War and the Warrior Spirit in Modern & Ancient Religion: Greek God Ares (Mars)

Agnosticism / Atheism

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Agnosticism / Atheism

Greek Mythology: Ares / Mars

Ancient Greek Mythology, Religion, Art

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Ares was the Greek god of war - or, more specifically, the god of fighting spirit. This would appear to have nothing whatsoever to do with modern religions because people today all worship loving, just gods and want nothing to do with religion which promotes warfare, violence, or fighting - right? Don't be too quick to jump to such assumptions. If warrior and fighting gods filled an important and valued religious niche for humans in the past, how likely is it that we've changed that much?

The ancient pantheons fulfilled a variety of social and personal needs, most of which continue to exist in people today. Modern people have to find ways to fulfill those needs in modern religions, and this often means investing monotheistic religions with some of the attributes of ancient pantheons. If we look more closely at some of those ancient gods, we can find a lot of surprising similarities between those gods and the gods people believe in now.

All cultures have had warrior gods who have embodied the spirit of violent action. In a religion like Christianity, there is a presumption that there is but one god and that this deity has nothing to do with wars - but such a presumption would be inaccurate. The Christian god, for example, was given a lot of the attributes of Germanic warrior gods because the Germanic tribes wouldn't convert so easily to a religion without some warrior backbone. Even today, there are regular efforts by male Christians - especially in America - to imbue God and Jesus with "masculine" qualities which inevitably include elements of violence, decisive action, war, etc. All are sharply and explicitly contrasted with "feminine" qualities of love, peace, kindness, etc.

Most Greek gods were very similar to their Roman counterparts, but Ares is an unusual case. Whereas the Roman god of war, Mars, was honored the Greek Ares was looked down upon. This was reflected amongst the gods themselves: his own parents, Zeus and Hera, hated him. Because Ares represented all of the worst aspects of warfare, battle, and slaughter, worship of him was not very common or extensive in Greece. The situation with Ares helps illuminate the error behind the common assumption that belief in a god is necessarily accompanied by loving and worshipping that god.

This assumption is often seen with Christians whose religion does combine these elements. This assumption is likely what lies behind the popular myth that atheists must hate God along with disbelieving in God. Ares, however, helps demonstrate that a person can believe in the existence of a god, and even believe that this god wields significant power, but not also feel any urge to worship or respect this god. Being a "god" does not automatically entitle an entity to respect, honor, worship, or love.

The nasty attributes of Ares should be contrasted with the warrior goddess Athena who represents more rational and orderly aspects of warfare. Ares does, in fact, often take the opposite side from Athena in various conflicts - for example, during the Trojan War. A curiously similar duality has developed even in Christianity. For many, the Old Testament god has been one of wrath, vengeance, and warfare — there are numerous stories in the Old Testament of this god ordering the slaughter of large numbers of enemies. The Jesus of the New Testament is commonly thought of as the embodiment of love, but at the same time he is regularly associated with violence — though instead of the general warfare of conquest and expansion, it's violence on behalf of religious theology and purity.