Have atheist societies killed more people than all the religions combined?

Question

The single largest killer in all of human history is, by far, atheistic Communism with a total of 110,000,000 … over 1/3 of all people ever killed! If we add to that number just two other regimes where religion of any sort was strongly discouraged, Nazi Germany and Nationalist China, the number rises to 141,160,000. Almost 50% of all the killings in human history were committed in the past 100 years by regimes that either actively promoted atheism or strongly discouraged religion. We have not considered the over one billion abortions, where Christianity seems to be particularly unwelcome. When the murders of history are tallied up, it is very clear that atheism is the most dangerous philosophy ever embraced by humanity.

http://theroadtoemmaus.org/RdLb/21PbAr/Pl/DthByAthsm.htm

Scholars estimate that the Crusades of the middle ages cost from 58,000 to 133,000 lives. The most realistic figure for the Spanish Inquisition puts the total killed from AD1480 to AD1808 at up to 31,912. Finally, records indicate that the number of witches killed may be over 30,000. Some argue that records don't tell everything and suggest that maybe even 100,000 were killed. These three events, totaling over 264,000 killed, are thought to be the largest atrocities perpetrated by one or another form of Christendom.

Alucard you said the Japanese were atheist also, it's estimated they killed 30,000,000 people.

Eric Von Cartman the killing by the South American tribes were as bad as people believe, it was all performed by one king during a 50 year period. Aztec history claims that Ahuitzotl (1468-1502), who preceded Mocteuzma II as king, sacrificed 20,000 people.

Here is a web site that show all the estimates for every war, religious killings, murders, abortions even the number of dogs and cats euthanized.

http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstatx.htm#Japan

Answer 1

Many people have killed people for different causes. That is not acceptable behavior by God.

Answer 2

A few things.

The Nazis weren't atheistic. Hitler was openly Catholic and constantly said he was doing the Lord's work by exterminating the Jews. The Nazi party was heavily tied to the Catholic Church. In fact, why do you think Hitler chose to exterminate the Jews? Because they were the ones who put Jesus to death?

As far as "communism" goes, the reason so many died wasn't because of atheistic ideals. Rather it was dogmatic despotism and tyranny, which have happened before and will happen again, not because the tyrant is atheist or secular, but because he/she is a tyrant.

Explain how atheism is a dangerous philosophy? Explain how atheism is a philosophy? Atheism is the belief there is no god. That's all. Nothing more. How does that, in and of itself, have anything to do with the cruelties people inflict on each other?

So, let's flip the coin, shall we? Should we start from the beginning of history and tally up the dead who died due to religious beliefs? Should we count all those burned at the stake by the Inquisition? How many died on the many different Crusades? In terms of abortion, how many of those are there compared to the number of miscarriages, which, in a religious view, would be god aborting fetuses? How many have died in natural disasters?

Of course, I don't regard the fact of religious violence as being a rebuttal to belief in god. All it is indicative of is that people commit violence against each other in the name of Something, some ideal that is supposed to be more important than anything else in the universe. That, my friend, is the problem.

Answer 3

Hitler was a Christian. I don't know why they keep pushing this bullshit that he was an Atheist.

Communism is at its truth is a utopian society where there wouldn't be all that death and destruction. Real world political communism is just a tool of oppression that used as an excuse the writings of Karl Marx. They are only "atheist" because they don't want to share the power with the churches.

You know what the most Atheistic societies are? Japan, Neatherlands, Norway, Switzerland, Belgium, and you know what they are? Ranked as the top nations in the world.

Answer 4

Sophistry! Throughout history, governments have done all sorts of nasty things. First, when people in power want to kill people, they'll use anything they can to justify it. If they can get people to do it with religion, they will. If not, they'll use other methods. To say that these killings had anything to do with Atheism is poppycock. Communists governments kill people to keep power pure and simple.

Second, the population of Earth for the past Century of so is many times higher than it used to be and technology is a lot better at killing people now than ever. So, you can only really look at what modern major powers have done to kill people.

Third, you've failed to mention all of the atrocities that Christian governments have done. The Inquisition tortured to death lots of Jews, Muslims and people accused (usually by neighbors who wanted to steal their land) of witchcraft. There was a two hundred year period (from about 1550 - 1750) dubbed by historians as the Witch Craze in which many, many people were killed and usually tortured beforehand because they had been accused of "witchcraft". Finally, there were the Crusades, in which more people were killed.

I talked with an East Orthodox bishop about all of this and he pointed out that self-proclaimed "Christians" and "Muslims" fight what they call "holy wars" (Christians call them Crusades, Muslims call them Jihads). They literally fight wars and kill people BECAUSE of their religious beliefs. My friend the bishop said that he considers "holy war" thoroughly blasphemous. Christianity is a religion of peace. He noted, however, that non-Judeo-Christians (I'm including Islam in the term "Judeo-Christian" for simplicity sake), historically, don't fight "holy wars". Non-Judeo-Christian governments may fight wars (border disputes, conquests, etc.), but they don't rationalize them with religion. The only difference this bishop saw between "holy wars" wars and non-Judeo-Christian wars is that the non-Judeo-Christians are more honest about it.

But, what I think you're failing to understand is that individuals, religious or non-religious, may have all sorts of ethics. Ethics are separate from religion. Aristophanes (the ancient Greek Comedian) was a pre-Christian Athenian opposed to Athen's imperialism. French existentialists faught in the French Resistance against the Nazis because they believed that people should be good even IF resistance proceeds essence (that is, they believed that there either is no God or that God may be something people experience psychologically but who isn't real at any essential level). They weren't trying to be good out of any fear of Hell or because they were following any book, they just believed that the world would be a better place if everyone was good.

So, I think there are some major problems with your conclusions. First of all, you're being reductionist. That's bad scholarship. You're trying to find out which belief about the Divine causes the most deaths. What you fail to realize is that these deaths you speak of are caused by governments and are totally separate from religious belief. You also seem to be thinking of Atheism as a religion. In fact, different Atheists believe different things. There is a range from the very worst to the very best. But then, that's true of members of religions as well. So, while the data you have is that Communist and Nazi governments had the largest number of people killed in modern history, you're conclusions based on these facts are based on faulty logic. You're trying to create a correlation between an absense of belief in God and killing people where there is none. The correlation is in fact between dictatorial governments and killing people.

I think the reason you're doing this is because, for whatever reason, you're biased against Atheists and that bias is clouding your logic.

Answer 5

first of all, Nazi Germany was christian and who said communism is atheist? and abortions is apposed and supported by all and not sepearated by faith.

and if you believe in christianity, you are just another person driving the religion to the dirt.

(btw, you also need to show the death toll for religious people too for a valid argument)

Answer 6

don't forget about the Aztecs, Incas, Rome, Egypt, the Vikings, and so on.....they all killed for their religions whether it was to appease the sun god or some other

Answer 7

Sorry, religion still wins. You better go a little further back in history.