# Whose non-existance would save the most lives, directly or indirectly? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 9, 2009, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whose-non-existance-would-save-the-most-lives-directly-or-indirectly/505790 "2009-08-09T01:46:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2009, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whose-non-existance-would-save-the-most-lives-directly-or-indirectly/505790/41 "2009-08-09T22:11:52Z")
> [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > Hitler was anti-Christian and heavily influenced by neo-paganism. That’s just Christian historical revisionism. > [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > You’re pretty ignorant of theology didn’t Jesus say to turn the other cheek? As I said, meaningless. His basic worldview demands endless war and oppression. Lines like “turn the other cheek” if anything undermine any tendency toward morality and peacefulness because they are so blatantly impractical; they encourage unethical behavior by encouraging the idea that good behavior is stupid. > [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > What was so wrong about the Cold War may I say? If not Communism would have triumphed and would kill tens of millions of people more then in our world. Also you despise the Founding Fathers? They were regardless of religion the beacons of liberty and freedom in the world: are you a communist or something? The Cold War was a war of two evil sides as far as I’m concerned. And the founding fathers were genocidal slaveowners, and opposed to liberty and freedom save for a select few people. > [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > You’ll still have several other religions. Which probably wouldn’t be as bad as Christianity and it’s offspring. > [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > Christianity is anti-genocide and killing in it’s actual form. Yes, No True Scotsman would do such things. > [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > Why would you eliminate all religion. What’s the point of converting people to atheism anyway? Because religion is stupid and malignant; atheism is both correct and morally neutral. > [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > The Christian God of an all encompassing universal deity is far more science oriented then the pagan gods. Garbage; Christianity is all about believing the One True Way, ignoring the facts and denying that other beliefs are anything but evil. It’s the enemy of science, or any other sort of reason or attempt to understand the world. It is the champion of madness and ignorance. > [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > You seem to ignore the fact that Christianity is a religion of love in it’s real form and promotes helping people and caring for them. Garbage. It’s a religion of hate; malice as an ideology. It has spent about two thousand years grinding away at everything good in the world; compassion, reason, happiness, pleasure, knowledge; Christianity is the enemy of them all. It got to it’s present position of power due to it’s willingness and drive to overgrow and destroy everything but itself; it is the intellectual equivalent of a malignant cancer. It has caused grave and possibly irreparable harm to humanity’s collective nature; even many non-Christian cultures have been corrupted by it’s grim opposition to all form of happiness, beyond the malignant joy of harming others. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2009, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whose-non-existance-would-save-the-most-lives-directly-or-indirectly/505790/42 "2009-08-09T22:36:28Z")
> [@Blalron](#): > > The problem with that is that we’d probably all be muslim right now, if Christianity didn’t exist to fight with Islam during the Middle Ages. Is that really better? 😕 IIRC Muhamed adapted Judaism and Christianity as the basis for the new faith. I do think that the predominant faith in Europe during the middle ages would had counteracted whatever it had come out of the Arabian peninsula. Another problem with your point: It was the divisions among Christians that helped the Muslims in Europe. The fall of the Eastern Roman empire was caused in large part by the crusaders stupidly sacking Constantinople in the 4th crusade. Never mind that the Eastern empire was Christian, but it seems that the crusaders thought that being Orthodox angered the Christian god. The maddening thing is that the crusaders forgot about Jerusalem. In the following 200 years the weakened Byzantine empire began to lost territory to the Muslim Ottoman empire. The European Christian states not rise in time to help when the Muslims came knocking at the gates of the weakened city, again for theological reasons. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2009, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whose-non-existance-would-save-the-most-lives-directly-or-indirectly/505790/43 "2009-08-09T23:11:34Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > That’s just Christian historical revisionism. Prove it. Many of the people Hitler admired or were fellow Nazis were neo-pagans. > [@](#): > > As I said, meaningless. His basic worldview demands endless war and oppression. Lines like “turn the other cheek” if anything undermine any tendency toward morality and peacefulness because they are so blatantly impractical; they encourage unethical behavior by encouraging the idea that good behavior is stupid. So you are saying that Christians think Jesus’ saying is stupid. Also there have been prominent Christians who turned the other cheek: MLK for one example. > [@](#): > > The Cold War was a war of two evil sides as far as I’m concerned. And the founding