Sunday, March 21, 2010

Atheism verse Theism: who has killed more

This entry inspired by a recent comment I read from a theist who argued that individuals following “atheistic philosophies were responsible for more deaths than any other group in human history”. Obviously he was referring to the millions who have died as a result of communism in the 20th century. I, of course, reject this notion that there is even such a thing as an “atheistic philosophy"; furthermore I do I consider communism to be synonymous with atheism. For the sake of this discussion, we're going to grant that communism = atheism and make a comparison based solely upon 20th century statistics.


These are just 20th Century conflicts involving 150,000+ fatalities (per http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm ). There are just too many to include conflicts involving less that 150,00 fatalities..


Deaths inflicted by predominately religious nations in the 20th century

First World War (1914-18): 15 000 000

Congo Free State (1886-1908): 8 000 000

Armenian Massacres (1915-23): 1 500 000

Rwanda and Burundi (1959-95): 1 350 000

Ethiopia (1962-92): 1 400 000

Nigeria (1966-70): 1 000 000

Bangladesh (1971): 1 250 000

Iran-Iraq War (1980-88): 1 000 000

Sudan (1983 et seq.): 1 900 000

Kinshasa Congo (1998 et seq.): 3 800 00

Brazil (1900 et seq.): 500 000

Abyssinian Conquest (1935-41): 400 000

First Indochina War (1945-54): 400 000

Colombia (1946-58): 200 000

India (1947): 500 000

Algeria (1954-62): 537 000

Sudan (1955-72): 500 000

Indonesia (1965-66): 400 000

Uganda, Idi Amin's regime (1972-79): 300 000

Angola (1975-2002): 550 000

East Timor, Conquest by Indonesia (1975-99): 200 000

Lebanon (1975-90): 150 000

Iraq, Saddam Hussein (1979-2003): 300 000

Uganda (1979-86): 300 000

Kurdistan (1980s, 1990s): 300 000

Liberia (1989-97): 150 000

Iraq (1990-): 350 000

Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992-95): 175 000

Somalia (1991 et seq.): 400 000

Zaire (Dem. Rep. Congo), Civil War (1997) 250,000

Total: 43,062,000

Deaths inflicted by predominately communist/socialist/"atheist" factions:


Soviet Union, Stalin's regime (1924-53): 20 000 000

People's Republic of China, Mao Zedong's regime (1949-1975): 40 000 000

Tibet (1950 et seq.): 600 000

Cambodia, Khmer Rouge (1975-1978): 1 650 000

Mozambique (1975-1992): 1 000 000

Russo-Finnish War (1939-1940): 150 000

Romania (1948-89): 150 000

Vietnam, post-war Communist regime (1975 et seq.): 430,000

Cambodian Civil War (1978-91): 225 000

Yugoslavia, Tito's Regime (1944-80): 200 000

Total: 64,405,000

Note: These are the total deaths inflicted by communist regimes upon it's citizenry; includes deaths resulting from disease and starvation. Some estimate that this total is lower than the combined total of Native America's killed in the conquest of the Americas and Africans killed in the slave trade (both inflicted predominately by Christians).

Death's suffered in war's involving both “atheist” and “religious” factions:

Second World War (1937-45): 55 000 000

Russian Civil War (1917-22): 9 000 000

Chinese Civil War (1945-49): 2 500 000

Mexican Revolution (1910-20): 1 000 000

Korean War (1950-53): 2 800 000

Second Indochina War (1960-75): 3 500 000

Afghanistan (1979-2001): 1 800 000

Spanish Civil War (1936-39) 365 00

Greek Civil War (1943-49): 158 000

Total: 76,123,000

Note: The significant majority of these dead were communist killed by predominately religious nations. As it turns out, communist tend to die in far greater numbers than capitalists. Many theists wish to blame 100% of these deaths on communists, but this quite simply isn't justifiable. In many instances, the communists were attempting to overthrow overtly evil tyrannies. Of the WW II deaths, only 10,000,000 were inflicted by the Soviets, many in the act of defending themselves from Nazi aggression; meaning that the remaining 45,000,000 were inflicted by predominately religious nations.


Ultimately the deaths inflicted by conflicts in the 20th century are pretty evenly divided between predominately religious and communist nations. Without a doubt, communism was a scourge of the 20th century, though it's understandable why many people sought to replace the tyrannies they lived under with communist regimes...sadly, they often merely replaced one tyranny with another. Of course, it's a total farce to suggest that “practitioners of atheistic philosophies” (still no idea what an “atheistic philosophy” might be) have lead to more deaths than any other group combined. I would argue (and the facts would easily back me on this) that predominately religious nations as a group have massively inflicted far more death in human history than “atheistic philosophies” particularly if the tales of the Old Testament are true...but this is nit picking. Now, the 20th century enjoyed massively higher populations than did an other century (in fact the majority of human to have ever lived did so during the 20th century), so it's not surprising to see that the wars fought during that century inflicted far more casualties (in fact the 55,000,000 killed in WWII alone would have been 1/4th the human population at the time of Jesus). Furthermore, during the twenty century, the devices of war were far more refined and effective...it was just much easier to kill a lot of people in the 20th than any other time. So in most ways, comparing the war dead of the 20th century to other centuries is an extremely unbalanced comparison; however even when you do you still find that predominately religious nations killed about as many people as non-religious nations. The main difference is that almost all non-believers view the past actions of communist regimes as despicable while many theists dream of holy wars to come.

2 comments:

  1. The flaw in your reasoning here is that you are equating obviously Secular States with "Theism".

    ReplyDelete