Originally posted by psmith81992Only for a sentence or two. I switched gears to focus on all of history, since all of it is what matters, not just the Crusades. It's why I asked:
And I think LL was asking about the Crusades as well.
Originally posted by Lord Lucien
Beefy, if you had to estimate, how many people do you think were killed throughout history at the behest of religious violence?
Read sloooooowly and carefully.
Dave
But we were, at least Nai and I. And I think LL was asking about the Crusades as well. As far as I'm concerned, this whole discussion has been about the Crusades and only recently did it encompass the entire human existence.
Furthermore, if you've been reading any of our posts, you know the three of us have taken practically identical positions at the end of the day; the entire approach to the argument you've been trying to force on us—what killed more, secularism or religion?—is a daft, futile, and genuinely idiotic way of approaching things. You insist that this is merely getting back at all the first year college students and whatnot whom you've heard condemning religion with a comparable line of thought in the other direction, and are pleasantly surprised to discover that that isn't the universal stance of the irreligious. Who could have imagined?!
So be it.
I have explained in detail why 1) it is a bad position, 2) why it makes no sense whatsoever for you to adopt it, and 3) why aggrieving the atheists or agnostics on this board with that logic is inane, because none of us subscribe to it. Quite separately, so have Nail and Lucien. You've decided to frame what are apparently your only earnest attempts to get anything done here as getting to the bottom of the casualties comparison.
Okay. And here's where you lose me again.
Nai, Lucien and I have all expressed the belief that we can't distill motive down to either "religion" or "secularism" with a straight face. We don't think it can be done. I have specifically asked you under what conditions you would attribute blame for a crime to religion, and your answer was effectively "none," because anything bad done in the name of religion is just a perversion. That last bit is laughable, but fine. Now Mao, Stalin and co. stand unequivocally for the secularists, and at best only the Crusades are representative of "a purely religious affair."
1) NOBODY HERE disagrees that more people died by the actions of Mao, Stalin and co. than by the events of the Crusades.
2) NOBODY HERE actually thinks that we can parse atrocities like the above into "because secular" and "because religious." WE ALL think it's stupid and (painfully) myopic.
So what does that leave us with? As far as I can tell, there is literally one place we can start where nobody can f*ck up the parameters or otherwise somehow confuse themselves, and that's the total number of killings (or other atrocities collectively) committed on the individual level by people informed by religion—as in baseline level of devotion, grew up in a religious society, has values at least partially derived from religious teachings, actually believes in most of the stuff at face value, etc.—vs people for whom religion was simply not a consideration, a.k.a. atheists, agnostics, or people who otherwise turned away from or were simply never exposed to religion of any sort. And this matter should be pretty easy to resolve in theory, although I'm sure it'll play out it in a way more convoluted, frustrating manner:
The religious guys killed more. Why? Because irreligion on a level comparable to atheism or agnosticism was practically nonexistent. If you lived anywhere in the world at practically any time, you believed in and were informed by something recognizable as religious. And unless you're under the demonstrably false impression that less than 0.1% of the estimated total historical human population were victims of violence—which, as above, is conducted almost exclusively by the religious—then that's settled pretty easily. Correcting for all of the other important factors to the extent possible, that is probably more of an indictment of religion than our stereotypical religious person would want to accept and probably less of one than our stereotypical atheist/agnostic would want to accept. Oh well.
Why do we give a shit about their opinions, again?
Why is this topic of any substantive importance, again?
If at this point you really just a have deep, innocent curiosity concerning how many people died in what conflict, then that should be a pretty straightforward fact finding mission. But you will bend the knee and cease these ridiculous shenanigans or I will destroy you. If you post anything aggressive and dumb or otherwise aggravating in response to any of the above, I will respond with a gif of Stannis Baratheon and thereby formally lay the topic to rest.
Dave
I've yet to see any conclusive studies, much less ones that imply strong correlations.
OR you have impossible standards for what you would consider "conclusive," in which case I might rather die than get into that.
But start here: not being snarky, that's honestly the only foolproof method I have devised to get you people to that paper, because putting quotes around the search gets you a different result.
Click the first link, says "Cited by 7" at the end.
edit: Sweet Jesus. Okay, look. Just paste
The Relation Between Intelligence and Religiosity: A Meta-Analysis and Some Proposed Explanations
into Google, just like that, and search. No quotes. I don't understand.
Originally posted by Eminence
Read sloooooowly and carefully.This is incalculably absurd. The three of us have been very clear in our intent, Dave, and, on occasion, so have you. Hell, you're the one who started this whole jack off to the body count farce in the first place! Why would you compare the collective casualties of all of your worst 20th century secular authoritarians to the figure from what's being accepted as effectively a single campaign spanning a few centuries focused around basically one part of the globe (the Crusades, if it wasn't clear)? I just went back and picked half a dozen quotes from a single page—half of them from you—where the subject matter was very explicitly concerned with the matter of crimes by religious bodies throughout world history, and highlighted the super obvious parts in bright, screaming red. How do you just retroactively decide that this entire thing was about a single set of conflicts that say literally nothing useful about any of the agendas you've put forth? I seriously can't wrap my head around this.
