...Let God Sort'em Out Part II: More People Have Died in the Name of Religion Than Any Other Reason

I have heard from atheists, and others that "more people have been killed in the name of God (or religion, implying Christianity) than for any other reason." Let's be perfectly fair here, I’ve never challenged that, because I didn’t know.

I do know there have been atrocities (crusades, etc) committed in the name of God, though I would be of the opinion that God was not in favor of these. Even though I never argued, knowing there was some support for this data, I now realize one thing - there's rarely, if ever any proof offered of this. Where are the numbers?

It seems that this is often used as an excuse to reject Christianity and the Bible, and was often quoted to me by a hedonist who liked quoting Karl Marx's "religion is the opiate of the masses." Ironically, he was addicted to the true opiate of the masses - television. He also smoked marijuana. Who's the real addict here?

Before we even start, I have already addressed the previous "genocides" perpetrated by the Israelites in the Bible. So we won't go into that here. If you're losing sleep over that, go read them after this. (http://dontaskthatinchurch.blogspot.com/2011/09/wipe-outall-of-them-why-would-good-and.html) and (http://dontaskthatinchurch.blogspot.com/2011/09/wrath-of-god-is-god-really-genocidal.html)

Alright everyone who uses the "religion has killed..." excuse, let's put your money where your mouth is. Figuratively. Let's take a look at the causes of death to humanity (by people killing each other for various causes), and see what adds up to more. If you're right, you shouldn't have anything to worry about. If you're wrong, then maybe you should give God and the Bible another chance.


Facts

Abortion. First, it's murder. If unkilled, a fetus will become a baby human. Period. The only difference between a baby, and a human outside the womb is:

Size
Level of development and dependency

Fetuses have hiccups, heart beats, body parts, etc. What else does? A human being.
Killing a human being outside the womb for being small is absurd. Killing someone because of their level of development/dependency is also frowned upon and rightly so. No sane, rational person goes around killing people smaller than themselves or the mentally disabled. Anyone who does, goes to jail and becomes a pariah.

That's why if someone hurts a pregnant woman, and she miscarries, they can go to jail (assuming she wanted to keep the baby).
Anyways, we're not discussing IF abortion is murder or not. Leviticus 18:21, God spells out clearly that killing a baby is murder. And for the purposes of this discussion, it is considered murder.

If you disagree, skip ahead or provide factual data that proves a fetus is not a human being.
In America, since 1973 there have been about 50 million babies murdered in the womb. That's almost 10 times the number of Jews killed by Hitler in the Shoah.
http://prolifeaction.org/faq/abortion.php
Worldwide, the number is 42 Million PER YEAR.

http://prolife.org.ohio-state.edu/Facts.htm

If that number has stayed constant (which it probably hasn't) since 1973, that's 1,596,000,000. That one and a half BILLION. Certainly, these people weren't murdered in the name of God, but rather the sake of convenience.

Hitler, whether it be to furnish his ideal "Aryan" race, and eliminate those who didn't measure up, or if you consider that he was sacrificing Jews, etc. for a luciferian agenda, here's the round numbers.

6 Million Jews
500,000–1.2 million Serbs (killed by Croat Nazis)
200,000–800,000 Roma & Sinti (Gypsies)
200,000–300,000 people with disabilities (or you could say those not as "developed" or people who were dependent)
80,000–200,000 Freemasons
100,000 communists
10,000–25,000 homosexual men
2,000 Jehovah's Witnesses
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=1006050806108

All said and done, probably more than 8 million people died at the hands of Hitler's regime. Another source you'll see in a minute, puts the total at 12 million.

Well, Hitler was crazy, right? So how about other dictators. Surely they can't approach the insatiable bloodthirst of those killed "in the name of God". Before we see what a menace to the world Christians are, let's take a look at what happens just when people are killed by governments. We won't hit every dictator on the list though.

Chairman Mao - 50 to 70 million
Stalin - 23 million, i've heard up to 30.
Leopold II of Belgium (Congo) 8 Million
Japan (Civilians in WWII. I don't know if this counts the Nanking massacre) 5 million
Turkey (Armenians, and others) - about 2.5 million
North Korea's communist regime - more than 1.2 milliohn

http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/dictat.html


The high end of this number is around 130 Million (including Hitler's 12) and that's not all the ones on the list. But i don't think we could count any of these as killed by "Christians" or in God's name. Rather, these were all killed for political or ethnic reasons.

