Who has killed more "of their own" from 1066-2007: Jews, Muslims, Christians, secularists, or atheists?

Question

Do you consider France's role in the Napoleonic Wars to be secular or atheist? Do you consider the Franco-Prussian war to be secular or atheist? WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq?

There were over 3,000,000 killed between France, Britain, Germany, and America in WWI alone.

Answer 1

One ends up trolling through the weeds with this question, unfortunately, particularly in determining who is a secularist, how they differ from an atheist and if a religious person kills indiscriminately, (be they Jew, Muslim or Christian), are they really a religious person? For the purpose of answering this question, let’s consider secularists as religious people who simply want religion removed from the daily operation of their government and take a murderous religious person at their word when they say that they are who they are.

Let’s start with world leaders. Stalin killed far more of his own people than any other ruler in history; no one even comes close to him. But while he may very well have been an atheist, there is little evidence to suggest that the majority of his victims were. Stalin’s reign ended less than forty years after the Russian Revolution, that’s not a lot of time to breed out faith. And under the Tsars, Russia was a hyper-religious country; the first wave of the Great Enlightenment missed a lot of the Slavic countries in Eastern Europe. Mao would be next up and his case has a similar problem as Stalin. Hitler would probably be third and his case is even more difficult.

I suppose the problem with the question is that real secularists didn’t really exist until the previously mentioned Great Enlightenment and hard-core atheists have always been a distinct minority, even to this very day. In both cases you end up with a very small population available to kill. The only totally atheistic countries I can think of are a few of the former Soviet Republic countries in Asia, I think I heard of one where its mainly culturally Muslim population didn’t even know how to do their 5 daily prayers.

If it’s a choice between the three religions mentioned, Christianity is clearly the answer. It’s interesting why you picked 1066 to start off with, because it is the start of the low Middle Ages? Well add up all the wars, baby genocides and other assorted fighting and I’d say it’s quite clear. After all, Christianity was and is the majority religion from 1066 to 2007 in terms of numbers, plus the nations with the most destructive weapons have had majorities in terms of Christian populations. Islam in the last 100 years or so has started to catch up but they still have a long way to go.

Now none of the wars you mentioned had a direct religious motivation to them but that’s a totally separate issue from your question. All of the European wars you mentioned were almost entirely made up of Christians killing other Christians.

Answer 2

Rather an unfair question. Secularism and atheism were socially quite unacceptable until after World War 1 (1918). Before that, there may have been lots of people with mainly secular or atheist beliefs, but they wouldn't make other people generally aware of it, so you can't reliably assign their killings to one group or another.

Currently, at the rate that Sunni and Shiite Muslims are enthusiastically murdering each other, they'll catch up with everybody else pretty soon.

Answer 3

Either Christians or Muslims.
Jews have always been a persecuted minority, along with atheists (burned at the stake during the middle ages) and those who didn't conform to catholic teachings during the Inquisition, as well as all the innocent women accused of witchcraft by the church.
Only Christianity and Islam had holy wars, they caused the pointless deaths of millions of people

Answer 4

I don't remember too many of the people who killed each other in Europe in 2 world wars being anything other than Christians. About 14 million. Not too bad for people who believe thou shalt not kill is the word of God.

Answer 5

Actually Mao killed more of his own people than anyone else in history not Stalin.. not that Stalin was not trying hard enough.. its just the Mao had simply more people to kill .. so techinicaly the chinese have killed more of their own people than anyonoe else... but that is becuase they just have more people. Also how do you want to classify the chinese.. were they atheist .. confuscian budist? i do not know.
but the last religious war in europe was the 30 years war.. everything after that was politicaly motivated

Answer 6

Muslims

Answer 7

Either muslim or atheist, I think.

Millions of atheists were killed by Stalin (Russia) and Mao (China), who were also atheists.

Lately, the victims of muslim terrorists have been predominantly muslims as well. Sunni vs. Shiite.

Answer 8

It's probably all kind of equal some where down the line, but I like to think we are all equal no matter what religion were are, it shouldn't matter. We are all still human and we are each others greatest enemy, not our religon.

Answer 9

I'd have to say the humans did.