# Should we forgive (and forget) religions' past atrocities? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 25, 2010, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344 "2010-10-25T22:15:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2010, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344/61 "2010-10-26T19:34:11Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > I’m not seeing the logic here. If I choose to be a member of the Democratic Party, then I’ve chosen to associate with the Democratic Party, but it does not make me responsible for what the Democratic Party does. Moreover, it does not make me responsible for what the Republican Party does, nor the Libertarian Party, the Green Party, and so forth. So how would me being an Episcopalean make me responsible for the choices of the Episcopalean leadership, much less the leadership of other denominations or other religions? If knowing what the Democratic Party does, you still associate with it, then it is assumed you condone what it does. There is an element of guilt by association there, certainly. However, if you come out in public defending, justifying, excusing or being an apologist for what the Democratic Party does, then you can’t go around saying “but that’s the Party, not me !” > [@](#): > > Here’s a further consideration. If someone were to bash members of the Democratic Party based on the fact that they joined a party which defended slavery in the mid-19th century, we’d all agree that that person was desperate, and clearly scraping the bottom of the barrel as far as excuses for attacking the Democratic Party. Similarly for anyone who brings up the Spanish Inquisition in order to bash the Catholilc Church, only more so, since the Spanish Inquisition is much farther removed in time from us than the Democratic Party’s support for slavery. Well, that would be clear cut if the Inquisition didn’t exist anymore. But it does - oh, sure, the name has been bowdlerized and it’s not an active arm of the Church. But it still sits on the payroll. Waiting. Besides, this is precisely **Der Trihs** ’s exceptionalist argument : the people who today espouse the principles of today’s Democratic Party aren’t guilty of things the Democratic Party espoused a century ago - not only were the people not born then, but the Party itself has evolved. Churches and religions, however, claim an universal moral standard exists, and they’ve got a special kinship with it. Therefore, based on their logic, they should be expected to know right from wrong and abject from decent today, yesterday, and ever since god gave them a call. And if they do not, their entire claim to any kind of legitimacy breaks down. This is not an anti-Christian argument, by the way - the same applies to Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and that one follower of Athena I will not name. Loki’s OK, though. > [@](#): > > On the other hand, if a person does devote himself to attacking the Democratic Party and blocking everything it does, then he _is_ responsible for cases where he helped block an action of the Democratic Party. Likewise if **Cyningablod** devotes himself to attacking all religions and, imagining for a second that he succeeded, then he would be (jointly with others) responsible for the huge numbers of deaths and other disasters that would befall in those areas of the world where religion is a main provider of food, medicine, education, and other necessities, and where religion is a bulkwark against secular tyranny. Bullshit. If people are set on doing the right thing (for whatever reason), then they will do it even if culture precludes them from doing it for their reasons. If tomorrow, the world forcibly stopped all African aid from Christian missions, then Christian bleeding hearts would still give through secular organisms. Only the self-serving, wholly religious-based charity would stop. The blackmail kind, “accept Jesus and I’ll give you food”. The latter is not charity, or humanity, or empathy, or any sort of positive notion you wish to jot down. And again, you trying to use the latter as emotional blackmail to the former is low, low, low, low. No boots, no fur, either 🙂 (note : my use of the idiom “bleeding hearts” is not intended as disparaging. I have more respect for bleeding hearts than I do for logic engines.) ---
**Author:** ![smithsb](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smithsb/32/12107_2.png) [@smithsb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smithsb)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2010, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344/62 "2010-10-26T21:26:41Z")
> [@Locrian](#): > > That’s a no brainer. No. No forgiveness and certainly no forgetfulness. Religions’ atrocities are the main > > … > Drop the crutch, realize you’re nothing more than an organism that would never deserve such an astoundingly inappropriate gift as eternal life for saying thank you and never swearing, and feel even more powerful knowing that priests, nuns and even eucharistic hosts at your Sunday services are nothing more than idiotic organisms who can never achieve your level of understanding… by choice. 🙂 “I don’t think I can fit all this in the block. I’ll just mark ‘UNDECIDED’ under religious, 'kay?” ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2010, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344/63 "2010-10-26T21:46:40Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > If knowing what the Democratic Party does, you still associate with it, then it is assumed you condone what it does. There is an element of guilt by association there, certainly. I don’t think so at all. If I am a member of the Democratic Party, it means I think being a member is better than the alternatives. It doesn’t make me responsible for all the party’s decisions. Most Democrats on this board would squeal at any assumption that they’re condoning certain decisions that their party leaders have made, such as escalating the war in Afghanistan or maintaining certain civil rights violations. > [@](#): > > Well, that would be clear cut if the Inquisition didn’t exist anymore. But it does - oh, sure, the name has been bowdlerized and it’s not an active arm of the Church. But it still sits on the payroll. Waiting. [Completely untrue.](http://www.bede.org.uk/inquisition.htm) The Spanish Inquisition does not exist anymore. (The only possible excuse you could give for this statement would be to point to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which derived in a roundabout fashion from the unrelated Roman Inquisition of the sixteenth century. That, however, would be a rather thin excuse, and just admitting that you were wrong would be smarter.) > [@](#): > > Churches and religions, however, claim an universal moral standard exists, and they’ve got a special kinship with it. Therefore, based on their logic, they should be expected to know right from wrong and abject from decent today, yesterday, and ever since god gave them a call. And if they do not, their entire claim to any kind of legitimacy breaks down. This is not an anti-Christian argument, by the way - the same applies to Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and that one follower of Athena I will not name. At best I know of one religious body that could be said to match your description, that being the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, whose doctrine says clearly that the church leadership has never lead its followers into error. It certainly is not the position taken by the Episcopal Church, nor the Catholic Church, nor any other significant church that I know. And it, if anything, farther from the truth when applied to Buddhism or Hinduism. (For Islam you could perhaps make some argument in that direction.) > [@](#): > > Bullshit. If people are set on doing the right thing (for whatever reason), then they will do it even if culture precludes them from doing it for their reasons. In making that statement, of course, you’re revealing the double-standard that’s at the basis for the attack that’s being made in this thread. **Cyingablod** has said, ad nauseum, that religion causes bad things. In other words, people do bad things for religious reasons, who would not do violence for other reasons. However, when the topic turns to the good things that religious people do, you arbitrarily declare that there’s no relationship between religion and those things; they’d do as many good things if they weren’t religious. So apparently what I’m supposed to believe is that any act of violence done by a religious person is motivated by religion, while any act of charity has nothing to do with religion. To which I respond with one of your favorite words: bullshit. Three basic reasons why I don’t believe your claim. First, it doesn’t match what I see. I’ve already given examples. When the civil war in El Salvador broke out, the Catholic Church fought for the rights of the people of El Salvador. Where were the non-religious people? When the war broke out in Guatemala, same question. With the current situation of abuse of workers in Honduras, same thing question. I’m constantly being told about how numerous the non-religious and anti-religious are, so why don’t I see them standing up and fighting for human rights and dignity in situations where such assistance is necessary. Second, the idea that “Christian bleeding hearts would still give through secular organisms” (I presume you meant “organizations”) depends on the existence of secular organizations to do the job. Oftentimes there aren’t any, or at least not any good ones. Third, secular organizations are often going out of their way to prevent acts of charity, which does little to boost the idea that they’d take over those acts of charity if religion disappeared. An example that I happen to be familiar with is the Nashville Rescue Mission, which provides food, clothing, emergency shelter, counseling, and other assistance to the homeless in downtown Nashville. It’s been around for 60 years, but in the past generation, downtown Nashville has gentrified. (That means the black people were kicked out and rich, white people moved in.) Those who moved in didn’t particularly like the Mission because they noted, not surprisingly, that the homeless tended to gather around it, and the newcomers didn’t like homeless people. So there were attempts to bully the Mission away by law. I’ve checked the website and it seems that the Mission has survived, but similar dramas have played out in cities across the country, and a lot of similar charities have been legislated out of existence so that the rich people don’t have to see any poor people on the way to work. So, I find it hard to believe that secular institutions will fill the role of Christian institutions, when so many secular institutions work against that same role right now. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2010, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344/64 "2010-10-26T23:10:03Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > I don’t think so at all. If I am a member of the Democratic Party, it means I think being a member is better than the alternatives. It doesn’t make me responsible for all the party’s decisions. Most Democrats on this board would squeal at any assumption that they’re condoning certain decisions that their party leaders have made, such as escalating the war in Afghanistan or maintaining certain civil rights violations. Sorry, but no. It’s obvious to me that if being a Democrat is better than the alternatives but not quite right either, then the way to go is to join the Quite Right Party, or to start one if it doesn’t exist. And if you do vote for the Democrat Party or do anything to put them in power or help put them in power, then you \*do \*bear your share of responsibility for whatever it is the DP ends up doing or not doing. Yes, even if you don’t agree with it, or didn’t put them in power so they could do it. > [@](#): > > [Completely untrue.](http://www.bede.org.uk/inquisition.htm) The Spanish Inquisition does not exist anymore. (The only possible excuse you could give for this statement would be to point to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which derived in a roundabout fashion from the unrelated Roman Inquisition of the sixteenth century. That, however, would be a rather thin excuse, and just admitting that you were wrong would be smarter.) Um, your cite ? I think it doesn’t say what you think it says. I think it’s, in fact, entirely unrelated to what we’re talking about. And it’s not even a very good or authoritative cite. Anyway, unrelated ? 😕 There was no special Spanish Inquisition. The Inquisition was one institution which carried out its duties everywhere in Europe for centuries, under the supervision of the one central and eternal Catholic Church, amen. The same guys burned Bogomils, and Albigensians, and Spanish Jews, under the same laws and authorities. And yes, it did evolve into the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Which still performs the same heresy detecting and defining function, albeit without an active enforcing arm to stamp said heresy down (least not outside of the Church proper) > [@](#): > > At best I know of one religious body that could be said to match your description, that being the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, whose doctrine says clearly that the church leadership has never lead its followers into error. It certainly is not the position taken by the Episcopal Church, nor the Catholic Church, nor any other significant church that I know. And it, if anything, farther from the truth when applied to Buddhism or Hinduism. (For Islam you could perhaps make some argument in that direction.) Yeah, it’s not like anyone has ever come up with any sort of [infallibility clause](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_infallibility)whatsoever. Or claimed the Holy Spirit [talks to or through them](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity) on a daily basis. Or that their holy books are the inerrant literal word of GAWD which supercede human comprehension and therefore must be strictly obeyed and its laws enforced. But if your position is that religions don’t know any fucking better than we poor irreligious sinners, then we’re in full agreement. All the more reason to hold them to the exact same standards as secular movements. > [@](#): > > In making that statement, of course, you’re revealing the double-standard that’s at the basis for the attack that’s being made in this thread. **Cyingablod** has said, ad nauseum, that religion causes bad things. In other words, people do bad things for religious reasons, who would not do violence for other reasons. However, when the topic turns to the good things that religious people do, you arbitrarily declare that there’s no relationship between religion and those things; they’d do as many good things if they weren’t religious. So apparently what I’m supposed to believe is that any act of violence done by a religious person is motivated by religion, while any act of charity has nothing to do with religion. To which I respond with one of your favorite words: bullshit. That is not my position at all. I believe “good” people will do good things because their life experience has led them to feel empathy for their fellow men. And I believe monsters will do monstrous things because their lives turned them into monsters. In my opinion, religions and gods have precious little influence either way. Rather, I object to the notion you put forward that religion turns people right when strong evidence to the contrary abounds, both in the news and the history books. Just as I object to the notion that religion, or lack thereof, turns people horribly wrong. I see religion as completely unnecessary yet extremely divisive. A backwards concept which hinders humanity’s progress, increases tensions and conflicts and has no reason to be, since it is based on nothing but flim-flam in the first place. And if it _isn’t_ flim-flam and omnipotent god(s) exist who speak to their chosen in ineffable ways, then they don’t need a church, or a book, or rituals, or money, or special laws, or people strong-arming others to believe in them. And they certainly don’t need a PR squad. > [@](#): > > Second, the idea that “Christian bleeding hearts would still give through secular organisms” (I presume you meant “organizations”) depends on the existence of secular organizations to do the job. Oftentimes