fathers were genocidal slaveowners, and opposed to liberty and freedom save for a select few people. So the American democracy is morally equivalent to Soviet tyranny? Also how were the Founding Fathers genocidal? And many weren’t slaveowners: Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, indeed many were abolitionists while George Washington freed his slaves. > [@](#): > > Which probably wouldn’t be as bad as Christianity and it’s offspring. Prove it. > [@](#): > > Yes, No True Scotsman would do such things. > > Because religion is stupid and malignant; atheism is both correct and morally neutral. You aren’t providing real answers. > [@](#): > > Garbage; Christianity is all about believing the One True Way, ignoring the facts and denying that other beliefs are anything but evil. It’s the enemy of science, or any other sort of reason or attempt to understand the world. It is the champion of madness and ignorance. Then why did the Roman Catholic Church save several scientific documents. Why were the world’s greatest scientists: Newton, Galileo, Bell, Coperinicus Christians? Provided Galileo and Coperinicus defied the Church but they still were religious. ---
**Author:** ![Fake\_Tales\_of\_San\_Francisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8491ac/32.png) [@Fake\_Tales\_of\_San\_Francisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fake_Tales_of_San_Francisco)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2009, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whose-non-existance-would-save-the-most-lives-directly-or-indirectly/505790/44 "2009-08-09T23:21:05Z")
This kind of thing would only work if you could also manipulate cause and effect to make the world exactly the same, just without the notable figure you’re eliminating. There’s no way of telling that removing Jesus would make the world a worse place, there’s no way of being sure that removing Hitler would make it better. There’s always people who are willing to kill to achieve their goals, take out one of them and another will just take their place. Not to mention all the unseen unfathomable ramifications removing people from history would have. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2009, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whose-non-existance-would-save-the-most-lives-directly-or-indirectly/505790/45 "2009-08-09T23:36:04Z")
> [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > Prove it. Many of the people Hitler admired or were fellow Nazis were neo-pagans. This neo-pagan business needs to be proved, I have seen very little regarding the fellow neo-pagan Nazis but there is plenty of evidence on how they followed religion in practice: > **[Legalni bukmacherzy w Polsce 2026 – Ranking](https://www.nobeliefs.com/)** > > Poznaj listę najlepszych legalnych bukmacherów w Polsce. Sprawdź najlepsze oferty i bezpiecznie obstawiaj zakłady w 2026 roku. > [@](#): > > Hitler’s Christianity > > To deny the influence of Christianity on Hitler and its role in World War II, means that you must ignore history and forever bar yourself from understanding the source of German anti-Semitism and how the WWII atrocities occurred. > > By using historical evidence of Hitler’s and his henchmen’s own words, this section aims to show how mixing religion with politics can cause conflicts, not only against religion but against government and its people. This site, in no way, condones Nazism, Neo-Nazism, fascist governments, or anti-Semitism, but instead, warns against them. [http://www.liberalslikechrist.org/Catholic/Hitlersfaith.html](http://www.liberalslikechrist.org/Catholic/Hitlersfaith.html) > [@](#): > > Hitler offered his countrymen the family of his good friend Joseph Goebbels as the model for all good Germans to follow: > > Goebbels with his family > > Joseph Goebbels (seated) with his wife Magda and the six innocent children whom they killed before killing themselves, in Hitler’s bunker. The eldest son in uniform, by Magda’s previous marriage, was in the Luftwaffe and survived the war. Goebbels was so close to his Catholic boss that he asked and received the honor to have the Fuëhrer serve as first witness at his Catholic wedding. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Peyote\_Coyote](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/5f8ce5/32.png) [@The\_Peyote\_Coyote](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Peyote_Coyote)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2009, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whose-non-existance-would-save-the-most-lives-directly-or-indirectly/505790/46 "2009-08-09T23:48:44Z")
Islam would have existed without Christ because Mohammed was heavily influenced by Judaism. Islam would have eventually nudged out a lot of the paganist belief systems for much the same reasons Christianity did: it offers a sophisicated religion that promises eternal life for anyone who believes, not just the great warriors. I seriousily doubt that the non-existence of Gustav Princip or Franz Ferdinand would have prevented WW1. Kaiser Bill was determined that Germany would have “its place in the sun,” and it’s my impression that most of the other nations of Europe were also spoiling for a war. ---