Furthermore, if you've been reading any of our posts, you know the three of us have taken practically identical positions at the end of the day; the entire approach to the argument you've been trying to force on us—what killed more, secularism or religion?—is a daft, futile, and genuinely idiotic way of approaching things. You insist that this is merely getting back at all the first year college students and whatnot whom you've heard condemning religion with a comparable line of thought in the other direction, and are pleasantly surprised to discover that that isn't the universal stance of the irreligious. Who could have imagined?!
So be it.
I have explained in detail why 1) it is a bad position, 2) why it makes no sense whatsoever for you to adopt it, and 3) why aggrieving the atheists or agnostics on this board with that logic is inane, because none of us subscribe to it. Quite separately, so have Nail and Lucien. You've decided to frame what are apparently your only earnest attempts to get anything done here as getting to the bottom of the casualties comparison.
Okay. And here's where you lose me again.
Nai, Lucien and I have all expressed the belief that we can't distill motive down to either "religion" or "secularism" with a straight face. We don't think it can be done. I have specifically asked you under what conditions you would attribute blame for a crime to religion, and your answer was effectively "none," because anything bad done in the name of religion is just a perversion. That last bit is laughable, but fine. Now Mao, Stalin and co. stand unequivocally for the secularists, and at best only the Crusades are representative of "a purely religious affair."
1) NOBODY HERE disagrees that more people died by the actions of Mao, Stalin and co. than by the events of the Crusades.
2) NOBODY HERE actually thinks that we can parse atrocities like the above into "because secular" and "because religious." WE ALL think it's stupid and (painfully) myopic.So what does that leave us with? As far as I can tell, there is literally one place we can start where nobody can f*ck up the parameters or otherwise somehow confuse themselves, and that's the total number of killings (or other atrocities collectively) committed on the individual level by people informed by religion—as in baseline level of devotion, grew up in a religious society, has values at least partially derived from religious teachings, actually believes in most of the stuff at face value, etc.—vs people for whom religion was simply not a consideration, a.k.a. atheists, agnostics, or people who otherwise turned away from or were simply never exposed to religion of any sort. And this matter should be pretty easy to resolve in theory, although I'm sure it'll play out it in a way more convoluted, frustrating manner:
The religious guys killed more. Why? Because irreligion on a level comparable to atheism or agnosticism was practically nonexistent. If you lived anywhere in the world at practically any time, you believed in and were informed by something recognizable as religious. And unless you're under the demonstrably false impression that less than 0.1% of the estimated total historical human population were victims of violence—which, as above, is conducted almost exclusively by the religious—then that's settled pretty easily. Correcting for all of the other important factors to the extent possible, that is probably more of an indictment of religion than our stereotypical religious person would want to accept and probably less of one than our stereotypical atheist/agnostic would want to accept. Oh well.
Why do we give a shit about their opinions, again?
Why is this topic of any substantive importance, again?If at this point you really just a have deep, innocent curiosity concerning how many people died in what conflict, then that should be a pretty straightforward fact finding mission. But you will bend the knee and cease these ridiculous shenanigans or I will destroy you. If you post anything aggressive and dumb or otherwise aggravating in response to any of the above, I will respond with a gif of Stannis Baratheon and thereby formally lay the topic to rest.
Then you haven't looked very hard, my boy.
OR you have impossible standards for what you would consider "conclusive," in which case I might rather die than get into that.
But start here: not being snarky, that's honestly the only foolproof method I have devised to get you people to that paper, because putting quotes around the search gets you a different result.Click the first link, says "Cited by 7" at the end.
edit: Sweet Jesus. Okay, look. Just paste
The Relation Between Intelligence and Religiosity: A Meta-Analysis and Some Proposed Explanations
into Google, just like that, and search. No quotes. I don't understand.
his is incalculably absurd. The three of us have been very clear in our intent, Dave, and, on occasion, so have you. Hell, you're the one who started this whole jack off to the body count farce in the first place! Why would you compare the collective casualties of all of your worst 20th century secular authoritarians to the figure from what's being accepted as effectively a single campaign spanning a few centuries focused around basically one part of the globe (the Crusades, if it wasn't clear)?
I just went back and picked half a dozen quotes from a single page—half of them from you—where the subject matter was very explicitly concerned with the matter of crimes by religious bodies throughout world history, and highlighted the super obvious parts in bright, screaming red. How do you just retroactively decide that this entire thing was about a single set of conflicts that say literally nothing useful about any of the agendas you've put forth? I seriously can't wrap my head around this.