there aren’t any, or at least not any good ones. Then found and fund them, oh thou non self-serving apostle of pure, beautiful humanism. Surely you don’t need to brag to the gods, or to bring more sheep to their divine flock to be doing the right thing and easing the people’s suffering ? (and yes, I meant organizations. French barbarism, I apologize) > [@](#): > > Third, secular organizations are often going out of their way to prevent acts of charity, which does little to boost the idea that they’d take over those acts of charity if religion disappeared. An example that I happen to be familiar with is the Nashville Rescue Mission, which provides food, clothing, emergency shelter, counseling, and other assistance to the homeless in downtown Nashville. It’s been around for 60 years, but in the past generation, downtown Nashville has gentrified. (That means the black people were kicked out and rich, white people moved in.) Those who moved in didn’t particularly like the Mission because they noted, not surprisingly, that the homeless tended to gather around it, and the newcomers didn’t like homeless people. So there were attempts to bully the Mission away by law. I’ve checked the website and it seems that the Mission has survived, but similar dramas have played out in cities across the country, and a lot of similar charities have been legislated out of existence so that the rich people don’t have to see any poor people on the way to work. So, I find it hard to believe that secular institutions will fill the role of Christian institutions, when so many secular institutions work against that same role right now. And ? Rich pricks bully secular soup kitchens just the same. I should know. That’s no argument in favour of or against religion or religious charities. It’s just an argument against rich pricks. ---
**Author:** ![Cyningablod](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9fc29f/32.png) [@Cyningablod](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cyningablod)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2010, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344/65 "2010-10-27T16:03:17Z")
I’m done trying to argue with **ITR champion** here. Like most religious apologists, he is a master of the misdirect, the half-truth, and the irrelevancy. And he clearly doesn’t understand key historical concepts in my arguments, like the history of circumcision in the US. ---
**Author:** ![LonesomePolecat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a88e57/32.png) [@LonesomePolecat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LonesomePolecat)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2010, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344/66 "2010-10-27T17:46:54Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Consider the Jim Jones cult and other ones where everyone dies; no one profits, everyone dies. Who is the one using the people there? Jones was a commie. Jones once claimed he was the only real Communist in the world. He tied to emigrate to the Soviet Union with his entire congregation. At Jonestown, there were nightly showings of propaganda films borrowed from the Soviet embassy in Guyana. People’s Temple escaped close scrutiny because of Jones’ political connections with liberal and radical politicians in California. > [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > It is the religion itself that is using them, which doesn’t care that it is destroying itself in the process because it is a thing, not a person. A mindless psychological disease with no foresight, parasitizing its human hosts to their death. And yet, strangely enough, it wasn’t religion that killed a hundred million people across Europe and Asia in the twentieth century. It was an explicitly atheist and secularist political movement much adored by intellectuals. ---
**Author:** ![LonesomePolecat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a88e57/32.png) [@LonesomePolecat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LonesomePolecat)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2010, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344/67 "2010-10-27T17:50:58Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > How often does any large scale human behavior have one, and only one motive? If that’s the standard you are going by, then how can you claim that politics was the cause either? Similarly, how can you claim it was religion? ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2010, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344/68 "2010-10-27T20:28:50Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Consider the Jim Jones cult and other ones where everyone dies; no one profits, everyone dies. Who is the one using the people there? > > . Okay, let’s consider Jim Jones: he agreed with YOU on every issue of importance. He was a man of the Far Left, and was beloved by liberal politicians and activists all over San Francisco. You’d have been on his side. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2010, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344/69 "2010-10-27T21:46:07Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > Um, your cite ? I think it doesn’t say what you think it says. I think it’s, in fact, entirely unrelated to what we’re talking about. And it’s not even a very good or authoritative cite. > > Anyway, unrelated ? There was no special Spanish Inquisition. The Inquisition was one institution which carried out its duties everywhere in Europe for centuries, under the supervision of the one central and eternal Catholic Church, amen. The same guys burned Bogomils, and Albigensians, and Spanish Jews, under the same laws and authorities. > And yes, it did evolve into the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Which still performs the same heresy detecting and defining function, albeit without an active enforcing arm to stamp said heresy down (least not outside of the Church proper) First of all, my cite says exactly what I think it says. “When did the Spanish Inquisition end? After about 1700 it was a feeble shadow of its former self but limped on for over another hundred years until 1835 when it was suppressed for the last time. The various other Inquisitions of Sicily, the New World and Venice disappeared in the decades around 1800, finally killed off by the Napoleonic Wars.” As for the quality of the cite, it looks quite high quality to me. It has sources for every paragraph, a bibliography of works from top academic presses, and the author, James Hannam, is a historian with degrees from Oxford and Cambridge. So I don’t see why you say it’s “not a very good or authoritative cite”. I have trouble imagining anything more authoritative. Nevertheless, if you want to contest anything it says, you’re welcome to provide cites that say something different. When you say that “the Inquisition was one institution, which carried out its duties everywhere in Europe for centuries under the supervision of the one central and eternal Catholic Church”, you’re flatly wrong once again. In the article I already linked to, [myth #1]([http://www.catholicapologetics.info/apologetics/protestantism/holinquisit.htm#MYTH](http://www.catholicapologetics.info/apologetics/protestantism/holinquisit.htm#MYTH) 1) is “The medieval Inquisition was a suppressive, all encompassing, and all-powerful, centralized organ of repression maintained by the Catholic Church.” First of all, no Inquisition carried out its duties “everywhere in Europe”, and that would have been difficult considering that the Catholic Church wasn’t even present everywhere in Europe. The Spanish Inquisition had almost no activity outside Spain, France, and Italy, so that’s a long way from “everywhere in Europe”. Second, the Spanish Inquisition was established and supervised by the monarchy in Spain, not the Catholic Church. It was an entirely different institution from the Roman Inquisition, which was established and supervised by the Church and centered in Rome. Saying that they are the same institution is simply wrong. ---
**Author:** ![FuzzyOgre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@FuzzyOgre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FuzzyOgre)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2010, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344/70 "2010-10-27T23:31:53Z")
Lets lay it to rest: Has religion killed more people than secular organizations? Thats what its all about, right? We’ll be very modest in our assumptions. Since Christian fundamentalism feels the world to be about 6000 years, we’ll use that. Most faiths accept older numbers, so this is the modest and most strict reckoning. Next we will assume that world wide, in that time, 200 people died per day for religious reasons. That doesnt mean that every day 200 people died, but the average works out that way. For instance, there might be a battle with 100k casualties, as someone said earlier. Is that modest? I think it is. For instance, the Aztecs sacrificed about 20,000 per year! Thats 54 per day. They were around for about 200 years. I am sure they worked themselves up to that number, but thats as much as 4 million from them alone. So world wide, 200 is pretty modest. That would only be 40 people for each of Europe, Africa, middle east, far east and the Americas. If you had a battle in Europe and 50,000 died, then nobody has to die for for religion for another 3 years! Anywhere in Europe. You see where this is going. Two hundred people averaged daily for 6000 years. It also averages that more modern battles cost more lives than early ones, though lots of bronze age battles killed tens of thousands. Cut to the chase: 438,000,000 million dead in all that time. Nearly half a billion. 1/7 of todays world would have to drop dead to make up those numbers. The regimes of the depots of the 20th century are a small fraction compared to that. Is my 200 unreasonable? If the population of the Aztec empire was 10 million (and I read claims as high as 19 million), then the religious death rate was only 0.0005 percent! That would be utterly un-noticeable against the regular mortality. I havent even mentioned their kills due to war. Political conflicts were also religious conflicts in that society. Remember we are being modest, and it could have been half that rate. Whats that mean in practical terms? It means that if you were an Aztec who knew **200,000** people, only _one_ person you knew would be dead from religious conflict. Do my numbers stink? Of course they do. They are way too low, probably by an order of magnitude. And thats just if you are a biblical literalist. If you are a more typical religious person, you probably accept that the world is older, and religion extends back 10,000 years or more. Religion has been killing people for millenia. Yes religion has killed **way** more people than despotic atheists. ---
