The rejection of god and religion seems to lead to depraved acts of mass murder

[Nick Young]

The French Revolution
Pol Pot's reign in cambodia
Lenin and the Red Terror
Stalin's regime
Nazi Germany
Cuba and Che Guevera's mass murder of 1000s by firing squad.
Vietnam
Mao Zedong
Kim Jong Il

What do all of these governments have in common? They consciously rejected god and religion. And they have disgustingly high death and murder counts.

Point out the witch hunts and the crusades? I did the math, The Reign of Terror lasted about 8 months, and had a comparable total deathcount to the witchhunts which lasted 200 years.

Everything Hitler and Stalin did blows away anything that happened during the crusades.

Everyone is always saying Jesus is the biggest mass murderer of all time and religion leads to all this bloodshed.

While I can't deny religion has lead to much bloodshed in the past and currently, as it clearly has, atheism and the rejection of god and religion has lead to a much higher level of depravity and murder.

It's hard to argue.

During the crusades both sides had MAX 25k each. Even if all 50k of those died, plus we can throw in 100k civilian deaths (even though the actual number is nowhere near that) that's 150,000 deaths compared to the atheist stalin killing 20 million.

Can anyone argue this correlation?

[raiderfan19]

Zealotry leads to bloodshed. It doesn't particularly matter what direction said zealotry is in.(unless it's pacifism)

[Nick Young]

Zealotry leads to bloodshed. It doesn't particularly matter what direction said zealotry is in.(unless it's pacifism)

Yes.

But atheist zealotry seems to lead to an exponentially higher level of depravity than religious zealotry.

I'm just looking at the raw numbers as an outsider when I state this.

[joe]

I think it has more to do with overcentralized government power, than a lack of religion. A lot of examples on your list support that, as well.

You allow a political position with unlimited power, and eventually a sociopath is going to take it over. It's a guarantee.

The most detailed discussion of the role of religion in the Rwandan genocide is Timothy Longman's Christianity and Genocide in Rwanda.[5] He argues that both Catholic and Protestant churches helped to make the genocide possible by giving moral sanction to the killing. Churches had longed played ethnic politics themselves, favoring the Tutsi during the colonial period then switching allegiance to the Hutu after 1959, sending a message that ethnic discrimination was consistent with church teaching. The church leaders had also long had close ties with the political leaders, and after the genocide began, the church leaders called on the population to support the new interim government, the very government that was supporting the genocide.

[Nick Young]

Yeah, because the Crusades were just pillow fights.

The total death count of all 7 crusades does not even come close to 1 million.

Probably more about 500k TOTAL MAX.

Hitler alone did about 24 times that in 3 years.

What is your point in bringing up the crusades?

[Nick Young]

I think it has more to do with overcentralized government power, than a lack of religion. A lot of examples on your list support that, as well.

You allow a political position with unlimited power, and eventually a sociopath is going to take it over. It's a guarantee.

Death count in the Rwandan genocide, estimated between 500k and 1 million

Stalin did 20 times that.

Your example only serves to emphasize my original thesis.

Also the Tutsi and the Hutu is a racial thing (despite the fact they are racially the same) rather than a religious thing.

[cuad]

Did all these murders happen in the name of athesism?

I mean.

Those governments all had penises. Did they murder in the name of the ***** also?

[Nick Young]

Did all these murders happen in the name of athesism?

I mean.

Those governments all had penises. Did they murder in the name of the ***** also?

Not in the name of atheism. But can you deny the fact that all of the largest genocides throughout human history have been committed by atheist governments, and nothing that any religious government has ever done can compare to them in terms of large-scale death count?

Has a religious government ever had a murder count comparable to the governments of pol pot, mao, stalin or hitler?

There have been other murderous dictators who were religious, but none of them have done anything comparable to what Hitler or stalin have done.

To emphasize this fact, there are also a much smaller amount of athiest leaders and governments throughout history.

[raiderfan19]

I'm religious but the reason the crusades didn't cause more deaths is because there were less people

[Nick Young]

I'm religious but the reason the crusades didn't cause more deaths is because there were less people

Do you compare soldiers who die on the battle field to civilians executed on a mass scale, like for example in the reign of terror?

[Kblaze8855]

Has anyone killed as many people as Japan in and around WW2?

[vapid]

Briefly skimmed, but atheism is a pretty new concept. Religion and government have been intertwined for the most part until the last century or so. So those mass-murdering governments will be more efficient in killing more densely populated groups of people.

[Nick Young]

Has anyone killed as many people as Japan in and around WW2?

yep, his name is Joseph Stalin.

[miller-time]

correlation does not equal causation. there are other factors besides rejecting religion that caused these travesties. most of them come under some type of state fanaticism (which is akin to religious fervent belief) and/or socioeconomic or political disparity.

[Nick Young]

Briefly skimmed, but atheism is a pretty new concept. Religion and government have been intertwined for the most part until the last century or so. So those mass-murdering governments will be more efficient in killing more densely populated groups of people.

Atheism is a new concept, so is government sanctioned large-scale mass murder, which also seems to correspond with the rise of atheist governments.