Communism Alone
"The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression" gives a good set of numbers for just those killed when all belief in God is not only expelled, but punished by death or torture. Let's take a look at what a God-free, atheist utopia can do. After all, if God's followers have killed more than any other cause, the good ol' commie deathtolls should be quite low. After all, they're not trying to please God, so they shouldn't want to kill anyone.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Book_of_Communism


Well, we already saw Mao and Stalin at about 70 to 100 Million between the two of them. The book gives about 94 million.

From the wiki:
(65 million in the People's Republic of China
20 million in the Soviet Union
2 million in Cambodia
2 million in North Korea
1.7 million in Africa
1.5 million in Afghanistan
1 million in the Communist states of Eastern Europe
1 million in Vietnam
150,000 in Latin America
10,000 deaths "resulting from actions of the international Communist movement and Communist parties not in power." )

Communist Utopias, with their absence of God have killed a lot of people, so this must mean that those killed in the name of God must be at LEAST 200 Million, or 2 BILLION if you count abortions, which I'm counting them, because i believe God is.

Well, let’s see how many have died “in God’s name.” We don’t include those humans who were and are sacrificed to pagan gods. Sorry Aztecs, Mayans, Canaanites, etc. We’re also not including how many people have been killed by Muslims or Hindus. Mainly because people who argue this have a beef with Christians. In any event, My personal thought is that Muslims and Hindus combined haven’t killed even as many people as Hitler, let alone Communism. I’m also going to exclude Christians who are killed by various folks martyred, but will put some of those stats in the appendix.

Killed "in the name of God" that is, by "The Church" or alleged Christians

A disclaimer here. While a portion of individual Catholics i will concede may be saved and true Christians, i don't think we can include all of the elements in leadership, especially through the centuries. Those who ordered the Crusades, the inquisition were not following the Bible, and thus not God's will. Pope John Paul even formally apologized for some of that. Afterall, Jesus didn't say to spread His name at the sword's point.

Constantine was allegedly told by a vision (by a spirit he didn't test) to go and conquer. Nowhere did this vision prove itself to actually be of God. He either made it up, or was fooled by Satan to kill people under the guise of Christianity. I highly doubt God would have told him to conquer. So, was he a Christian? I can't judge his heart. But his actions cause me to question.

But, for the sake of argument, let's give you the numbers of those killed "in the name of God".

It's hard getting good numbers on this, so i'll go through a few different ones.

Total for the crusades, inquistion (over 200 years!) and other "witchcraft" kinds of things. This author says about 264,000. He's also got a really good point, (like i mention above) not everyone who says they are a Christian, or says that they are following God actually are. The pews are also filled with "Christians" but how many of us actually are? How many are there for social or other reasons?

Also, look at the Norway shooter. The media called him a Christian, yet there's no real evidence that he actually is a true Christian, especially in light of what Jesus taught and lived about violence. Anyways, the link.

http://www.newscholars.com/papers/Killing,%20Christianity,%20and%20Atheism.pdf
This author gives about 100,000 people-all time-killed by alleged Christians.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080829095434AAuK2UD

Here's a new agey/neo pagan website that looked promising for stats at first, but fell apart quite quickly for me.

http://www.truthbeknown.com/victims.htm

They make a lot of complaints about Christian murderers, and pagans being unjustly killed. They mention a number of examples, with “thousands killed” or “tens of thousands massacred” and these are indeed horrific, yet give very few actual numbers and no total.

Not to mention that some of these groups doing the massacres don’t seem all that Christian to me. I can't speak to the faith of those who committed these atrocities, but contrasted with the true Christians in the book of Acts, I'd suggest that those who killed these pagans and other poor folks had their hearts far away from God. That is, they were killed by people falsely representing the God of the Bible. But that should be no surprise.

