I assume you believe that the human race evolved from microscopic organisms, then. Is your belief in this not 'faith' in the same way as believing what one reads in the Bible or Koran?

Have you seen evolution with your own eyes? What is 'factual evidence' but a phrase? Are you not blindly giving yourself up to the prevailing, accepted ideas of your time? Scientists are your apostles, 'surveys' and 'theories' are your scripture, and coincidence is your God.

I know who sounds more foolish.



I'm not afraid of being ignorant of something I'm not interested in. I'm ignorant as regards Japanese basket weaving, origami and American history.



The Bible has many more merits than anything Marx wrote. It can seem contradictory sometimes, but the little I've read of Marx, regarding economics, was heavily illogical. It isn't often that one can pre-empt every criticism made by someone's opponents before reading them.

It seems you have a very skewed idea of religion. You don't understand it.

You are what I would class as a grudge-bearing atheist. You seem to think that religion is about exclusivity and discrimination. Have you been wronged in the past, perchance, and still carry a grudge?

It's nice to hear that the most charity work you have done was for your school music programme. I don't think this is relevant, and if it's making a point, it's a bad one.

You complain about the lack of religious freedom in America, when a few paragraphs earlier, you said there was a 'serious problem' with someone who thought that non-Catholics would go to hell. Why? People should be able to believe whatever they like. If it isn't hurting you, why is it a serious problem? You contradict yourself.

I don't know any religion which teaches 'think less of others'.

You advocate freedom. You want to be free from having to hear other people's opinions, even when they aren't harming you. But if you had this 'freedom', you would also (thankfully) be forced to stop spewing your aggressive atheistic drivel. True freedom? I think not.

To be fair, many religious factions do focus on exclusivity and discrimination. I don't think the christian religion is much worse than some others, but some denominations do encompass those behaviours. Not all, some.

I find it hard to respect Christianity as a belief system nowadays, and I for one did carry a grudge for a while (not sure if I've stopped or not), but I also know there are many wonderful Christians regardless of what metaphysical truths they might subscribe to.

Much like I abhor the oppression and philosophy espoused by China as a nation, but I can't hold anyone who lives in the country responsible for the actions of a few tyrants. I'm sure 99% of the chinese are decent, humane people.

ooh ooh

I have the perfect site. (well not really)
www.yourgoingtohell.com

it's always made me laugh, along with the various christian comics i've seen of witches and the like.

I do have one question though... If we all came from Adam and Eve who had firm knowledge that god existed and would have passed this on to their children etc etc, even with differing languages why are there so many widely varied religeons (well ok not wide)
Also my biblical knowledge is a little rusty, aside from that mistranslated line stating that people should not "suffer" witches to live (originally poisoner) i don't remember much (umn the last time i payed attention in scripture was like... over 7 years ago)

I wouldn't consider one of them to be a religion in the real sense. We should define 'religion' as 'organised religion' or 'established religion' in the context we're discussing, because saying 'religion is bad' otherwise is like saying 'ideologies are bad' or 'ideas are bad'.



Ever played Chinese Whispers?

I had a friend, a very close friend, in a hospital under mental treatment for depression and attempt at suiciding.

It seems he was involved deeply in a catholic religious sect (a pretty well known and accepted one) and did something wrong (some bussiness about a girl who isn't in that sect). After going to his councellor and being told he would burn in hell and was a poor condemned soul (by the person who had been his religious spiritual guide the past 5 years) this friend of mine went and tried to kill himself. Luckily he decided that would condenm him even further at the last minute and called the ambulance before collapsing.

He has a right to believe what he wants, but I don't think you can say that the beliefs of his advisor and the beliefs that were driven into his brain didn't hurt me or all the people who love this guy. The only good part of all of this was he finally wasn't able to kill himself. He didn't do it because he wanted to live, but because he didn't want to be even more condemned. But putting that kind of self-image into somebody brain isn't good and cannot be justified.

I think the fact that suicide is considered to be unacceptable in Christianity nullifies the relevance of the story, though it is sad that he got into that condition.

yes but by the same logic it could be said
"these religions are wrong, this one is close, that one is way off, ooo close but no cigar for that one, etc"

hence my favourite advice from a movie and (slightly) religion "it doesn't matter what you believe, as long as you believe"

*does the wiccan pride dance, then ducks*

What do you mean you don't consider the different denominations religions?

