- Feb 25, 2018
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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.
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.