numinous terror, although explanations of the use of violence cannot be narrowly theological. The chapter also engages with the debate about our ‘secular age’, arguing that state violence can contain a powerful religious core, expressed through sacred killings which survive and reinvent themselves, becoming modern virtue guided by clean, clinical and technological murder. After some brief observations around the evolution of martyrdom, the chapter addresses the issue of how faithless individuals, groups and states can in reality adhere to their principles in a very religious fashion
