War Analysis

[achilles12604]

During my debate with Confused, the topic of religious wars and violence came up. I took the most liberal, anti-religious numbers I could (so as to counter any bias I had) and analyzed all the major wars for the last 1000 years. Here are my results.

Sam Harris wrote the following regarding beliefs and their impact on human atrocities.


These are mere words - until you believe them. Once believed they become part of the very apparatus of your mind, determining your desires, fears, expectations and subsequent behavior. There seems, however, to be a problem with some of our most cherished beliefs about the world: they are leading us, inexorably, to kill one another. A glance at history, or at pages of any newspaper, reveals that ideas which divide one group of humans from another, only to unite them in slaughter, generally have their roots in religion. - page 12

I of course find this hard to believe. Therefore I am undertaking an endeavor to uncover the accuracy of this statement. Using as many sources as I can, I will attempt to identify the wars, slaughters and suffering recorded by mankind since 1000 AD. I will then categorize these events by "cause by or associated with religion" and "Caused by other than religion". For simplicities sake, I will only include incidents with more than 5000 people dead. I am also including all conflicts between Israel and other Arab nations in with religious even though many of the wars are political in nature. Thus if there is any bias, it is towards Harris position, not against it.

Religious

Aztec Human Sacrifice 1487 Dead: Unknown (Average 36,000)
Sati suicides 1900-1988 Dead: 62,400
Aztec Human Sacrifice 1400-1600 Dead: 2,000,000
Witch Hunts 1450-1700 Dead: 40,000
Henry VIII executions 1509-1547 Dead: 72,000
Russian pogroms 1881-1922 Dead: average 160,000
India-Pakistan Partition -1947-1948 Dead: average 900,000
Genocide of Chinese Muslims 1857-1873 Dead: average 3,000,000 (Violence BY atheist against religion)
Second Intifada 2000-2007 Dead: 5,000
Democides of Nazi Germany 1933-1945 Dead: 26,00,000 (left in religion despite the fact not all the deaths had anything to do with religion)
Ustashe genocide 1941-1945 Dead: 550,000
Bangladesh/Pakistan partition 1971- Dead: 1,600,000
1982 Lebanon War 1982 Dead: 18,500
Yom Kippur War 1973 Dead: 15,000
War of Attrition 1968-1970 Dead: 11,000
Six Day War -1967 Dead: 22,000
Israeli War of Independence 1948 Dead: 20,000
Kosovo War 1996-1999 Dead: 16,000
Indo-Pakistani War - 1971 Dead: 23,000
Knights of Malta-Ottoman War - 1565 - Dead: 40,000
Kashmiri insurgency 1989-2006 Dead: 70,000
Bosnian War 1992-1995 Dead: 100,000
Great Turkish War -1683-1699 Dead: 220,000
Lebanese Civil War -1975-1990 Dead: 150,000
Crimean War -1854-1856 Dead: 300,000
Wars of the Three Kingdoms 1639-1651 Dead: 500,000
First Sudanese Civil War -1955-1972 Dead: 500,000
Second Sudanese Civil War -1983-2002 Dead: 1,000,000
French Wars of Religion -1562-1598 Dead: 3,000,000
Thirty Years' War -1618-1648 Dead: 5,500,000
Saddam Hussein Kurds 1986-1989 - Dead: average 112,000
Timur the Lame -1369-1405 Dead: 17,000,000
Taiping Rebellion 1851-1864- Dead: 35,000,000
World War 2 1939-1944 Dead: 36,000,000 (split between the two evenly due to multiple causes)

