This is a post by purpledawn supposedly proving that religion is responsible for more murders than nonreligious political movements. Unfortunately after posting this it seemed confusing to me and I took it down for a while. It still is confusing to me and I really don't know what I should think about it but I'm putting it back up anyway.
The source for her information is this blog. Interestingly she seems to be using the information as proof against Christianity, although the blog is arguing the opposite, as I also do below.
Deaths caused by the ReligiousI'm not sure what point Purpledawn is trying to make or if she's even noticed that the blogger concluded that deaths caused by "religious" are far fewer than deaths caused by "nonreligious:"
1562-1598 – French Wars of Religion – France – 4 million
1095-1291 – Crusades to the Holy Land – Middle East, Spain, Africa – 1.5 million (This does include all sides of the conflict)
1184-c. 1860 – Various Christian Inquisitions – Europe – 17,500
184-205 – Yellow Scarves Rebellion (Taoists) – China – 7 million
1300s-1521 – Human Sacrifices (Aztecs) – Mexico – 1 million
1855-1877 – Panthay Rebellion (Muslims) – China – 12 million
1971 – Bangladesh Atrocities (Islamists) – East Pakistan – 3 million
September 11, 2007 – Terrorist attacks (Muslim Jihadists) – USA – 5,000
Deaths caused by the Non-Religious
1932-1933 – Holodomor (communist atheists) – Ukraine – 10 million
1941-1945 – Nazi Genocides (statist atheists) – Germany – 11 million
1959-1962 – Great Leap Forward famine (communist atheists) – China – 43 million
1975-1979 – Khmer Rouge Repression (communist atheists) – Cambodia – 3 million
Christianity and Religion Have Caused More Deaths Than Anything Else in History
The deaths caused by non-Christians – approximately 90 MILLION! And this is actually a conservative number.It appears that the blogger is comparing Christians and nonChristians, but Purpledawn is comparing religious and nonreligious causes of death. The blogger comes up with 6 million deaths caused by "Christians" and 90 million by nonChristians from that same list, but it's not at all clear whether Purpledawn has even recognized this point.
In other words, even if you could attribute deaths to Christians, which we established at the beginning of this piece is not really the case, they are only responsible for 1/15 the deaths as non-Christians.
In reality, there isn't even ONE example of a Christian cause of any of the murders listed. And presumably they ARE murders, not merely "deaths."
Anything French, and the Crusades and the Inquisition, were not Christian but Catholic and their victims were PREDOMINANTLY genuine Christians, though atheists these days delight in not knowing anything about this history. May I suggest starting with Foxe's Book of Martyrs? Not that ANYTHING recommended by a Christian would get a fair hearing from them of course, but hey, we try. Other "religious" murders on that list are not even remotely Christian.
I've given up trying to grasp what Purpledawn thought those statistics represent, but atheists and unbelievers such as Hitchens probably wouldn't accept them. However, they usually take most of their "evidence" from the Bible itself rather than such worldly events, and when they accuse the Bible and God Himself they are like those who protest against the Death Penalty, refusing to distinguish between justice and murder. Some day God's justice will be only too apparent to them, and undeniably justified as well, shutting their blasphemous mouths, but for now they like to accuse God of the very murders He condemns and the standard for which they could have learned nowhere else but from Biblical Christianity. Just as Pastor Wilson kept saying about Christopher Hitchens -- He learned his morality from the Bible that he wrongly aims against God and Christianity. Of course he did. The world had no such morality before Christ, but trust the fallen intellect to twist it against Christ Himself.
Purpledawn may be reading the list wrong, hard to know, but apparently the blogger also reads it wrong since he accepts that Catholics are Christians.
If Hitchens is right, we can attribute at least Nazism to religion instead of "nonreligion", as deriving from the Roman Catholic Right as he put it. So let's attribute lots of murders to "religion." That's fair. An argument could be made that all the above in a sense ARE "religions" -- but they certainly are NOT Christianity. They are exactly what the Bible identifies as religion in this world since Eden -- the inventions of Satan and his demons. And since Hitchens startled me into recognizing how much of "secular" politics also has a religious element, deriving from Roman Catholic paganism or the deification of political leaders as done in ancient Rome, which for all intents and purposes is now embodied in the Vatican, yes, certainly Nazism, but even Communism, such as Stalinism, may be said to be "religious."
Of course the necessary distinction between religion and Biblical Christianity is still going to escape the atheistic mindset because they don't want to know anything about it and would just LOVE to sic the lions on us. Fine. Bring them on. Come soon, Lord Jesus.
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Sigh. And now I'm constrained to notice that someone posted an enormously long bunch of quotations earlier in that thread supposedly demonstrating that Hitler was really a Christian. I'm not up to reading through it right now but I suppose I may have to eventually. Nothing could be more obvious than that Hitler was no Christian. The churches under Hitler were obligated to swear fealty to him and to the Nazi Party, and any that refused and preached the true gospel were suspected of treason. Hitler was a member of the Catholic Church which isn't Christian anyway, and curried the Vatican's favor when it suited him. He also DID engage in occultic and satanic practices (not that there's anything really contradictory between that and Catholicism, but there certainly is between those practices and Biblical Christianity). Of course he didn't want to lose the loyalty of Christians in the country and much that sounds Christian was just his politicking to keep the churches in line. Unfortunately there were Christian churches that did embrace Nazism and didn't see through it until the very end. HOWEVER, eventually perhaps I'll read that supposed proof of Hitler's "Christianity." He sure made a good Antichrist, fooled a lot of people and is still fooling them. The Big One yet to come will no doubt do an even better job of it.