**Author:** ![Yeticus\_Rex](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/a698b9/32.png) [@Yeticus\_Rex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yeticus_Rex)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2010, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344/71 "2010-10-28T00:01:46Z")
I had the impression you wanted to hear and give thought to differing viewpoints… > [@Cyningablod](#): > > Is it fair/justifiable/ethical to criticize modern religious institutions–or perhaps, religion in general as a phenomenon–for their/its past crimes and atrocities? **I ask this because I really want to hear mixed views on the question. I don’t know how I feel, just yet.** > > Here’s the background to my question: > > I just finished reading three books\* that have inflamed my normally mild-mannered atheism into borderline [anti-theism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antitheism). I have to admit, these authors make _some_ compelling points, and I find myself strongly agreeing with them at times, and feeling deeply spiteful towards religion in general for all of its long, looooooong history of abuses against the human species. But I don’t want to get carried away with the rhetoric. > > I would expect that the two most common counterarguments to the anti-theistic “argument from institutional evil” (as I call it) would reduce to: > > \*1. Yes, religion has done much harm, but it has also done just as much if not more, good. > > 1. Religions can evolve, just like any other institution or society. Is it fair to criticize Christianity for the pogroms, Inquisitions, and Crusades, when we no longer criticize the United States, as a nation, for slavery?\* > > Of these, I find 1) to be pretty unconvincing, because it amounts to a pathetic “Yes, but…” protestation. Pointing to good things you’ve done does NOT diminish your culpability and responsibility for the bad things. Moreover, religion is purported to be a force for transcendent good, and this lame counterargument does nothing to salvage the deep damage done to that idea by the “argument from institutional evil”. > > But I have a more difficult time processing 2). My instinct is to say in response that a) religion _continues_ to offend, abuse, and injure, just not on as grand a scale, thanks to humanistic and Enlightenment-derived secular political systems; and b) how much real “evolution” can occur anyway, in a belief system that is supposed to be divinely-wrought and thus absolute and unchanging? > > **Your thoughts? Thanks!** > > * * * > > \*_Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith_, Jon Krakauer > _The God Delusion_, Richard Dawkins > \*god Is Not Great \*[sic], Christopher Hitchens …and then this after about 70 posts… > [@Cyningablod](#): > > I’m done trying to argue with **ITR champion** here. **Like most religious apologists, he is a master of the misdirect, the half-truth, and the irrelevancy. And he clearly doesn’t understand key historical concepts in my arguments** , like the history of circumcision in the US. My bolding. You asked for **ITR** ’s thoughts and then you end up criticizing him for his inability to understand your argument. Something must have gotten lost from Post#1 to Post#65. Your OP at first _seemed to be openly inviting_ those from both sides of the aisle who wanted to give their opinions on how we should treat organized religion(s). Now whether or not you meant this to become another religion bashing thread, you kind of destroyed your OP with your later post. I too was curious (and I bet many other lurkers were as well) about what others thought about your OP, but now it seems that the thread is gonna head south like all of the other ones before it. At this point it’s up to you to steer it back towards your OP, or ask a mod to send it to the Pit so we can all recycle/regurgitate/reuse our mantras…might be too late since some have already expressed them in their own predictable manner. ---
**Author:** ![Calculon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b5a626/32.png) [@Calculon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Calculon)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2010, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344/72 "2010-10-28T00:13:28Z")
> [@FuzzyOgre](#): > > Lets lay it to rest: Has religion killed more people than secular organizations? Thats what its all about, right? > > We’ll be very modest in our assumptions. > > Since Christian fundamentalism feels the world to be about 6000 years, we’ll use that. Most faiths accept older numbers, so this is the modest and most strict reckoning. > > Next we will assume that world wide, in that time, 200 people died per day for religious reasons. That doesnt mean that every day 200 people died, but the average works out that way. For instance, there might be a battle with 100k casualties, as someone said earlier. > > Is that modest? I think it is. For instance, the Aztecs sacrificed about 20,000 per year! Thats 54 per day. They were around for about 200 years. I am sure they worked themselves up to that number, but thats as much as 4 million from them alone. > > So world wide, 200 is pretty modest. That would only be 40 people for each of Europe, Africa, middle east, far east and the Americas. If you had a battle in Europe and 50,000 died, then nobody has to die for for religion for another 3 years! Anywhere in Europe. > > You see where this is going. Two hundred people averaged daily for 6000 years. It also averages that more modern battles cost more lives than early ones, though lots of bronze age battles killed tens of thousands. > > Cut to the chase: 438,000,000 million dead in all that time. Nearly half a billion. 