He didn't manage to finish it exactly due to that. As he told his parents, he didn't want to live because he was going to hell, but suiciding would just make matters worse.

They are, by definition, denominations of religions. Not religions. My point was that any wacko (see Wicca) can make up a load of crap and call it a religion. Debating the rights and wrongs of that sort of thing would be a waste of time.



It's sad that anyone would get into that kind of predicament. But cults are generally bitter, exclusive, destructive. And all of these things are anathema to established religion (not including Islam, BOOM!).

Since when the Opus Dei is anathema to established catholical religion? They're exclusive (you're in, you are encouraged not to interact with anybody out of it) and destructive (including self-punishment among their teachings). And still, they're a strong force in the Vatican from what I read (I used to work in a company where most if not all of the directives were from Opus Dei).

I would consider the scenario you've illustrated to not be indicative of Opus Dei as an organisation. I also don't think that self-punishment can be called 'destructive'. It's self-inflicted and is intended to drive on and improve, not destroy.

This question is plainly explained in the bible.

Here are the relevant passages, I removed the passages that deal with the other people born and thier contributions to humanity.. however you need to take a close reading here, so important lines, I will place in bold.

Cain said, 'My sin is too great to bear!
Vayomer Kayin el-Adonay gadol avoni mineso.
4:14 Behold, today You have banished me from the face of the earth, and I am to be hidden from Your face. I am to be restless and isolated in the world, and whoever finds me will kill me.' (then god gives him a mark so nobody will kill him, and he moves to the land of Nod. (Its very clear from these early passages that Adam and Eve were not the only humanoids on the planet.. Kabbalah teaches that a animal version of man existed but had no human soul. Antrhopology teaches that Neadrathals(or cromagnums, I get those groups mixed up) and Homosapiens once lived on the planet at the same time.)

Its at this point that Cain nolonger has a personal relationship with G-d..

Cain knew his wife. She conceived and gave birth to Enoch. was building a city, and he named the city Enoch, after his son.

Adah gave birth to Yaval. He was the ancestor of all those who live in tents and keep herds.
Tzillah also had a son, Tuval Cain, a maker of all copper and iron implements. Tuval Cain's sister was Naamah.


You can see here that the people who founded the cities, and technologies are all decendants of Cain. Their relationship with G-d was highly limited, and it is for this reason that later, when describing the children of Adam they mention that they prayed or were close with G-d. When you don't have a relationship with someone, its hard to tell people much about them.


6:1 Man began to increase on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them. 6:2 The sons of God saw that the daughters of man were good, and they took themselves wives from whomever they chose.

This is generally understood (atleast in Jewish texts) to be the point when mankind began to confuse Angels with gods. Its at this point that people discovred that there was a way to communicate with angels and if they "worshiped" them, then they could have thier bidding done for them. It is for this reason that Judaism abhors Idolatry because it is a case of people saying that he is greater than god. People began to pick and choose which "power" (i.e. "son of god".. the word son in Hebrew is also the word for "derivitive") they wanted to control, which ever spirit you liked best. And thus you have the creation of many different philosphies and religions

6:3 God said, 'My spirit will not continue to judge man forever, since he is nothing but flesh. His days shall be 120 years.'

This is where G-d reduces the relationship with human beings, since humans began to worship that which is below god, his "angels" or "sons of god"

6:4 The titans were on the earth in those days and also later. The sons of God had come to the daughters of man and had fathered them. were the mightiest ones who ever existed, men of renown

And here we have the creation of legends which turned the spirits and angels into Idols. The "gods" became more human like, and thus you have the establishment of stories such as Gilgamesh, or Hurclues. (not those stories specifically but in abstract)

The following verses are the story of Noah. Its not untill 10 generations after Noah that Abraham learns to have a relationship with G-d again by noticing that no single power in the world is above any other. 40 years after that realization, Abraham has his first personal experience with G-d.

Now I hope your question was serious one.

I'm a bit confused... There is a claim that "religion" is the leading cause of suffering in this world.. War is known to cause the most suffering, and yet when shown facts about how many people have died to wars started by "religion" vs. those not started by religion its said to be irrelevant?