TOTAL: 133,930,900




Not religious

Chinese Massacre of Tibettian independence 1959 Dead: 87,000
La semaine sanglante 1871 Dead: 30,000
228 incident 1947 Dead: 30,000
Romanian Peasants revolt 1907 Dead: 11,000
March 1st movement 1919 Dead: 7,500
Japanese Suicide (Battle of Saipan) 1944 Dead: 8,000
Japanese Suicide (Battle of Okinawa) 1945 80,000
Thuggee 1300-1890 Dead: 2,000,000
Nine major famines under the British East India Company 1630-1857 Dead: 16,000,000
25 major famines under the British Raj 1858-1943 Dead: 35,000,000
Famines in China under Chinese Communist Party led by Mao Zedong 1959-1962 Dead: 30,000,000
Famines in the Soviet Union, under the leadership of Joseph Stalin 1932-1933 Dead: 8,000,000
The Dirty War 1976-1983 Dead: 30,000
Cuba Political Oppression 1959-2007 Dead: about 20,000
Haiti Political Oppression 1964-1971 Dead: 30,000
Reign of Terror 1793-1794 Dead: average 30,000
South Africa concentration Camps 1899-1902 Dead: average 38,000
Vlad III the Impaler 1448-1462 Dead: average 70,000
Democide of Tibetans 1950-2007 Dead: average 700,000
Harrying of the North 1069-1070 Dead: 150,000
Ethnic cleansing of Circassians- 1763-1864 Dead: 300,000
Democide Uganda 1971-1979 Dead: 300,000
Taiwan under Japanese rule 1895-1945 Dead: 400,000
Anticommunist purge 1965 Dead: 500,000
Leopold II of Belgium 1877-1908 Dead: Average 9,500,000
Arab slave trade 800-2000 Dead: average 12,000,000 (left in non-religious due to wiki quote)
Imperial Japan's occupation of Asia 1930-1945 average 18,000,000
Atlantic slave trade 1600-1900- average 33,000,000
Democide/genocide of Native Americans 1500-1900 15,000,000
Political repression & Great Leap Forward 1949-1975 Dead: average 50,000,000
Khmer Rouge 1975-1979 Dead: 2,000,000
Armenian genocide 1895-1923 Dead: 2,000,000
Rwandan genocide 1994 Dead: 800,000
Darfur conflict -1994-2007 Dead: 400,000 (placed in non-religious due to politics, and same religions)
Depopulation of Australian aborigines 1788-1888 Dead: 225,000
Efrain Rios Montt 1962-1996 Dead: 200,000
French Revolution 1793-1796 Dead: average 300,000
East Timor 1975-1990 Dead: 150,000
Genocide in West Papua 1961-2006 Dead: 200,000
War of 1812 1812 1815 Dead: 16,000
Malayan Emergency 1948-1960 11,000
Mau Mau Uprising 1952 - 1960 Dead: 50,000
Croatian War of Independence 1991-1995 - Dead: 18,000
Nagorno-Karabakh War 1988-1994 23,000
Sino-Vietnamese War -1979 Dead: 30,000
Turkey/PKK conflict 1984 2007 Dead: 30,000
First Sino-Japanese War 1894-1895 Dead: 40,000
Second Chechen War 1999-2007 Dead: 70,000
Finnish Civil War 1918 Dead: 36,000
War of the Pacific 1879-1884 Dead: 40,000
Mahdist War 1881-1899 Dead: 44,000
Greek Civil War 1944-1945 Dead: 45,000
Wars of the Roses -1455-1485 Dead: 50,000
First Chechen War -1994-1996 Dead: 130,000
Angolan War of Independence -1961-1974 Dead: 52,000
Nicaraguan Rebellion 1972-1991 Dead: 60,000
Sri Lankan Civil War 1983-2007 Dead: 68,000
Shining Path insurgency 1980-2007 Dead: 70,000
Second Boer War -1898-1902 Dead: 75,000
El Salvador Civil War 1980-1992 Dead: 75,000
Indonesian National Revolution 1945-1949 Dead: 140,000
Thousand Days War 1899-1901- Dead: 100,000
Algerian War of Independence -1954-1962 Dead: 550,000
Gulf War 1991 Dead: 50,000
War of the two brothers 1531-1532 Dead: 550,000
Chaco War -1932-1935 Dead: 105,000
Algerian Civil War 1991-2007 Dead: 180,000
Eritrean-Ethiopian War 1998-2000 125,000
Winter War -1939 Dead: 530,000
Russo-Japanese War 1904-1905- Dead: 150,000
North Yemen Civil War 1962-1970 Dead: 150,000
La Violencia 1948-1958 Dead: 240,000
Franco-Prussian War 1870-1871 190,000
Guatemaltec Civil War - 1960-1996 Dead: 200,000
Sierra Leone Civil War 1991-2000- Dead: 200,000
Liberian Civil War -1989-2003 Dead: 220,000
Ethiopian Civil War- 1974 1991 Dead: 750,000
Philippine-American War -1898-1913 Dead: 750,000
Burundi Civil War -1993-2006 Dead: 300,000
Mexican Revolution 1910-1920 Dead: 1,100,000
Bangladesh Liberation War 1971 Dead: 2,500,000
Russian-Circassian War 1763-1864 Dead: 3,000,000
Continuation War 1941 Dead: 371,000
War of the Triple Alliance 1864-1870 Dead: 800,000
Ugandan Civil War 1979-1986 Dead: 500,000
Angolan Civil War 1975-2002 Dead: 500,000
Eritrean War of Independence 1961-1991 Dead: 570,000
Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 Dead: 750,000
Somali Civil War -1988-2007 Dead: 550,000
Congo Civil War 1991-1997 Dead: 800,000
Rwandan Civil War 1990-1994 Dead: 900,000
Seven Years' War 1756-1763 Dead: 1,000,000
Mozambique Civil War -1976-1993 Dead: 1,000,000
American Civil War 1861-1865 Dead: 970,000
Nigerian Civil War 1967-1970 Dead: 1,000,000
Iran-Iraq War -1980-1988 Dead: 1,000,000
Chinese Civil War 1928-1949 Dead: 5,000,000
Afghan Civil War 1979-2007 Dead: 1,700,000
Shaka's conquests 1816-1828 Dead: 2,000,000
Vietnam War -1945-1975 Dead: 4,000,000
Korean War -1950-1953 Dead: 3,000,000
Napoleonic Wars -1804-1815 Dead: 10,000,000
Second Congo War 1998-2003 Dead: 3,800,000
Russian Civil War -1917-1921 Dead: 7,000,000
World War I 1914-1918 Dead: 15,000,000
Second Sino-Japanese War 1931-1945 20,000,000
Ming Dynasty -1616-1644- Dead: 25,000,000
Mongol Conquests -1207-1279- Dead: 45,000,000
World War 2 1939 1944 Dead: 36,000,000

