(March 23, 2017 at 4:45 pm)TheAtheologian Wrote: What do you think the deadliest/bloodiest religion in history was?
With the religious terrorism of this day, it seems many horrific things have been done in the name of religion.
It doesn't have to be a religion alive today, just some religion (historical and/or modern) that you consider to have been the most deadly.
I really do hate our species comparing numbers like this. All religions are potential volcanos, some are simply more active than others in context of human history. Who killed more is pointless to me because religion is the excuse people use, but it is not the source of cruelty. Our evolution is the source of our behaviors both cruel and compassionate. Religions come and go over time and humans have always made excuses using them to do both bad and good.
You wont get rid of any religion by force, but we do need to see ourselves as the same species and have a scientific understanding in terms of evolution and human psychology to gain an understanding as to why this is not the right question to ask. This question causes the believer (insert any religion here) to think in divisive tribal terms and that can cause the pissing contest our species gets stuck in.
Humans kill because we do. Humans naturally defend that which they are familiar with, so we are widely likely to defend the society we grow up in. Religion is the excuse humans use to do that. 20,000 years from now, if we don't kill ourselves off, we would expect to see current religions die or morph to something unrecognizable by comparison and still have people murdering over them, even between sects under the same umbrella label, much like Protestants and Catholics in Ireland did in the 80s and 90s. Much like Sunnis and Shiites unfortunately still do in the middle east.
It doesn't matter who kills more. What matters is logic and seeing nature as nature and that understanding in natural terms instead of superstition gives us better solutions to reduce conflict. It is still very important to study all religions and compare their histories yes, but for the purpose of deconstructing bad logic, but not for the purpose of finger pointing. Our species will always produce both cruelty and compassion and unfortunately evolution does not care which wins. It is up to us to know both are part of our reality and then it becomes a choice as to how we respond to each other.