As for the famine.. Again if you bothered to read the website its plainly epxlained there, however since you didn't bother to read it...

Deaths by Mass Unpleasantness:
Estimated Totals for the Entire 20th Century
List of Recurring Sources

Alphabetical Index




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How many people died in all the wars, massacres, slaughters and oppressions of the Twentieth Century? Here are a few atrocitologists who have made estimates:




M. Cherif Bassouni, from an unspecified "1996" source which I have been unable to track down (Cited in an article in the Chicago Tribune, 25 Oct. 1998)
33 million "military casualties" (That's how the article phrased it, but I presume they mean military deaths.)
170 million killed in "conflicts of a non-international charater, internal conflicts and tyrannical regime victimization")
86M since the Second World War
TOTAL: 203,000,000
Zbigniew Brzezinski, Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the Twenty-first Century (1993)
"Lives deliberately extinguished by politically motivated carnage":
167,000,000 to 175,000,000
Including:
War Dead: 87,500,000
Military war dead:
33,500,000
Civilian war dead:
54,000,000
Not-war Dead: 80,000,000
Communist oppression:
60,000,000
David Barrett, World Christian Encyclopedia (2001)
Christian martyrs only: 45.5M
Stephane Courtois, The Black Book of Communism
Victims of Communism only: 85-100M
Milton Leitenberg
Politically caused deaths in the 20th C: 214M to 226M, incl...
Deaths in wars and conflicts, incl. civilian: 130M-142M
Political deaths, 1945-2000: 50M-51M
Not The Enemy Media
Killed through U.S. foreign policy since WWII: 10,774,706 to 16,856,361 (1945-May 2003)
Rudolph J. Rummel, Death By Government
"Democides" - Government inflicted deaths (1900-87)
169,198,000
Including:
Communist Oppression: 110,286,000
Democratic democides: 2,028,000
Not included among democides:
Wars: 34,021,000
Non-Democidal Famine (often including famines associated with war and communist mismanagement):
China (1900-87): 49,275,000
Russia: (1921-47): 5,833,000
Total:
258,327,000 for all the categories listed here.
Me (Matthew White, Historical Atlas of the Twentieth Century, 2001):
Deaths by War and Oppression:
Genocide and Tyranny:
83,000,000
Military Deaths in War:
42,000,000
Civilian Deaths in War:
19,000,000
Man-made Famine:
44,000,000
TOTAL:
188,000,000
FAQ: How did you get these totals?
(Note: It's commonly said that more civilians than soldiers die in war, but you may notice that my numbers don't seem to agree with that. Before you jump to any conclusions, however, remember that most civilian deaths in war are intentional, and therefore fall into the "genocide and tyranny" category. Many others are the result of starvation.)
My estimate for the Communist share of the century's unpleasantness:
Genocide & Tyranny: 44M
(incl. intentional famine)
Man-made Famine: 37M
(excl. intentional famine)
Communist-inspired War (for example the Russian Civil War, Vietnam, Korea, etc.)
Military: 5M
Civilian: 6M
NOTE: With these numbers, I'm tallying every combat death and accidental civilian death in the war, without differentiating who died, who did it or who started it. According to whichever theory of Just War you are working from, the Communists may be entirely blameless, or entirely to blame, for these 11M dead.
TOTAL: 92M deaths by Communism.
RESIDUE: 96M deaths by non-Communism.

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For Comparison:
Total Deaths During the 20th Century
Smallpox
Smoking
Abortions
Cats and Dogs
Influenza Epidemic, 1918-19
AIDS
Homicides
Disasters
Racism
Decommunization
Medical Mistakes
Eaten by Tigers



Total Deaths During the 20th Century
Approximately 4,126,000,000 people have died during this century from all causes. If man-made megadeaths account for 185 million of them, then one out of every 22 (or 4.5%) human deaths during the 20th Century have been caused by fellow humans.
Sources: Nowadays, you can just open up a statistical abstract and find reasonably accurate numbers for how many people died last year. Unfortunately, that's a very recent ability. Only industrialized countries keep vital statistics, and most of the people who have lived in this century have not lived in industrialized countries. Therefore, we've got a big margin of error to worry about.
Basically, to arrive at the following numbers, I set up a big spread sheet which multiplied each country's population by its death rate for a middle year of each decade. Then, I added them together to get a global total, and multiplied by ten for a decade total. For those countries for which I did not have accurate mortality statistics, I scrounged the death rate from a nearby, similar country -- using Argentine death rates for Chile, say.