TOTAL: 439,032,500

[McCulloch]

Things are not ever that neat and tidy. For example, you entered the Spanish Civil War into the non-religious column, yet one of the most brutal factions in that war were the ultra-religious Carlistas. Carlism believed in the Catholic Faith as a cornerstone of Spain, and sought to re-establish Church control over Spanish society.

[QED]

I don't think our vocabulary is equipped with words that would do justice to the absurdity that is aggression due to differences in religious ideology.

Are we going to argue that 133,930,900 deaths as a direct consequence of arbitrary ideas are somehow the lesser of two evils? For this to have the faintest hope of working we need a bigger number that is deaths that would otherwise have been prevented had the aggressors practised religion.

The "non-religious" wars you've listed are not giving us the total numbers of deaths that have occurred due to people having no religion -- find these numbers and a case may be made that religion is the lesser evil. I would dare to say that the great majority of the wars you have listed were fought despite religious convictions on both sides. Also, can we point to any crisis in which religion can be identified as having an active role in preventing significant conflict?

Any argument that religion does more good than harm seems to me to be on very shaky ground -- but then I may be missing your point here.

[achilles12604]

Things are not ever that neat and tidy. For example, you entered the Spanish Civil War into the non-religious column, yet one of the most brutal factions in that war were the ultra-religious Carlistas. Carlism believed in the Catholic Faith as a cornerstone of Spain, and sought to re-establish Church control over Spanish society.

