Why do ppl say religion is deadly when athiesm killed 100 mil in 20th century?

Question

You know how people are always saying "organized religion only causes bloodshed and wars" rah rah rah and stuff like that? Well, did anyone notice last century that athiesm or organized "nonreligion" killed around 100 million people? communism was a logical result of athiesm and evolution, by the way. How can people be this hypocritical about things?

If you people scream for sources, here's one for ya: http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/COM.ART.HTM that one of the answers has already posted down the way a bit.

Here is a table that compares low, median, and high possible values of communistic murders. http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/COM.TAB1.GIF

As you can see, communism killed at the very least 40 million people in the 20th century alone. the highest estimate for all the killings done by Christianity in all the previous 19 centuries is 20 million. You see how much different the number is? 20 mil in 19 centuries vs. -maybe- 40 mil in 1 century.

read "what if jesus had never been born" for a look at what communists have actually done. the author cites his sources if you would like to research further

Answer 1

Amen brother!!!! I keep saying this.

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Most atheists ignore Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao Tseng when quoting their statistics on religious wars. And I noticed that someone tried to dodge the issue by say Mao worshiped himself, so technically he was not an atheist. What a load!! Atheists are hypocrites (just as they keep accusing others of being).

And yes, Communists murdered people and sent them to prison exactly because these people refused to give up their beliefs in God, so the guy who said that atheists may have killed people, but no one has killed in the name of atheism is incorrect. These people are delusional.

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For those who asked for citations and proof:

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...With this understood, the Soviet Union appears the greatest megamurderer of all, apparently killing near 61,000,000 people. Stalin himself is responsible for almost 43,000,000 of these. Most of the deaths, perhaps around 39,000,000 are due to lethal forced labor in gulag and transit thereto. Communist China up to 1987, but mainly from 1949 through the cultural revolution, which alone may have seen over 1,000,000 murdered, is the second worst megamurderer. Then there are the lesser megamurderers, such as North Korea and Tito's Yugoslavia.

Obviously the population that is available to kill will make a big difference in the total democide, and thus the annual percentage rate of democide is revealing. By far, the most deadly of all communist countries and, indeed, in this century by far, has been Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot and his crew likely killed some 2,000,000 Cambodians from April 1975 through December 1978 out of a population of around 7,000,000. This is an annual rate of over 8 percent of the population murdered, or odds of an average Cambodian surviving Pol Pot's rule of slightly over just over 2 to 1.

In sum the communist probably have murdered something like 110,000,000, or near two-thirds of all those killed by all governments, quasi-governments, and guerrillas from 1900 to 1987. Of course, the world total itself it shocking. It is several times the 38,000,000 battle-dead that have been killed in all this century's international and domestic wars. Yet the probable number of murders by the Soviet Union alone--one communist country-- well surpasses this cost of war. And those murders of communist China almost equal it.

Figure 2 shows the major sources of death for those murdered under communism and compares this to world totals for each source for this century. A few of these sources require some clarification. Deaths through government terrorism means the killing of specific individuals by assassination, extrajudicial executions, torture, beatings, and such. Massacre, on the other hand, means the indiscriminate mass killing of people, as in soldiers machine gunning demonstrators, or entering a village and killing all of its inhabitants. As used here, genocide is the killing of people because of their ethnicity, race, religion, or language. And democide through deportation is the killing of people during their forced mass transportation to distant regions and their death as a direct result, such as through starvation or exposure. Democidal famine is that which is purposely caused or aggravated by government or which is knowingly ignored and aid to its victims is withheld. ...

Answer 2

100 million? Just where did you get this number? "non-religion" does not mean one is an Atheist.

Not being hypocritical... but this sounds like you got the info from the same place that some witches get the "9 million people were killed by the church during the inquisition"... yet history shows that there were, at the very most, only 100,000 killed during the inquisition.

I'm leery of anyone who just throws out #'s of those killed without providing any real back-up for that #. And, if you look real close at history, things like the Inquisition, Crusades, etc... were done in the name of Religion. I don't recall ever reading about how a group of Atheists went on the rampage in a local town, screaming "there is no god!".

So this looks more like you're just trying to show Atheism in as bad of a light as Religion has gotten itself in... and I just don't see how you can make that one work.

Answer 3

Hello, Look, most wars are fought over material gain, territorial disputes and in the 20th century, political ideology in combo. Even on a micro scale between people like you and me, I have seen people killed for ripping people off, getting involved in drugs, screwing around in others marriages but never for going to their mosque, synagogues or Cathedrals. Cheers, Michael Kelly PS - Japan had a very nasty human rights abuses and high death tolls for their enemies in the 30's and throughout WW II.

Answer 4

"communism was a logical result of atheism and evolution" And I bet on another day you will say the exact opposite, that social darwinism is the logical result of atheism and evolution, and still believe that that is perfectly logical.