Decade Deaths worldwide (millions) Death Rate (per 1000) Mid-decade World Population (millions) How I calculated it
late 1990s 261 Looked up total estimated deaths in Britannica's Yearbook, year by year.
early 1990s 252 8.6 5863
1980s 459 9.2 5000 Gathered mortality stats of 20 largest countries for typical years (1977, 1987) from UN Yearbook. Calculated average world death rate, weighted by population. Multiplied this average by mid-decade's world population, then by 10.
1970s 481 11.7 4100
1960s 348 11.5 3030 Estimated average worldwide death rate, based on extremely scattered data for individual countries in the 1963 UN Yearbook. Multiplied this average by mid-decade's world population, then by 10.
1950s 385 14.3 2700 Geometric mean of death rates for 1930s and 1960s. Multiplied this by mid-decade's world population, then by 10.
1940s 318 14.3 2230
1930s 377 17.6 2138 Geometric mean of death rates for 1900s and 1960s. Multiplied this by mid-decade's world population, then by 10.
1920s 425 21.9 1941 Geometric mean of death rates for 1900s and 1930s. Multiplied this by mid-decade's world population, then by 10.
1910s 385 21.9 1762
1900s 435 27.1 1606 Estimated average worldwide death rate, based on extremely incomplete and scattered data for individual countries in the 1911 Britannica. Multiplied this average by world population, then by 10.
TOTAL 4126 Added.




Smallpox:
Mannfred Hollinger, Introduction to Pharmacology: Half a billion people worldwide in the 20th C.
John Campbell, Campbell's Physiology Notes for Nurses: smallpox killed 300 million in the 20th Century.
Michael Oldstone, Viruses, Plagues, and History: 300M
Albert Marrin, Dr. Jenner and the Speckled Monster: 300M
Smoking:
R. Peto, "Mortality from tobacco in developed countries: indirect estimation from national vital statistics", Lancet, 23 May 1992:
1930-59: 11,000,000
1960s: 9,000,000
1970s: 13,000,000
1980s: 17,000,000
1990s: 21,000,000
TOTAL (1930-1999): 71,000,000 tobacco-related deaths in developed countries. (US, Europe, USSR, Canada, Japan, Australia, NZ)
Note: Although the bulk of humanity lives outside developed countries, tobacco-related deaths are not as common there, largely because the average Third World life expectancy does not leave enough time to develop cancer and heart disease. Ditto for the developed world prior to 1930. Basically, smoking is a rich man's way to die.
The World Health Organization estimates that 3 million people die each year worldwide from tobacco, which becomes 900,000 3rd-Worlders when we subtract the 2.1 million 1st- and 2nd-Worlders calculated by Peto (yearly average for the 1990s, above). This indicates some 9 million tobacco deaths in non-developed countries during the 1990s and (using the same ratio) perhaps 5 million during the 1980s. If we continue this ratio all the way back, we get an even hundred million deaths by tobacco worldwide; however, as Peto puts it, "the epidemic is generally at an earlier stage," so the tobacco-related mortality rate in the third world was relatively low before 1980. Let's add only another 5 million for the years prior to 1980, bringing the century total up to 90,000,000.
Abortions:
29,247,142 legal abortions were performed in the United States, 1970-95. (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Vol. 47 No. SS-2)
Estimated abortions worldwide: 527M to 836M (1920-2000)

