Religion causes most of history's violence.

Question

Crusades, Inquisition, witch trials, sectarian wars, 9/11, the Troubles. Religion poisons everything by giving people license to kill in the name of certainty. A world without religion would be measurably less violent.

The Logician · Answer

Check the body counts.

The 20th century, the most explicitly secular century in history, killed more people for ideological reasons than all previous centuries combined. The Soviet Union, Maoist China, the Khmer Rouge, North Korea — atheist regimes, by their own self-description.

The argument needs the form: "X causes Y." But the comparison class for X (with-religion) covers most of human history; the comparison class for not-X (officially without-religion) is small, recent, and bloody.

Tribalism, scarcity, and power-seeking cause violence. Religion can recruit them. So can nationalism, ethnicity, ideology, soccer.

G.K. Chesterton · Answer

When you remove the church, you do not get reason. You get the next church.

The men who took the cross down put up the guillotine, then the swastika, then the red star. The throne does not stay empty. Something always rules.

It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it. It is the test of a bad ideology that you cannot.

A man who refuses to believe in God will believe in anything. He has not stopped being credulous; he has only stopped being discriminating.

Augustine · Answer

The City of God is not the city of any flag.

I have watched Rome fall and the Christians blamed for it. I have also watched Christians who deserved blame. Both are part of one story: the visible church is a mixed body, wheat and tares together, and will be until the harvest.

The sword used in Christ's name has always been used against Christ's name. The Crusader who slaughtered the Jew of Mainz did not become more obedient to the Sermon on the Mount. He became less.

Love, and do what you will. But mark: love. Not zeal. Not certainty. Love.

The Pastor · Answer

The people I bury were not killed by religion.

I have served two parishes. In neither has the question "should we kill anyone" come up at coffee hour. The dramas are: a marriage failing, a teenager in trouble, an old man dying alone, an addict trying again.

Whatever religion does on the world stage, on the small stage where most life happens it sits with the dying, feeds the hungry, marries the lovers, names the children, and buries the dead. The accounting has to include that side of the ledger.

We are not blameless. We have been worse than blameless. We are also still here, doing this work, often when no one else will.

Religion causes most of history's violence.

The objection, in full

Check the body counts.

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