Bit of a data dump, but I believe its important to destroy this fallacy once and for all.
The three volume
Encyclopaedia of Wars lists 1,763 wars as having been waged over the course of human history. Of those 1,763 wars, only 123 have been categorised as being religious in nature
(which is 6.98%).
The remaining wars were caused by the following reasons
- Independence
- Territorial gain
- Economic gain
- Civil Disturbances
Furthermore, if you were to list the top 10 wars in terms of recorded casualties, you will again find that none were related to religion.
62,000,000 - World War II (1939-1945)
36,000,000 - An Lushan Rebellion (756-763)
30,000,000-60,000,000 - Mongol Conquests (13th century)
25,000,000 Manchu conquest of Ming China (1616-1644)
20,000,000-50,000,000 - Taiping Rebellion (1851-1864)
17,000,000 - Timur Lenk's conquests (1370-1405)
15,000,000 - World War I (1914-1918)
10,000,000-25,000,000 - Second Sino-Japanese War (1931-1945)
5,000,000-9,000,000 - Russian Civil War (1917-1921)
3,800,000 - Second Congo War (1998-2004)
There are plenty of things you can use to attack religion and religious people, but mass killing on a genocidal scale is not really one of them. In fact some of the cruellest and most vile mass murderers in history were self proclaimed atheists (or Paganists).
Joseph Stalin - 42,672,000
Mao Zedong - 37,828,000
Adolf Hitler - 20,946,000
Chiang Kai-shek - 10,214,000
Vladimir Lenin - 4,017,000
Hideki Tojo - 3,990,000
Pol Pot - 2,397,0003
Do we therefore conclude that atheism is evil or are broad brush generalisations only applicable to religion?
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