Additionally, the stats on this site are way off, one example that author gives is a total of “80000 Turks massacred” during the battle of Belgrad. Oddly, they neglected to mention is that the Turks were INVADING Hungary. They were the aggressors. Secondly, the Turks had a (presumably) seasoned army of 30,000 – 100,000 troops. Wiki lists them as receiving casualties of only 13,000. Meanwhile, the “menacing” Hungarians had around 4,000 actual soldiers that were armed and trained and a “motley” army of 60,000. That’s 60,000 nobodies fighting for their lives for probably the first time ever.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Belgrade_(1456)

Here’s a relevant scripture.

"For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,

Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,

Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;

Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. "

2 Timothy 3:2 - 5


"[Ye] hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying,

This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with [their] lips; but their heart is far from me.

But in vain they do worship me, teaching [for] doctrines the commandments of men."

Matthew 15:7 - 9

Suffice it to say, these people may have thought they were acting “for God”, but in actuality were doing the bidding of the political movers and shakers who happened to have been a part of the Catholic or Holy Roman Church. Just because the "Church" a Pope or a "Christian" king ordered the killing of a group "in the name of God", doesn't actually mean that God Himself endorsed or approved it, or that those people actually have given their lives to Christ.

Look at George Bush, he lied about his conversion (supposedly converted by talking to Billy Graham, though Graham doesn't remember this). He also went on to start 2 wars. Somehow I don’t think you’d see Jesus, the Apostle Paul, Corrie Ten Boom, or Richard Wurmbrand. In fact, Paul condoned killing of people BEFORE he was a Christian, then afterward let people beat him!

This is why when Jesus warned us “let no one deceive you” He wasn’t kidding. He likely knew that folks would come around and use God as an excuse to kill. A true follower of Christ would not have went along with any violence that a Church or government ordered.

Saying that more people have died “in the name of God” or were killed by Christians because the Church/Theocratic government ordered it makes about as much sense as saying that actors are criminals because of shenanigans like Winona Rider’s shoplifting or what Pee-Wee Herman did.

Here’s a good article that summarizes the above point. That sinful humans are using religion to fulfill their own evil agendas. I strongly recommend that you read the whole article, and forward that to anyone who says religion has killed more than…

www.godandscience.org/apologetics/atrocities.html

Here’s the numbers he used for those killed by “Christians” (actually land/power grabs).

Crusades – 1,000,000
Aztecs – (unclear if he means sacrificed by the Aztecs or killed by conquistadors. I assume the latter) 1,000,000
The Inquisition – 350,000
Albigensian Crusade – 200,000
Witch Hunts – 100,000
So wrapping up here’s the “score”.


Killed “in the name of God” – 250,000 – 1,650,000 people. (This is based on the earlier number I had and the recent article. Of these, I would say none have been killed by true Christians, but rather the visible “Church” and political entities, of which, the Church was a part.

Killed for any other reason – 1.6 Billion people have been killed because they were unwanted. This is either by a political party or a parent. That’s well above small amount killed by “God’s followers.” Even taking away abortion we’re left with 130 million killed by dictatorships of various sorts. Or if you prefer, Communism alone has killed probably 100 Million, ten times more than those who claim to follow God


Appendix:
I won't concede that many true, Spirit filled, Bible believing Christians have killed anyone, or even COULD kill anyone. The more we grow in faith, the less attractive violence becomes, even "justified" violence. Listen to Corrie Ten Boom's testimony, or read Richard Wurmbrand's "tortured for Christ" or Wilkerson's "the Cross and the Switchblade". Those are how true Christians react to violence.

If you can give more numbers of those killed "in God's name," (Crusades, Inquisition, etc.) please give me an event, a number and a source, and i'll add it.

Fred Hartley said in his book "Prayer on Fire" that in the "1980's, 270,000 Christians were martyred every year." He also quotes a number of 500,000 dying for believing in Jesus the Messiah every year. So in one year, twice as many are killed for believing in Christ than those killed by alleged Christians during the crusades, witchhunts and inquisition combined over a several hundred year period.
Voice of the martyrs gives a much lower, though still alarming number at their site. It's a good look at the extent of persecution faced by Christians right now.

http://persecutedchurch.blogspot.com/2009/04/limits-of-statistics.htm