Cats and Dogs
AHS: 9.6 million animals euthanized in the US, 1997
HSUS: 3-4 million cats and dogs euthanized by US shelters each year
Influenza Pandemic, 1918-19:
Gilbert: 13,000,000
Encarta: 20,000,000 (also Time: Great Events of the 20th Century; also 30 June 1998 Washington Post)
Michael Howard, The Oxford History of the Twentieth Century: 20M d. in 1919 flu.
Our Times: 21,642,274
MEDIAN: ca. 21M
Wallechinsky: 30,000,000
R.S. Bray, Armies of Pestilence: the Impace of Disease on History (1996): 25-50M, citing Burnet & White
John M. Barry, The Great Influenza (2004)
1927 AMA study: 21M
1940s McFarlane Burnet est. 50-100M
2002 epidem. study: 50-100M
Spartacus : >70,000,000
NOTE: Because the first outbreaks of the disease were often spread via troop movements, the temptation is to add all the world's pandemic deaths to the death toll of World War I, thereby raising it from ca. 15M to more than 35M; however, I have never seen an actual, published history of the First World War do this. Yes, histories of the war will count the soldiers and refugees that died of the flu in camps, but obviously not the millions in, say, China or India, that died far from any battlefield, long after the armistice.
AIDS:
11,700,000 deaths worldwide, 1981-98 (from 23 June 1998 report by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS at http://www.unaids.org/highband/document/ep...e98/index.html)
Homicide:
Very, very rough estimate until I research this more fully: 8.5 million murders worldwide, 1900-1999.
What I do know so far:
Brazil: 350,000 murders in 1990s (24 Oct. 1999 Guardian)
USA 1960-96: 666,160 murders and (non-negligent) manslaughters (Statistical Abstract of the United States, http://www.census.gov/statab/freq/98s0335.txt)
USA 1900-59: 390,136 murders (Watenburg, The Statistical History of the United States, 1976)
USA TOTAL: 1,056,296 (more or less -- depending on how you want to count manslaughters)
739,938 murders worldwide, 1986-90, excluding the USA (http://www.ifs.univie.ac.at/uncjin/mosaic/ccrimes/tothom.txt). The USA produced 12.5% of the world's murders during the years 1986-90, so if we apply that ratio to the entire century, then it would indicate that 7.35M murders were committed worldwide (but outside the US), 1900-96. It looks like the century total is somewhere near 1.05M in US + 7.35M elsewhere.
Maybe this 8.5?M should be added to the wars and oppressions under the category of deaths "caused by fellow humans", above. If you want to do this, go ahead.
Natural Disasters:
According to a 20 December 1999 press release from the reinsurance company Munich Re, a total of 3.5 million people were killed in 20th Century disasters such as floods, earthquakes, and volcanos, but not drought or famine. (A total of 15M were killed by disasters during the entire Second Millennium.)
Racism:
Just out of curiosity, I decided to calculate the death toll of racism in the United States, and it certainly looks like non-whites suffered 3,300,000 excess deaths from 1900 to 1970.
Sources: Throughout most of American history, non-whites have had a significantly higher death rate than whites. As there's no natural reason for whites to live longer than non-whites, the cause for this difference must be social -- rooted in poverty and manifesting itself in malnutrition, inadequate public health, substandard medical care, homicide, alcoholism, suicide and drug addiction.
If we subtract the number of non-whites who would have died anyway (even at a white death rate) from the number who did die -- year-by-year -- and then add it all up, we get our total number of excess deaths.
Because this is just my calculations -- not peer-reviewed or gathered from a reputable source -- I'll give you a lot of detail. My source for the raw numbers is Watenburg, The Statistical History of the United States (1976). As an example of my methods, consider this: in 1920, the death rate for whites was 12.6/1000, while for non-whites it was 17.7/1000. Now, if we multiply the non-white death rate by the estimated non-white population of 10,951,000, we find that there were approximately 193,833 deaths among non-whites in 1920. If they had died at the white death rate, however, there would only have been 137,983 deaths. Therefore, we've got 55,850 excess deaths caused by the socioeconomic handicap of not being white.
Decade by decade, here are the totals: Decade Excess Deaths
1960s 65,000
1950s 200,000
1940s 300,000
1930s 535,000
1920s 630,000
1910s 735,000
1900s 835,000
TOTAL 3,300,000




