The fallacy of saying religion causes violence.

JerseyChristianSuperstar

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Among atheists and anti-theists, there is perhaps no greater card they like to pull out in their petulant crusade against religion than the idea that religion supposedly inspires people to commit gruesome acts, or has been the most frequent instigator of violence in history.

Thomas Paine, an anti-clerical Deist, alleged in Age of Reason that "the most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion."

Sam Harris, one of the New Atheists, alleged in The End of Faith that religious faith is "the most prolific source of violence in our nation's history."

It sounds like a good argument: if this country is really built on religious, and particularly Christian, values and religion improves people's morality, why has it been the cause of the great majority of violence in our planet's history?

The only problem? It's not true. Not even close to being true.

Scholars Charles Philip and Alan Axelrod, in their 2004 work Encyclopedia of Wars, surveyed the recorded warfare of mankind throughout history. They did a total of 1763 wars, going back thousands of years.

They found that less than 7 percent of all these wars had religion as a central cause, meaning over 93 percent of wars in our history has not had a religious cause.

By contrast, atheism, and its twin sisters anti-theism and anti-clericalism, have been responsible for much of the bloodshed during the 20th century, as reliably documented.

For example, Stalin's Russia, the USSR, was an atheist regime that deliberately sought to stamp out church influence, persecute believers, bishops, pastors and priests, resulting in the martyr of 12-16 million Christians during the USSR's decades-long reign of terror.



The newspapers were all too happy to distribute anti-religious propaganda, and promote scientific atheism, and dozens of churches, synagogues and mosques were burned down, and more than 85,000 Russian Orthodox Christian priests were shot and killed in 1937 alone, according to Maelstrom of Memory by Yakovlev. The ones who weren't shot on sight were sent to labor camps or died in the gulags.

I could also point out the anti-Christian hostility of the majority of Nazis in Hitler's circle (including Hitler himself), the million Polish Catholics killed in the Holocaust, the clergy and nuns who were killed in the camps or just shot, etc.

Indeed, Hitler said that Christianity was "absurdity" and "humbug"; Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's Propoaganda Minister, wrote that Hitler "hated Christianity" in his diaries, which was confirmed by the Table Talks, private transcripts of Hitler's meetings with some confidantes.

So, there you have it.
 

Nithavela

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I agree, religion is not that often the origin of violence. It's just the tool the perpetrators of violence use to silence their conscience.
 
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JerseyChristianSuperstar

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I agree, religion is not that often the origin of violence. It's just the tool the perpetrators of violence use to silence their conscience.

As I have already demonstrated, the vast majority of the perpetrators of violence on this planet's history have had non-religious motives, and did not attempt to justify their brutality in the name of religion. Indeed, in many cases they actually targeted religious institutions, seminaries, churches and believers, with murderous consequences.
 
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Nithavela

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As I have already demonstrated, the vast majority of the perpetrators of violence on this planet's history have had non-religious motives, and did not attempt to justify their brutality in the name of religion. Indeed, in many cases they actually targeted religious institutions, seminaries, churches and believers, with murderous consequences.
And yet they always returned to the church, either to find vindication or forgiveness.
 
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JerseyChristianSuperstar

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And yet they always returned to the church, either to find vindication or forgiveness.

The vast majority of these murderers did not return to the church, as many of them belonged to pagan and other non-Christian religions, as well as the fact they believed in violence, murder, and greed, not faith, religion and God.

The church has never vindicated the violent acts done in the name of religion (which, again, accounts for less than 7% of all wartime violence), except maybe the First Crusade, which was justified as us Christians were responding to four centuries of Muslims pillaging and stealing Christian lands, Jerusalem in particular, not to mention killing fellow Christians.

See here: OBAMA INSULTS CHRISTIANS

Here is how Princeton scholar and Islamic expert Bernard Lewis puts it: “At the present time, the Crusades are often depicted as an early expansionist imperialism—a prefigurement of the modern European countries. To people of the time, both Muslim and Christian, they were no such thing.” So what were they? “The Crusade was a delayed response to the jihad, the holy war for Islam, and its purpose was to recover by war what had been lost by war—to free the holy places of Christendom and open them once again, without impediment, to Christian pilgrimage.”
 
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durangodawood

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Yeah. Most violence isnt directly religion motivated, like ISIS or earlier Christian inquisition events were.

But religion always seems to be there, validating the motives and practices of the warring parties. This goes for godless religions too, like revolutionary utopian state communism.
 
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essentialsaltes

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Wars are inherently political violence -- It may not be the best proxy for all violence.

It seems clear that neither Paine nor Harris were talking about war, so their arguments can't be dispelled by using war as evidence.
 
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Kaon

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As I have already demonstrated, the vast majority of the perpetrators of violence on this planet's history have had non-religious motives, and did not attempt to justify their brutality in the name of religion. Indeed, in many cases they actually targeted religious institutions, seminaries, churches and believers, with murderous consequences.

The problem is the short-sighted definition of religion. If you say religion is about believing in a god, then we still have plenty of war and subjugation from religious justification of a pre-manifest destiny mentality.

Western Imperialism alone was a major violent agenda that lasted centuries in AD. The dead natives and "property" aren't counted as casualties of war when they are taken over and subjugated in the name of a god.
 
