Deadliest religion ever?

[Brian37]

Maybe I am just being pedantic here, but I really don't see how a religion can be deadly. That's like saying atheism is deadly due to the high body count of dictators like Stalin and Mao.

Religion is deadly, not because all religious people will kill, but because people do act on their beliefs, and if their logic is bad that logic can lead them to do very horrible things in defense of that bad logic.

Now can atheists do the same? Sure, I never want the word "off" which is what "atheist"means to be turned into a religion. I do not like some current atheists trying to write their own moral lists and create "atheist churches" in order to compete with religion, those groups with those concepts would be just the same. 

You can avoid that kind of superficial tribalism by accepting that our morality is not in a label, but in our evolution, and that includes atheists. 

Stalin and Mao demanded the same blind loyalty as any dark age theocracy and Saudi Arabia. The issue is how humans use labels to form groups. That does create safety in numbers and allows the group when in big enough numbers to have control over resources and even bully other groups. 

No label, not even the word "atheist" will determine if the individual claiming that label will be cruel or compassionate. Religion should be considered anything, any label, be it religion, economic view, or political party that gets to the point of oppression of questioning authority. Basically the point a group gets to the point of demanding blind loyalty.

[Minimalist]

If you want to count the Mongols as xtian ( they had been heavily evangelized by Nestorians ) then jesusism wins hands down as the most murderous religion ever.  The thing is, the Mongols weren't conquering to spread religion.  They were just murdering bastards.

[SuperSentient]

I really don't see how a religion can be deadly.

If religion is used to justify violence, then it can be deadly.

That's like saying atheism is deadly due to the high body count of dictators like Stalin and Mao.

I don't know of people that use atheism to justify their violence, but I guess it is possible.

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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.

I disagree with the major idea here, but I can see why people wouldn't think the question matters and is supposedly irrelevant.

[Edwardo Piet]

Maybe I am just being pedantic here, but I really don't see how a religion can be deadly. That's like saying atheism is deadly due to the high body count of dictators like Stalin and Mao.

It's nothing like saying that.

Atheism has no creed, no beliefs... The key difference is when atheists kill people it never has anything to do with not believing in gods... It's for completely unrelated reasons and theists can kill for those reasons too... But there's stuff in the Bible and Koran that if taken literally and believed by extremists are reasons to be violent. When an atheist kills someone it has nothing to do with atheism but when Christain extremists bomb abortion clinics and when Muslim extremists blow themselves up shouting "Alah!" that has everything to do with religion.

The difference is that there's no such thing as extremist atheism.

[downbeatplumb]

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.

Christianity by virtue of having powerful agencies willing to kill in its name. From Rome to the inquisition, crusades, various schisms, missionarys enforcing compliance and the Nazis you have a history of almost endless bloodshed in the name of the dead jew on a stick.

[Edwardo Piet]

I don't know of people that use atheism to justify their violence, but I guess it is possible.

No it isn't.

Even if someone murdered someone and then immediately said "I killed that person because I do not believe that gods exist." they'd just be flat out wrong about why they killed the person.

But if an extremist muslim murdered someone and then immediately said "I killed that person because I believe every word of the Koran and feel especially passionate about the parts that tell us that God wants us to kill the unbelievers." they could be absolutely right about why they killed the person.

[SuperSentient]

I don't know of people that use atheism to justify their violence, but I guess it is possible.

Even if someone murdered someone and then immediately said "I killed that person because I do not believe that gods exist." they'd just be flat out wrong about why they killed the person.

Unless they actually murdered someone for that reason.

[Edwardo Piet]

That makes no sense. There's nothing about not believing in an imaginary guy in the sky that causes a person to kill someone.

[brewer]

Didn't the Shakers non fuck themselves out of existence?

[Mr Greene]

What immediately springs to mind for me is Jonestown.
Depending on how you interpret 'deadliest' of course.