1/7 of todays world would have to drop dead to make up those numbers. The regimes of the depots of the 20th century are a small fraction compared to that. > > Is my 200 unreasonable? If the population of the Aztec empire was 10 million (and I read claims as high as 19 million), then the religious death rate was only 0.0005 percent! That would be utterly un-noticeable against the regular mortality. I havent even mentioned their kills due to war. Political conflicts were also religious conflicts in that society. > > Remember we are being modest, and it could have been half that rate. Whats that mean in practical terms? It means that if you were an Aztec who knew **200,000** people, only _one_ person you knew would be dead from religious conflict. > > Do my numbers stink? Of course they do. They are way too low, probably by an order of magnitude. > > And thats just if you are a biblical literalist. If you are a more typical religious person, you probably accept that the world is older, and religion extends back 10,000 years or more. Religion has been killing people for millenia. > > Yes religion has killed **way** more people than despotic atheists. This is clearly a silly argument. If you look at atheist dictators they have a much higher death-rate then religion does. The obvious conclusion is therefore that atheism has killed fewer people simply because it is not given more opportunity. So some quick calculations: At a conservative estimate Pol Pot was in power 3 years and was responsable for 1.7 million deaths, at a rate of over 1,500 a day. Or worse still Joseph Stalin was in power 31 years and was responsible for about 20 million deaths, giving a death-rate of over 1,700 per day. And these are just in single countries and single regimes. If we take your metric that the worst offender in terms of deaths is only about 1/4 of the total worldwide, then we have around 6,000 being killed per year by atheist dictators. So crunching the numbers we find that on the YEC view of 6000 years, at this rate atheism matches the death total of religion in only 200 years. And given that atheism has been taken seriously for at least 200 years (The secular French revolutions were over 200 years ago) then it looks like atheism could be responsible for more deaths. Of course I think the whole thing is ridiculous. But even on a best-case scenario this narrative that religion is evil and secularisation is the way of the future is naievely simplistic. Calculon. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2010, 9:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344/73 "2010-10-28T09:37:42Z")
For the old “killing in the name of atheism” routine I say this. Take a group of people and sit them on an island, give them the “Men in Black” brain wipe. Leave them with an explanation of atheism. (it’ll be short pamphlet!) would there be anything in that pamphlet that positively drives them to mass murder? Alternatively, leave them with an explanation of the major world faiths, or communism, or maoism (I’m assuming there will be _some_ sort of handy guide yes?) Is there anything in those books that positively leads to mass murder? So can we stop with the “killing in the name of atheism” meme now please? ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2010, 9:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344/74 "2010-10-28T09:47:06Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Second, the idea that “Christian bleeding hearts would still give through secular organisms” (I presume you meant “organizations”) depends on the existence of secular organizations to do the job. Oftentimes there aren’t any, or at least not any good ones. > . Bang on, apart from the Red Cross, or Oxfam, or Medicene sans frontiers but other than those Oh…Unicef But other than those Ah! Amnesty International. Oh heck, [try these](http://www.freethoughtpedia.com/wiki/Charities)and see if that educates you out of your arrogance. ---
**Author:** ![jinty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/dbc845/32.png) [@jinty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jinty)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2010, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344/75 "2010-10-28T12:52:22Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Third, secular organizations are often going out of their way to prevent acts of charity, which does little to boost the idea that they’d take over those acts of charity if religion disappeared. An example that I happen to be familiar with is the Nashville Rescue Mission, which provides food, clothing, emergency shelter, counseling, and other assistance to the homeless in downtown Nashville. It’s been around for 60 years, but in the past generation, downtown Nashville has gentrified. (That means the black people were kicked out and rich, white people moved in.) Those who moved in didn’t particularly like the Mission because they noted, not surprisingly, that the homeless tended to gather around it, and the newcomers didn’t like homeless people. So there were attempts to bully the Mission away by law. I’ve checked the website and it seems that the Mission has survived, but similar dramas have played out in cities across the country, and a lot of similar charities have been legislated out of existence so that the rich people don’t have to see any poor people on the way to work. So, I find it hard to believe that secular institutions will fill the role of Christian