**Author:** ![Jerseyman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/bbce88/32.png) [@Jerseyman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jerseyman)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2009, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whose-non-existance-would-save-the-most-lives-directly-or-indirectly/505790/47 "2009-08-10T00:12:53Z")
Removing any religious figure would make no difference at all because none of them existed _as understood by their later followers_. It took centuries of argument to decide that Jesus was God and more centuries to decide just _how_ he was God and it isn’t settled yet between Oriental Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic and all the Protestants that have come on the scene since. Maybe there was a real Jesus and he preached a doctrine of peace. Maybe he preached the kind of peace so many fundamentalists do - the peace that comes when the Ungodly are all exterminated or converted and all follow the Will of God as defined by the sect. Maybe the religious figure of The Christ used memories of a noted genuinely peaceful Jewish preacher but if he had not existed would have just as readily used another, perhaps Simon the Mage or John the Baptiser. Mandeans do venerate John as the True Messiah and Jesus as a real man but false Messiah. ‘Christ’ is a title, not a name, so we could as easily have ‘John Christ’ or ‘Simon Christ’ or even ‘Appollonius Christ’. The same is even truer of Buddhism. Literal history doesn’t matter much to Buddhists anyway and Jains had already developed an even more extreme similar religion. Any number of Gurus could have come up with a basically atheistic (in that if there are gods they are just another form of existence like ghosts) version of moralistic Hinduism for the masses. In fact mythologically there are similarities: Gotama is born a Prince; Jesus is born ‘King of Israel’. Gotama leads a sheltered married life until he escapes and is shocked by the real human condition, abandons his kingdom (and his wife and his responsibilities to his people!) to join ascetics and then considering them too obsessed with trivial ‘self-mortification’ goes off to meditate by himself; Jesus we know less about but he presumable does nothing noteworthy for 30 years and then goes on the road. Though he is not said to have joined and then left anything else, the is his baptism by John and his constant attacks on trivial obsession by ‘Pharisees’. Jesus does spend 40 days ‘meditating’ and ‘being tempted’ in the desert. The similarity is more that while Gotama surrenders his kingdom and all worldly concerns to be spiritually reborn as the Perfect Man beyond ‘error’ (sin) to drag him back to further human incarnation, Jesus surrenders his life to be resurrected as the Perfect Man who is Perfect God living eternally in Heaven. To me, it sounds a lot like the same basic story expressed through different cultural and religious backgrounds, the age-old paradox of _Who wishes to live must die_. So I think no Jesus, no difference. Certainly (as so many authors like to imagine) no pagan Roman Empire unchanged into modern times. Everything Constantine did his Mithraic predecessor had done (except that Constantine undid the only {very sensible} rule of succession by appointment that the Empire ever had). Rome was headed to One State, One Emperor (in more than one Person!), One God long before Constantine. Mohammed? Again we may know more about him. We know too that modern intolerant politicised Islam is just plain that - modern. Its earliest lasting version is Wahhabism going back about 200 years to an Arab Puritanical movement (often deemed heretical) with strong ties to the al-Saud family that during the 19th century became identified with Arab political ‘religiously pure’ nationalism against the relaxed Ottoman Turks and got where it is today thanks to General Allenby and ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ supporting it in the First World War (and then dropping it as fast as Bush dropped the Taliban when they had no USSR to fight in Afghanistan). Historically, Muslims have been a lot more tolerant than Christians but they started from a position of strength that allowed it and they saw themselves as correcting where paganism had deified Jesus and lost his message, while Christians built up from one of weakness that almost forced them into a rigid orthodoxy. Anybody else we might be better off without? I think more the other way: _if_ Valentinus had become Bishop of Rome (before they were called Popes) _perhaps_ the concepts of ‘heresy’ and ‘orthodoxy’ would not have become as strong as they did; _if_ Julian the Apostate had not been assassinated, _perhaps_ a revived liberal Roman Empire would not have lost its West and become an Eastern theocracy; _if_ Charles Martel had lost the Battle of Poitiers, _perhaps_ Muslims going North would have met Vikings coming South not so culturally different from them and the result would have been a European Islam less unworldly than monastic Christianity and more dynamic than even Spanish Islam - and without Jewish persecution. We might be 500 years or more further more advanced than we are (but circumcised :dubious: ) ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Kobayashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4af34b/32.png) [@Mr.Kobayashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Kobayashi)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2009, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whose-non-existance-would-save-the-most-lives-directly-or-indirectly/505790/48 "2009-08-10T00:27:36Z")