Fundamentalist religion is deadly because it is one of the major sources of the us and them mentality, the dehumanising of the other group, in human society. When times turn bad, and resources appear limited, the animal within us pushes us towards hatred of the 'outside' group. Whether it's devastated 1930's Germany, Turkey in WW1, a collapsing Yugoslavia, poverty stricken Cambodian farmers, a medieval town after the harvest is poor, or Rwanda. To deny evolution is to deny the fact that there is an animal within us, and therefore to ensure that someday, somewhere it WILL take us over.

Sure, fundamentalist religion isn't the only source of dehumanising hatred, ethnicity and class are there too. But only by examining ourselves with eyes wide open can we defeat the demons within us. Evolution is true. Deal with it for the sake of humanity.

Answer 5

It is interesting how these atheists rushed to attack the number of 100 million. Perhaps they never heard of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.

The most oppresive regimes in the world today are officially atheist: North Korea and China. Communism (Atheism's political doctrine) was oppressive and violent wherever it existed.

There are very few wars that have been based directly on religion. Palestinians oppress Zionist occupation not because the Zionists are Jewish (many Zionists/Jews are atheist also), but because they occupy Palestine and oppress the people.

Atheists are only interested in attacking religion. They cannot hide their hatred.

Answer 6

Follow this logic for a moment. Darwin gave intellectuals a basis to believe in natural, biological creation. Google evolution fact or fiction. The fossil record is a fact. However, no one can prove how "new" genetic code was created, or how the original building blocks of biology came into existence. This "how did it happen" part of evolution is purely a hypothesis, accepted on faith, even today.

Why is this a problem? In the mid 1800's, Darwin's hypothesis of purely biological creation led to godless political philosophies that have been and are the most oppressive that have ever existed. The Nazi’s were given a scientific justification for ethnic cleansing (Jews), and many nations use this justification today. The godless Marxists eliminate (kill) capitalists and (kill) believers and (kill) anyone else who gets in their way to create a dreary and oppressive “society”. Open your eyes, would you like to live in Cuba or North Korea, or during Stalin's programs and Mao's revolution. 10's of millions of people suffered and died. I deeply fear Godless societies.

Yes, fanatical believers do exist, and they are empowered when they gain political power. That is why religion must be kept out of politics, to prevent the zealots from having control, who do not follow the basic message of religion. The message of God is to love God with all your heart, and love others as you love yourself. That is a good message, and it is not a message of oppression.

Here is why this is so important. Philosophically, since God is a creator, he created each of us for a reason. Thus, each of us are unique, and have a god given purpose for life that we need to achieve whether janitor, lawyer, doctor, actor, quarterback, whatever. This aligns with the sanctity of human life. Thus, government should protect each of our individual rights and allow each of us to find our destiny (i.e., Bill of Rights). This aligns with a society that believes in a creator and freedom of religion. That is a good thing. Belief in a creator is vital to the health of a society.

Here is my test for you: when you have a child, just look in their eyes and tell them they are a random quirk of nature and in the grand scheme of nature, their life is meaningless. I dare you. Yet, that is the intellectual dead-end of a godless society, if we are just random quirks of nature.

By the way, how did the brain get programmed for eyesight. To accept 2 images, combine them, to provide near instant assessment and response, millions of lines of unbelievably brilliant genetic code, how did that happen. We could put 1000’s of genius's to work on this today for 10 years, and they would not be able to figure out how to do that today. Not only is there no randomness, there is unimaginably brilliant creation involved.

The fact is that orgainized religion has been a force for good in the world. However, when it gains political power, it can be and has been a force for oppression, as bad as a godless society.

The answer is that a creator exists and this helps philosophy. However, you cannot prove which religion is the right religion, it is a choice. Thus, freedom of religion must be a central tenent of a society.

That said, I'm on your side. Ignore the beating you will take on this question.

Answer 7

The number is completely spurious as others have said.

But what is more wrong is the lack of thought about causality. Just because someone who is christian murders his wife does not mean that he murdered here BECAUSE he was christian. As far as I am aware there have been no wars where the unbelievers (in the sense of having no supernatural beliefs) rose up to massacre believers IN THE NAME OF UNBELIEF but there are plenty of examples the other way round.

Answer 8

If you want to play the numbers game I think Christianity will come off worst. For centuries the church was the instigator of crusades, persecution and inquisitions against anyone who didn't adhere to their perverse ideology.

Answer 9

Tell me the only atheist which mass murdered was mao ze dong but he believed that he was god and maoism or something was hes religion ;O?

Idk if he counts as a atheist but he worships himself

Answer 10

I'm not surprised you're making this stuff up. After all, you're only following in the footsteps of those whose made-up stories YOU'VE chosen to believe.

But I see that you're not refuting the statement about religion being deadly. You're merely making a pitiful attempt to retaliate; in essence you're saying "yeah, my religion is deadly, but so is yours! Neener neener neener!"