Escape Hatch: Since no one's paying me to be mired in controversy, I'll give a short list of why this calculation might not mean what it seems to mean. I'll leave it to philosophers and statisticians to iron out these problems:
I haven't adjusted for age differences.
I haven't adjusted for geographic differences -- specifically, I haven't taken into account that the South has traditionally been unhealthier than the North for both blacks and whites. Since the black population has been disproportionately Southern, then this has boosted their death rates.
Suicide, drug addiction, alcoholism, etc. are often considered to be matters of free will.
Homicides are customarily blamed on the individual murderers rather than society as a whole.
To give you a chance to check behind me, here are all the calculations in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, compressed with PKZip.
Decommuniziation:
Jerry Hough, LA Times 18 August 1998 Op-Ed: With the collapse of communism in Russia, poverty and death rates soared, and some 3 million people in Russia died who would have been alive if the old life expectancy rates had been maintained.
The Times (London) 27 Jan. 2000: The Russian population is roughly six million lower than if birth and death rates had stayed constant since the fall of communism.
28 Dec. 1994 Plain Dealer: 360,000 more Russians died in 1993 than in 1992.
Medical Mistakes:
According to a 1999 report from the Institute of Medicine, 44,000 to 98,000 Americans die unnecessarily every year from medical mistakes made by health care professionals. (30 Nov. 1999 Washington Post, 30 Nov. 1999 AP, or pretty much any news source that day.)
Eaten by Tigers:
According to official statistics , 34,075 people were killed by tigers in British-administered India, 1875-1912. That includes 11,423 k. 1900-1912.

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List of Recurring Sources


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FAQ

How did you get these totals?

Simple -- I added everything up. If you sum the first five of the century's top 30 atrocities, you get a bit over 142M. Summing the first 10 brings the total to 157M, while the sum of the first 20 is 171.7M. It may look like, at this rate, we'll shoot past 188M in no time at all, but notice how the body counts get smaller at each level -- from 142M for the 1st 5 to 15M for the next 5 to a mere 14M or so for the next 10. Pretty soon, we get to the point where a single atrocity doesn't noticably shift the total at all.




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to Table of Contents

Last updated September 2005

Copyright © 1999-2005 Matthew White

How many people have been torn apart because of it, how many people give up on god after seeing loved ones suffer, how many people have lost there homes because they arnt the right religion, how many biggoted people constantly fight and bicker and hate and kill because of it.

Your right you cant measure things like that but from where im sitting religion just hurts so many more people than it helps.

I see it here every day religion just propagates violence.

I'm not quite sure what your "evidence" is... however Communism and Tyrants have been proven to cause MUCH more pain and suffering than any religion ever has.

The problem is not religion, the problem is people who have no sense of self control and have no sense of succumbing to the "universe." The problem becomes when you define the universe as apposed to the universe defining you.


A clasic example of this, and why many Jews see Catholosism as idoltry is that the Vatican recently removed Limbo from the cosmos. On the daily show they said "Being unable to convince masses of people to baptise newborns, the Church desided it would be easier to rearange the netherworld." Thats a clasic case of idolotary where you define your god, instead of your god defining you.

HOWEVER, many non religious philosophies and secular philosphies make this problem even greater than any religion ever has. Communist states tend to say "there is no god, we must help all people, I am the leader, I know how to help people, if you are not helping people the way I say you should I will steal your possesions, remove your sense of hope, and kill you" This then happens on a national scale instead of an individual scale. Sure, some people who have the some complex can say to a child "Do as I say, or I will hurt, steald and kill you" however since there is personal choice in religion and MOST religious poeple will dissagree with that person, it happens on an individual scale and not on a national scale. 20 million people being robbed of thier life is a lot worse than the 10-500 people a random "cleric" would be able to influence.

The reason I compare communism to religion is because it is the only example we have in history where the state has decide to outlaw all religion. If there was another example that I knew of, I'd be using that as well.

My dear Ferlas.

You have to understand that some people are not very nice people. They don't need religion to be not very nice.. they can do that on their own. But sometimes, religion can be a good excuse for it.

Christianity is about peace. It's made excessively clear in the New Testament.
Incidentially, Islam is as well.
So are 99% of the rest of the big religions.

People may not be peaceful.. and they may do bad things in the name of religion.. but that doesn't mean that religion is at fault. Instead, blame human nature.

Actually, for any well educated religious person (i.e. well educated in their relgion).. Religion is the hardest way to be a not very nice person. The easiest methods to convince other people around you that its ok to be mean is to use philosphy that is made up by the person who wants to exert control and is based on "science".. such as Darwin's famous contrubtion to world domination and establishment of racism. Or Einstein's theory of Relativism which allows for any action to be justified, or Marx's theory of economics. Often you can also use Adam Smith's theory of economics.

If you use religion as your basis then eventually you get down to a single question that becomes very hard to answer... If G-d dislikes group X so much, why is group X still here?