> [@Jerseyman](#): > > Removing any religious figure would make no difference at all because none of them existed _as understood by their later followers_. It took centuries of argument to decide that Jesus was God and more centuries to decide just _how_ he was God and it isn’t settled yet between Oriental Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic and all the Protestants that have come on the scene since. > > Maybe there was a real Jesus and he preached a doctrine of peace. Maybe he preached the kind of peace so many fundamentalists do - the peace that comes when the Ungodly are all exterminated or converted and all follow the Will of God as defined by the sect. Maybe the religious figure of The Christ used memories of a noted genuinely peaceful Jewish preacher but if he had not existed would have just as readily used another, perhaps Simon the Mage or John the Baptiser. Mandeans do venerate John as the True Messiah and Jesus as a real man but false Messiah. ‘Christ’ is a title, not a name, so we could as easily have ‘John Christ’ or ‘Simon Christ’ or even ‘Appollonius Christ’. I agree that the various religious figures did not in reality resemble what the came to symbolise hundreds of years later, but surely you need a literal figure to hang your myths on - no figure, no myths attached. In the Christian tradition, could one of the apostles or John (or whoever) stood in for Jesus? I’m not so sure, Jesus seems to be the catalyst for many of those figures rising to pre-eminence (particularly the apostles; would Peter be destined to be a forgotten fisherman, or Matthew a tax collector without the influence of the Jesus figure?). Likewise John being beheaded on Herod’s orders for fear of a challenge of his authority may be harder to spin into something that would be the equal of the crucifixion and resurrect (with all the surrounding themes of redemption, suffering for sins and whatnot). Of course, given what we know about the historical Jesus (i.e., nothing beyond that Pilate crucified him) it’s indeed possible that some other figure would rise to equivalent status. However, I think the alternative is a possibility. ---
**Author:** ![pancakes3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ba9def/32.png) [@pancakes3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pancakes3)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2009, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whose-non-existance-would-save-the-most-lives-directly-or-indirectly/505790/49 "2009-08-10T00:54:23Z")
AIDS patient zero Robert Oppenheimer Ghengis Khan Cortez Wilhelm II ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Kobayashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4af34b/32.png) [@Mr.Kobayashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Kobayashi)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2009, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whose-non-existance-would-save-the-most-lives-directly-or-indirectly/505790/50 "2009-08-10T01:00:20Z")
> [@pancakes3](#): > > AIDS patient zero > Robert Oppenheimer > Ghengis Khan > Cortez > Wilhelm II 'Patient zero’s would be a good choice, hadn’t though of thought. Offing Oppenheimer might cost more lives, although I don’t particularly want to get in the A-Bomb debate. On the subject of WW1 - the alliances were already in place, the assassination of FF was arguably just the spark that set off the tinderbox; another reason would have come along. Is there anyone we could erase and prevent WW1? I’d imagine we’d have to address the alliances system. Erase Otto von Bismark? ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2009, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whose-non-existance-would-save-the-most-lives-directly-or-indirectly/505790/51 "2009-08-10T01:10:04Z")
> [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > So you are saying that Christians think Jesus’ saying is stupid. Yes, which is why they are nearly universally ignored. > [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > So the American democracy is morally equivalent to Soviet tyranny? Outside of their own borders the difference in behavior between the USSR and USA was slight. > [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > Also how were the Founding Fathers genocidal? Ask the Indians. > [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > Prove it. Lacking an alternate timeline capable time machine I can’t; which is why I used the word “probably”. _ **Most** _ religions lack the qualities that make Christianity so dangerous; I see no reason to assume that eliminating Christianity would just result in one that just happens to have the same qualities under a different name appearing. > [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > You aren’t providing real answers. You asked why I think atheism is better; I answered. And I was making the point that your “no real Christian would do that” claim is a classic No True Scotsman fallacy. > [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > Then why did the Roman Catholic Church save several scientific documents. Because they felt that those particular ones were no danger. They’ve opposed all sorts of other research, destroyed numerous other documents and records. > [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > Why were the world’s greatest scientists: Newton, Galileo, Bell, Coperinicus Christians? Provided Galileo and Coperinicus defied the Church but they still were religious. Because if they weren’t ( or good at lying about it ) they’d have been tortured or killed, for one thing. And to the extent they were religious they were handicapped by it, just as modern scientists who are religious are handicapped. ---