I don't know, but address them one by one!
how many people do you think were killed throughout history at the behest of religious violence?
all the deaths committed in the name of "God', throughout history (if we're to take 3 million as the high point)
Although I can't imagine it being more than a million or two more before that time period because of population shortages.
I think the 60-80 million mark is only set by Wikipedia but I've seen 10-15 sources that range anywhere from 200k to 3 million, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and say 3 million/quote]
Definitely discussing the crusades here.[quote]Furthermore, if you've been reading any of our posts, you know the three of us have taken practically identical positions at the end of the day; the entire approach to the argument you've been trying to force on us—what killed more, secularism or religion?—is a daft, futile, and genuinely idiotic way of approaching things. You insist that this is merely getting back at all the first year college students and whatnot whom you've heard condemning religion with a comparable line of thought in the other direction, and are pleasantly surprised to discover that that isn't the universal stance of the irreligious. Who could have imagined?!
So be it.
I have explained in detail why 1) it is a bad position, 2) why it makes no sense whatsoever for you to adopt it, and 3) why aggrieving the atheists or agnostics on this board with that logic is inane, because none of us subscribe to it. Quite separately, so have Nail and Lucien. You've decided to frame what are apparently your only earnest attempts to get anything done here as getting to the bottom of the casualties comparison.
Wasn't it simply a response to "religion has killed more"? I can't remember. And I'm pretty sure you, myself and LL were in agreement and LL and I attributed these deaths to the fault of humans, not religion or secularism.
That last bit is laughable, but fine
he religious guys killed more. Why? Because irreligion on a level comparable to atheism or agnosticism was practically nonexistent. If you lived anywhere in the world at practically any time, you believed in and were informed by something recognizable as religious. And unless you're under the demonstrably false impression that less than 0.1% of the estimated total historical human population were victims of violence—which, as above, is conducted almost exclusively by the religious—then that's settled pretty easily. Correcting for all of the other important factors to the extent possible, that is probably more of an indictment of religion than our stereotypical religious person would want to accept and probably less of one than our stereotypical atheist/agnostic would want to accept. Oh well.
f at this point you really just a have deep, innocent curiosity concerning how many people died in what conflict, then that should be a pretty straightforward fact finding mission. But you will bend the knee and cease these ridiculous shenanigans or I will destroy you. If you post anything aggressive and dumb or otherwise aggravating in response to any of the above, I will respond with a gif of Stannis Baratheon and thereby formally lay the topic to rest.
As far as the study, I have read the abstract. I'd like to know more about the 63 studies, the sample size, etc but I get the gist of it. I can just see someone taking those stats and yelling "atheists are smarter!"
Meanwhile, I want some kind of proof regarding your "religions guys killed more" assertion. Everything else we agreed upon and I must have had a brain fart regarding some of those quotes.
Dave
Emphasis bold. Why would you compare all of the religious deaths in all of human history to the mass genocide of two 20th century dictators? It goes both ways.
Dave
Come again? Me blaming human perversion when it comes to religion is laughable, but blaming human perversion for the crimes of Stalin and Mao...Isn't?
Dave
Going to have to call you out on this one. I think you're reaching in your assertion that "religious guys killed more", if you're basically concluding that the majority of violent deaths have been religion based up until there was some semblance of atheism/secularism, etc.
Dave
Unless of course you really ARE saying that with religious deaths, the motives are transparent, whereas with deaths perpetrated by secularists/atheists, the motives are more vague and on that basis/handicap alone, the religious crowd killed more.
We didn't. In fact, we went to some lengths to explain why even the preponderance of crimes by religious bodies shouldn't all be reduced purely to crimes of religion, hence Lucien's elucidation of the German Peasants' War and the Mongol conquests. Nai attempted early on to clarify the issue of intent—has a murder motivated by [whatever] been justified with religion, or was in this case religion the immediate source of strife? Would "atheism/secularism" and religion be interchangeable here?—to that very end. But we were trying to operate within your dangerously unstable and ever shifting parameters.
No, no. I'm obviously in agreement that human behavior is the common denominator. I'm saying that a perversion of religion or scriptural intent is quite often not necessary to justify doing a bad thing, it's already sitting right there. Which isn't to say this doesn't happen a lot, that would be silly. But it's not a prerequisite, and I'm troubled by the refusal of many faithful folk to acknowledge that. Where awareness isn't a concern, I think this just comes back to sensitivity to the topic, which is why I think the nature of the language used is so important.
Don't be silly. I didn't say they were religion-based, that's the clear distinction between this and the rest of the discussion. I said they were done by religious people, using the broad terminology we've adopted for our purposes here.
Nope. Motive is irrelevant here.