Alrighty. What would you list as the major causes of the spanish civil war? Not what some section of the war included, but the over all major causes of the war.


Show me that the war was started and fought primarily over some sort of religious cause and I will be happy to move it. However, you have a lot of work to do "correcting" my mistakes to even begin to sway the ratio. I must have misplaced around 200 million deaths before the ratio is even. And I did look up each under causes on wiki before placing it so I can't be to far off.

[achilles12604]

I don't think our vocabulary is equipped with words that would do justice to the absurdity that is aggression due to differences in religious ideology.

Are we going to argue that 133,930,900 deaths as a direct consequence of arbitrary ideas are somehow the lesser of two evils? For this to have the faintest hope of working we need a bigger number that is deaths that would otherwise have been prevented had the aggressors practised religion.

The "non-religious" wars you've listed are not giving us the total numbers of deaths that have occurred due to people having no religion -- find these numbers and a case may be made that religion is the lesser evil. I would dare to say that the great majority of the wars you have listed were fought despite religious convictions on both sides. Also, can we point to any crisis in which religion can be identified as having an active role in preventing significant conflict?

Any argument that religion does more good than harm seems to me to be on very shaky ground -- but then I may be missing your point here.

Well I must simply disagree. You are placing an extra demand onto one side simply because it is the side you disagree with. If I demanded that we create a category which included lives saved because of political upheaval, I would be laughed at.

[McCulloch]

Alrighty. What would you list as the major causes of the spanish civil war? Not what some section of the war included, but the over all major causes of the war.

You miss the point. There is usually no single cause for such terrible things like war. To attribute each war to 100% secular or 100% religious is simplistic and pointless.

[achilles12604]

Alrighty. What would you list as the major causes of the spanish civil war? Not what some section of the war included, but the over all major causes of the war.

You miss the point. There is usually no single cause for such terrible things like war. To attribute each war to 100% secular or 100% religious is simplistic and pointless.

I attempted to compensate for this in favor of the secular side. If there were multiple reasons for the war and they included both economic and religious and political, I attributed it to religion. For example the Salem witch trials used religion in my opinion as a scapegoat. The man who was pressed to death even began to recite the lord's prayer (which warlocks apparently could not do) yet he was killed. Therefore I could have placed it into secular violence. But because religion was attributed a significant portion of the cause, I placed the whole ordeal into the religious category.

When I did this I actually tried to counter my own obvious bias by overcompensating against religion. The numbers aren't perfect, nor can the be perfect enough to ward off all the tiny details like those you point to. However, as general guidelines, and considering I attempted to overcompensate against religion, I still hold that it is a fair assessment.

If you have time, perhaps you could go through the same wars and determine where you would have placed the primary causes.

[McCulloch]

If you have time, perhaps you could go through the same wars and determine where you would have placed the primary causes.

I question why you are focused only on the primary causes. Let's take the American Civil War 1861-1865 Dead: 970,000. Its primary causes were secular. You don't get much more secular than states rights, which was the primary trigger for that war. But both sides used religion to bolster their cause. The North probably would have sued for peace and made some kind of settlement if it were not for the largely religious anti-slavery movement. No one can estimate, but I think that it is safe to say that if it were not for religion, the death toll on this one would have been somewhat smaller.

How about WWII? You arbitrarily split it in half, due to multiple causes. Why half? Why not extend the same honesty to all of the other conflicts?

[achilles12604]

If you have time, perhaps you could go through the same wars and determine where you would have placed the primary causes.

I question why you are focused only on the primary causes. Let's take the American Civil War 1861-1865 Dead: 970,000. Its primary causes were secular. You don't get much more secular than states rights, which was the primary trigger for that war. But both sides used religion to bolster their cause. The North probably would have sued for peace and made some kind of settlement if it were not for the largely religious anti-slavery movement. No one can estimate, but I think that it is safe to say that if it were not for religion, the death toll on this one would have been somewhat smaller.

How about WWII? You arbitrarily split it in half, due to multiple causes. Why half? Why not extend the same honesty to all of the other conflicts?