**Author:** ![fuzzypickles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/9d8465/32.png) [@fuzzypickles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fuzzypickles)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2009, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whose-non-existance-would-save-the-most-lives-directly-or-indirectly/505790/52 "2009-08-10T02:23:12Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Ask the Indians. Nitpick: The relocation/genocide of Native Americans didn’t gain steam until the presidency of Andrew Jackson, who came along a little too late to be considered one of the Founding Fathers. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2009, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whose-non-existance-would-save-the-most-lives-directly-or-indirectly/505790/53 "2009-08-10T02:27:53Z")
> [@fuzzypickles](#): > > Nitpick: The relocation/genocide of Native Americans didn’t gain steam until the presidency of Andrew Jackson, who came along a little too late to be considered one of the Founding Fathers. George Washington got the name “Town Burner” from the Iroquois IIRC. No, the founding fathers didn’t start the long term slaughter of the Indians; it started well before they came along, and continued after they were dead. But they participated. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2009, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whose-non-existance-would-save-the-most-lives-directly-or-indirectly/505790/54 "2009-08-10T02:27:55Z")
> [@fuzzypickles](#): > > Nitpick: The relocation/genocide of Native Americans didn’t gain steam until the presidency of Andrew Jackson, who came along a little too late to be considered one of the Founding Fathers. Wouldn’t it actually have started before the Founding Fathers – with the arrival of Columbus and such? ---
**Author:** ![Reepicheep](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ed655f/32.png) [@Reepicheep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reepicheep)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2009, 10:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whose-non-existance-would-save-the-most-lives-directly-or-indirectly/505790/55 "2009-08-10T10:15:39Z")
The problem with unmaking Genghis Khan is that he has more [descendents](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/02/0214_030214_genghis.html) than any other person (leaving out Adam, Noah, etc). The idea is to save lives, not unmake lives. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2009, 10:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whose-non-existance-would-save-the-most-lives-directly-or-indirectly/505790/56 "2009-08-10T10:37:01Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > I think that anything short of the Aztecs would be better than Christianity. And eliminating Jesus also eliminates Islam as well. You’re delusional. > [@](#): > > What makes you think the Romans are the only people who have killed in the name of Christ? Directly and indirectly; among the lives saved would those lost to the war against condoms by the Catholics in modern Africa, for example. Or the people lost due to the resistance of Christians to admitting facets of science that involve evolution; the problem of microorganisms evolving resistance to antibiotics, or a fair amount of cancer research, or insects evolving resistance to pesticides. LOL > [@](#): > > And quite possibly the bulk of the human race; as long as Christianity and it’s fetish for the apocalypse is around there’s the danger that one of the wrong sorts of fanatics will get the opportunity to start a nuclear war, or biowarfare plague, or drop an asteroid or whatever future technology makes possible. Like Eschatonianism is unique to Christianity. :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2009, 10:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whose-non-existance-would-save-the-most-lives-directly-or-indirectly/505790/57 "2009-08-10T10:38:07Z")
Another thread successfully hijacked by **Der Tr…** ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2009, 10:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whose-non-existance-would-save-the-most-lives-directly-or-indirectly/505790/58 "2009-08-10T10:39:09Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > George Washington got the name “Town Burner” from the Iroquois IIRC. > > No, the founding fathers didn’t start the long term slaughter of the Indians; it started well before they came along, and continued after they were dead. But they participated. So George Washington is evil for being better at war than his enemies? ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2009, 11:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whose-non-existance-would-save-the-most-lives-directly-or-indirectly/505790/59 "2009-08-10T11:23:07Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > So George Washington is evil for being better at war than his enemies? You mean like Osama bin Laden? Terror tactics are not “being better in war”; they are acts of brutality. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2009, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whose-non-existance-would-save-the-most-lives-directly-or-indirectly/505790/60 "2009-08-10T14:58:00Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > And then they died, and the killing in their names stopped. Christ created an evil that killed long after he died, killed people he had no idea existed and continues to kill to this day. I don’t know whether you think Jesus engaged in bioterrorism or built a mind-control ray, but either way you’re in the realm of comic books, not reality. Jesus created a philosophy, yes; Saul of Tarsis made some innovations on that philosophy, yes; but neither of them forced anyone else (at least, anyone after their deaths) to act on these philosophies. Neither of them forced Constantine to turn Christianity into a state-organized militaristic religion. The idea that the great killers of Christendom would have been happy bunny rabbits except for the influence of Jesus is laughable. Which specific Christian killers do you think would have been nice people, save for the influence of Jesus? Name names, please; bodycounts optional. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whose-non-existance-would-save-the-most-lives-directly-or-indirectly/505790.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whose-non-existance-would-save-the-most-lives-directly-or-indirectly/505790.md?page=4)