Is Religion the Leading Cause of War?

I was participating in a discussion on a friend's thread about our social ills as a people. We don't follow traffic rules. Heck, we don't follow rules, period. We tend to pull each other down, instead of helping each other up. We scam our own kababayans  and take advantage of people. Et cetera, et cetera. My friend was claiming that we owe it to our Christian faith to do better as a nation - to which I agreed, although I was quick to point out that the Church is a bastion of sinners, too. We're all works in progress, so to speak.

Let me point out that I also accept the fact that being Catholic means being perfected as the Father is perfect.

Anyway, there was this self-proclaimed atheist who replied -

This guy was insinuating that Ephesians 6:5 meant that Christianity endorsed slavery, while the real context was that St. Paul was trying to tell the slaves of that time (slavery was practiced in the Roman Empire, remember your history!) to love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, so to speak. Nothing different from what Christ has taught. So I said this, and he replied:

What the ________ did I just read there?

Did he seriously say that the writers of the Bible were 'prehistoric writers'?

First, a quick look at the dictionary:

pre·his·to·ry  (pr-hst-r)

n. pl. pre·his·to·ries

1. History of humankind in the period before recorded history.

Woah! Let's take a look at what Wiki has to say.

Prehistory

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For a timeline of events in the early history of the universe and prehistoric Earth, see Timeline of prehistory.

t e

Prehistory (meaning "before history", or "before knowledge acquired by investigation", from the Latin word for "before," præ, and historia) is the span of time before recorded history or the invention of writing systems.  

Prehistory therefore means that time before there was any writing system involved. Therefore, a prehistoric writer is an oxymoron. Laugh trip!

 Anyway, he continued his tirades against religion.

These are common arguments that we Catholics should know how to debunk very easily. In my case, whenever I see a good article that proves a point or would make a good defense on the faith, I bookmark it. I happen to have bookmarked a comprehensive article debunking his claim that people kill because of religion, but first -

Having said my piece, I gave him these: 

 I left the thread a few more comments after I cited my source:

If you want to see that book, just go here. 

Take note that I post this for posterity, and not to make fun of any atheist out there, as I even charitably blotted out his name and picture. I posted this to encourage everyone to learn more about their faith. God bless us all.