Because the original claim was that religion was the cause for wars and conflicts. Harris never made the claim that because people with religious views got involved in wars, this proved religion itself was evil. This is of course guilt by association which you of all people recognize as a logical fallacy. Just because someone kills someone else in war, and also has religious beliefs does not necessarily relate the two.

As for world war 2, I split them because of the different causes for the war. The Jews were the scapegoat. However, this hardly explains Japan's bombing of pearl harbor, before which the US was not involved. Nor does it explain the attack on Russia by Germany.

I was actually tempted to place the primary CAUSES for WW2 entirely into the secular realm as the jews seemed to be an after thought. However, I decided it would be less biased on my part to divide them. Other wars (like the civil war which you bring up) do not share the same background and thus, I did not divide them.


This is all stemming from Harris, and some more recent non-theists here, claiming that religion was the cause of most of the violence and pain in the world. Feel free to review my debate with confused for the full details about this. Pages 2-3 I think.

[alexiarose]

If you have time, perhaps you could go through the same wars and determine where you would have placed the primary causes.

I question why you are focused only on the primary causes. Let's take the American Civil War 1861-1865 Dead: 970,000. Its primary causes were secular. You don't get much more secular than states rights, which was the primary trigger for that war. But both sides used religion to bolster their cause. The North probably would have sued for peace and made some kind of settlement if it were not for the largely religious anti-slavery movement. No one can estimate, but I think that it is safe to say that if it were not for religion, the death toll on this one would have been somewhat smaller.

How about WWII? You arbitrarily split it in half, due to multiple causes. Why half? Why not extend the same honesty to all of the other conflicts?

Because the original claim was that religion was the cause for wars and conflicts. Harris never made the claim that because people with religious views got involved in wars, this proved religion itself was evil. This is of course guilt by association which you of all people recognize as a logical fallacy. Just because someone kills someone else in war, and also has religious beliefs does not necessarily relate the two.

As for world war 2, I split them because of the different causes for the war. The Jews were the scapegoat. However, this hardly explains Japan's bombing of pearl harbor, before which the US was not involved. Nor does it explain the attack on Russia by Germany.

I was actually tempted to place the primary CAUSES for WW2 entirely into the secular realm as the jews seemed to be an after thought. However, I decided it would be less biased on my part to divide them. Other wars (like the civil war which you bring up) do not share the same background and thus, I did not divide them.


This is all stemming from Harris, and some more recent non-theists here, claiming that religion was the cause of most of the violence and pain in the world. Feel free to review my debate with confused for the full details about this. Pages 2-3 I think.

I read the debate, not the book. But the debate makes the argument against faith right, not religion.
Off the subject of the book, I can say that for things such as WWII, it was the superiority complex that compelled Hitler to target Jews. But it was still ethnic cleansing, religious cleansing. You can't say is related to a secular cause when its focus was on a religious faith. If you wanted to only focus on the primary cause Hitler used to rally everyone up to fight, which would be the what they perceived as unfair reparations they had to make as a result of WWI, then find the deaths that are related to this cause. But the death toll of Jews are directly related to religious cause, not secular.

Now, I will add my objection that I did in the other thread and say why are you only using the past 1,000 years? If you are going to make a comparison with statistics, you have to consider all the factors related to them. My statistics class professor would have failed me had I presented these. If you are going to make a comparison between two variables, you have to have the comparison representative of the entirety of the variables you are trying to present. In this case, you cannot simply pick an arbitrary date and say lets just view the past 1,000 years. You have to take both religion and secular in their entirety. You also have to sort out which numbers are secular and which are religion. There is no splitting down the middle. Like the example I provided for WWII. You would have to present the death toll for the secular cause, then the death toll for the religious cause. Then you include famines due to secular rule as deaths against the secular. Again, the secular didn't commit these deaths, contributed ok, but then you have to afford the same analysis to all your sources.

Statistically speaking, these numbers don't mean anything.