Comments on: Deaths over history: religious vs. nonreligous

By: bob

bob — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 22:19:08 +0000

LOL THAT IS FUNNY :)

By: bob

bob — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 22:17:33 +0000

can someone give a simple answer! with muslim deaths, christian deaths, and total number of deaths

By: Greg Shenaut

Greg Shenaut — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 18:32:03 +0000

My particular interest stems from the Pope’s recent comment about healing the “wounds caused by atheism” in the former Soviet Union. I found this remark extremely hypocritical for several reasons: he ignored the entire question of “wounds caused by religion”; he ignores the fact that in general, anti-clerical movements, including bolshevism but also including other movements such as French Republicanism, form in reaction to abuses of religion. In effect, their goal has often been precisely to heal the “wounds caused by religion” by substituting atheism, an effort which while it has definitely helped in quite a few instances, has also gone really, really bad in others. The pope also ignores the very relevant fact that, as pointed out in the comments here, religion is often used as an excuse to commit wars and other atrocities. By itself, it is likely that religious differences alone would have caused only a fraction of the abuses attributed to religion. And this also works in reverse: only a fraction of the abuses in the “atheist” Soviet Union are due solely to the desire to suppress religion, there are a raft of political, ethnic, and economic factors that are much more important. It is also important to point out that in the context of totalitarian Communism, atheism was only a small aspect of the ideology. In a fashion somewhat similar to the anticlericalism of the French revolution, which stemmed from the fact that the Church was the primary ideological base on monarchism, the anticlericalism of the bolcheviks was tied to the religious abuses of the tsars. In both cases, atheism was a reaction to and a recognition of the fact that the church was the direct, explicit enemy of the revolution, and that the revolution could not survive unless the power of the church was destroyed. However, this doesn’t mean that Communism or Republicanism = Atheism, that would be a very false equivalence.

By: anon

anon — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 02:34:03 +0000

this

By: Arandur

Arandur — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 00:38:31 +0000

And the distortions continue. In addition to the time scale problem already noted, the blogger claims casualties for ALL “religious” wars and attributes them to Jesus. Rubbish.

Of course, most wars, even if religion is cited, are fought for primarily political/economic/statist reasons. Islam’s Jihads are a major exception.

Even if we were to accept all these wars as primarily religious, and if we don’t accept defense as a valid motive, seems only some of those wars could be attributed to the Christian side. It’s also unclear what stats are being used; often numerous death tolls are referenced, and these often vary hugely (even by a magnitude of 100 times). Knowing a fair bit of European history, I know that a great deal of those numbers are hugely distorted. As was pointed out earlier, one really need only take a look at population statistics to get the first inkling that something is wrong.

A more accurate comparison can be made in more recent history. It’s also rather more interesting to compare the questions of violence done by each religion in comparison to the size of its population. I would include Atheism as a religion in this matter, in which case you’d have to chalk all the massacres due to communism and militant socialism (Russia, China, Cambodia, Vietnam, Cuba, Nazi Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, Franko’s Spain, etc.). That list alone is staggering, giving the lie to the idea that Atheism is somehow more peaceful than religion. That’s especially true when you’re talking about modern conditions–modern Atheism is vastly more violent than any religion with the possible exception of Islam. It’s past isn’t glamorous, either (Ghenghis Khan as the “Scourge of God” routinely slaughtered whole cities, man, woman, and child).

By: Why are you an Atheist today? - Religion and Philosophy - Page 10 - City-Data Forum

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 18:57:01 +0000

[...] [...]

By: John USA

John USA — Wed, 27 May 2009 03:09:52 +0000

LOL – You compare a less than decade of Hitlerian war and 70 years of Communism with 8,000 years of recorded history?

Almost every war is essentially tribal war, anyway. It’s just that some are fought using God as a justification.

By: raddoc

raddoc — Mon, 25 May 2009 12:59:44 +0000

Amen Brother!

Did I just type that….?

LOL

By: phillydrifter

phillydrifter — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 10:04:18 +0000

It’s true. Religion causes hatred of those different than thou.

There is no god. Get over it. Think for yourself instead of blindly following beliefs held by primitive people who thought everything in the universe revolved around us.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 22:44:59 +0000

I’m not sure what you mean by the median count. For religious deaths, I took the totals listed on the site provided in the post (http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstatz.htm#RelCon). That site’s bibliography is here (http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstats.htm). For deaths from “secular” conflicts, including communism – the two World Wars, etc. – I used death counts from WikiPedia, which are noncontroversial.