You're honestly an incredible revisionist if you somehow think religion hasn't been the fault of wars, gross injustice, sexism, sexual repression, and every other conceivable atrocity several times in human history.
*sigh* ZeaLitY, careful. Please don't go making gross claims of revisionism, especially as you are NOT an historian. Thought will back me up on this one, as will the vast majority of mainstream historians throughout history. Since you are in the minority in that viewpoint amongst the scholars, it is that, more than anything, that must logically be claimed revisionism.
Or, let's look at it another way. Revisionism means something has been altered, that the view was one way and people have attempted to change it. Now, as far as I have ever seen reading historical documents, almost no one ever considered religion to be a primary cause of wars. Herodotos didn't; Thucydides didn't.
I am baffled, actually, at how you can make this statement which, really, would not hold up in academic circles. It might be your own view, but you must remember, those who insist that Atlantis was a real place also complain about the 'revisionist' historians that understand how foolish they are being. Now I'm not saying this out of any sort of religious agenda, but it's simply 'fact' (which I put into quotations as any query into history is by neccessity biased by the observers... we really can't have entirely objective history.) But as close as we can get, your argument holds no logical grounds, is not accepted by any real portion of historians. I don't see how you can be so adamant in it.
See, it is true that such things occurred, but to place it on the shoulders of religion is taking a simplistic and skewed approach, putting forward a thesis and finding only those facts which agree with you... a decidedly unscientific approach. There is no evidence for this. That is, you can say 'well, where there was religion, there was this.' But that's not a solid argument. Where there was atheism, there was that, too. Just because two things exist coincidentally hardly means that one proceeds from the other.
Sufficed to say, for as much as this may anger you, religion is by no means the cause of all those things. I will grant you that it might be argued to be a co-conspiritor... that is, where those things arose, religion also was present. Yet such a claim then is that religion and oppression are children of the same social factors, rather than one the cause of the other. Now I will grant that there have been holy wars, and wars over religion. That is undisputable. But that religion is neccessarially the cause of these things is absolute hogwash, and an entirely unscientific statment. The very fact that those things have arisen for reasons of racism and myriad other causes show that religion alone does not cause it, and as such the root of them lie in something different. Oppression existed under Greek democracy as well, heck, each of those things you mentioned existed and in cases were sanctioned by it. That alone is a logical death-knell to your argument. For your argument to hold one must proceed one from the other, which it doesn't.
So honestly? As at least partially an historian (which, ZeaLitY, you are not), I am not the revisionist, nor is any other in saying this. As a professional in a nearly allied field (that of literature, in which at least the ancient history is recorded), you are the gross revisionist in holding that. And I have at my side just about every reputable and respected scholar. And don't bring up the likes of Dawkins... he's a scientist, not an historian. What, would you expect Kagan to suddenly start spouting off about biology? Hardly.
So look again at the concept of revision. It means something has been rewritten. And yet I'm looking at texts older than anything you can possibly read, and yeah, what I say is not the revision. It is indeed easy to throw that word around, but really consider... are you only saying it because it is contrary to your world-view? What are your own biases on this? Because you must certainly have them. We all do. Consider that maybe your objectivity is very clouded.
After all, and here's perhaps the strongest argument against what you said. This concept of 'cause' is extremely outdated. I don't think such simplistic causal models of cultural progression are much used anymore. In some ways, to speak as you do is decades behind the times. That's perhaps the main problem with what you say. It's as though you were trying to make a statement about modern physics by appealing to Aristotle's laws. A nice try, and it might win you some followers amongst the layman, but amongst the scholars it holds little strength.
As to the changes of who killed Goliath, that may well be. I can't pick the verses off hand, but I have read them before. As I recall, it's difficult to sort out things like 'brother of Goliath' or what not, but all the same, those stories do rest in somewhat legendary grounds.