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Kaon

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Yeah. Most violence isnt directly religion motivated, like ISIS or earlier Christian inquisition events were.

But religion always seems to be there, validating the motives and practices of the warring parties. This goes for godless religions too, like revolutionary utopian state communism.

Yes, godlessness (literal atheism, or some forms of paganism) can certainly be a religion - and often is.
 
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durangodawood

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Yes, godlessness (literal atheism, or some forms of paganism) can certainly be a religion - and often is.
Atheism itself cant be a religion. Its utterly lacking most of the components we require to call something a "religion".

But atheism certainly can be an aspect of a religion.
 
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Kaon

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Atheism itself cant be a religion. Its utterly lacking most of the components we require to call something a "religion".

But atheism certainly can be an aspect of a religion.

Religion is a set of beliefs and faith. Atheists have the NULLITY of faith, and NULLITY of belief - still in the set of religious elements.

But, more importantly atheists believe in EGO, which may not be deified in the atheists immediate mind, but if you think YOU are the master of your universe, you have accepted yourself as your own god.

Science is a religion; you have a set of beliefs and faith (theorems, theories, postulates, axioms and proofs). The force and knowledge itself is the higher entity. People are the laity; scientists are the priests. Notable scientists are the biships and archons. And, the most heralded scientists of the time would be the Vicor of the Force. People just don't sit down and think about it that way - which is why it is easy to get an atheist scientists to revile a creationists even though both are psychologically bound to the same chains of religion. Or, people just deny that post modernism is a philosophical arm of past religious crusades determined to be unprofitable. Our "enlightened reason" is actually primitive intellectual exploitation.

How can you say something is stupid? No one can, unless that one admits that one's faith in understanding is supreme - that one knows everything enough to eliminate the possible, and identity the ludicrous. We sell ourselves short by putting our faith in reason and logic, while at the same time claiming we have no faith, or follow no religion.


There was religion before there were "gods". The elements and nature were the belief system before the world gained enough insight to realize there may be more.
 
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FireDragon76

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Among atheists and anti-theists, there is perhaps no greater card they like to pull out in their petulant crusade against religion than the idea that religion supposedly inspires people to commit gruesome acts, or has been the most frequent instigator of violence in history.

Thomas Paine, an anti-clerical Deist, alleged in Age of Reason that "the most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion."

Sam Harris, one of the New Atheists, alleged in The End of Faith that religious faith is "the most prolific source of violence in our nation's history."

It sounds like a good argument: if this country is really built on religious, and particularly Christian, values and religion improves people's morality, why has it been the cause of the great majority of violence in our planet's history?

The only problem? It's not true. Not even close to being true.

Scholars Charles Philip and Alan Axelrod, in their 2004 work Encyclopedia of Wars, surveyed the recorded warfare of mankind throughout history. They did a total of 1763 wars, going back thousands of years.

They found that less than 7 percent of all these wars had religion as a central cause, meaning over 93 percent of wars in our history has not had a religious cause.

By contrast, atheism, and its twin sisters anti-theism and anti-clericalism, have been responsible for much of the bloodshed during the 20th century, as reliably documented.

For example, Stalin's Russia, the USSR, was an atheist regime that deliberately sought to stamp out church influence, persecute believers, bishops, pastors and priests, resulting in the martyr of 12-16 million Christians during the USSR's decades-long reign of terror.



The newspapers were all too happy to distribute anti-religious propaganda, and promote scientific atheism, and dozens of churches, synagogues and mosques were burned down, and more than 85,000 Russian Orthodox Christian priests were shot and killed in 1937 alone, according to Maelstrom of Memory by Yakovlev. The ones who weren't shot on sight were sent to labor camps or died in the gulags.

I could also point out the anti-Christian hostility of the majority of Nazis in Hitler's circle (including Hitler himself), the million Polish Catholics killed in the Holocaust, the clergy and nuns who were killed in the camps or just shot, etc.

Indeed, Hitler said that Christianity was "absurdity" and "humbug"; Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's Propoaganda Minister, wrote that Hitler "hated Christianity" in his diaries, which was confirmed by the Table Talks, private transcripts of Hitler's meetings with some confidantes.

So, there you have it.

War is not the only kind of violence inspired by religion.
 
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FireDragon76

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Wars are inherently political violence -- It may not be the best proxy for all violence.

It seems clear that neither Paine nor Harris were talking about war, so their arguments can't be dispelled by using war as evidence.

No, they are talking about the pogroms, persecutions, and bigotry that religious creeds can inspire.
 
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FireDragon76

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What causes violence is violent intolerance & hatred, of the form which secular extremists constantly blast others with ?

Secularists aren't generally intolerant people, but they want to be shown plain reasoning in ethics, not appeals to tradition.
 
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Sketcher

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Secularists aren't generally intolerant people, but they want to be shown plain reasoning in ethics, not appeals to tradition.
Secular extremists however, are intolerant, and believe that their intolerance is good.
 
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FireDragon76

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Secular extremists however, are intolerant, and believe that their intolerance is good.

Or perhaps they are tired of Christians assuming a place of unwarranted and unjust privilege in society.
 
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