institutions, when so many secular institutions work against that same role right now. Which “secular organization going out of their way to prevent… charity” was involved in this story? You didn’t name it, just said “rich, white people”. Are you claiming that’s a secular organization? Seems neither secular _nor_ an organization to me, but hey, if it lets you bash atheists, knock yourself out. Don’t expect me to be impressed by the honesty of your debating techniques though. ---
**Author:** ![tagos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2010, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344/76 "2010-10-28T13:01:55Z")
> [@LonesomePolecat](#): > > JIt was an explicitly atheist and secularist political movement much adored by intellectuals. Cite? By which I mean hard data showing that at any one time the majority of ‘intellectuals’ supported Stalin, Mao or Pol Pot. Hitler as you know was explicitly carrying out the holocaust in the name of christianity. And not one of the other mass murderers were doing it in the name of atheism or secularism. They were doing it in the name of their ideologies. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2010, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344/77 "2010-10-28T13:05:32Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > Yeah, it’s not like anyone has ever come up with any sort of infallibility clause whatsoever. Or claimed the Holy Spirit talks to or through them on a daily basis. First of all, both of the links that you used when you posted this were to Wikipedia, which is not a reliable source. Secondly, it seems you’re hoping that you can merely bring up the words “papal infallibility” and hope that it will prove your point. [A quick check of the facts](http://www.catholic.com/library/Papal_Infallibility.asp) will show that it does not, as no Catholic does or ever has claimed that every single decision made by every Pope, much less every one made by the Vatican, is infallible. The formal doctinre of Papal Infallibility has been invoked only two times in the history of the Church, for the doctrines of the Assumptions and the Immaculate Conception, neither having anything to do with what’s at issue in this thread. ---
**Author:** ![JThunder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e95f7d/32.png) [@JThunder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JThunder)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2010, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344/78 "2010-10-28T13:09:51Z")
> [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > For the old “killing in the name of atheism” routine I say this. > > Take a group of people and sit them on an island, give them the “Men in Black” brain wipe. > > Leave them with an explanation of atheism. (it’ll be short pamphlet!) would there be anything in that pamphlet that positively drives them to mass murder? Drives them to murder? Maybe, maybe not. That would depend on the pamphlet’s precise content and how matters are phrased. However, the notion that there is no ultimate authority to whom people will be held accountable on Judgment Day would certainly affect the kinds of moral decisions that people make. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2010, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344/79 "2010-10-28T13:19:38Z")
> [@Tagos](#): > > Hitler as you know was explicitly carrying out the holocaust in the name of christianity. [No he did not.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=579662) You’re making that up. The facts about that topic are well known, so it’s baffling that you would think you could get away with saying that. > [@](#): > > And not one of the other mass murderers were doing it in the name of atheism or secularism. They were doing it in the name of their ideologies. Atheism was part of their ideologies. Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Castro, Tito, and a great many others all specifically singled out Christians and members of other religions for violent extermination because they believed that the world would be a better place once religion was completely or mostly wiped out. Cites have already been given, so there’s no need for repetition. ---
**Author:** ![LonesomePolecat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a88e57/32.png) [@LonesomePolecat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LonesomePolecat)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2010, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344/80 "2010-10-28T13:19:57Z")
> [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > So can we stop with the “killing in the name of atheism” meme now please? Depends. Can you stop the “killing in the name of religion” meme? Whenever some dimwitted atheist starts ranting about the Crusades or what not, it is entirely appropriate to remind him that an explicitly atheistic and secularist political movement in the twentieth century led to the [Holodomar](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor), the gulags, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution. Prof. R.J. Rummel of the University of Hawaii estimates that more than [one hundred and ten million people died in the Soviet Union and China because of the Communists,](http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM) and the sort of atheist who rants about the supposed evils of religion deserves to have that fact thrown in his face. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344.md?page=5)