The other poster is correct that this an incorrect secular talking point. “Secular” regimes have murdered tens of millions of people in this past century alone
Nevertheless, the assertion that religious regimes are somehow advantaged is off base. Religious morality is not some constant force, it's a malleable, flexible construct that has less to do with actual scripture and more to do with what religious leaders of the time say it is.
I'd beg to disagree. The track record of secularism from the French revolution, to empire and idealogy had quite a lot of blood on it's hands. The body count is most certainly not skewed to religion by any stretch.
You seem to be inferring an argument in GP that they didn't make - that secularism is has no blood on it's hands. Of course it does.
This does not mean that religion is innocent. That is a fallacy. They are not mutually exclusive. People can do terrible things when guided by religious faith, or when guided by a secular "faith." Both are bad and should be called out.
We now live in the most peaceful time in human history.
And just to be clear, we're contrasting this time of unprecedented peace with entities that have killed in spasms of violence with no apparent public casus belli than "my book is better than your book and it told me to do so?"
Spasms that, in one set of instances, led to the deaths of a significant fraction of the global population?
“Estimates of the number of people killed in the Crusades begin at 1 million (Wertham…) and go as high as 9 million (Robertson…) passing through 3 million (Garrison…) and 5 million (Elson…) along the way. I took the low middle (Garrison’s estimate) as my estimate. The geometric means of the extremes is 3 million.” Matthew White, The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History’s 100 Worst Atrocities (2012), p. 576 (see f.n. 1 under The Crusades).
Or, the religiously affirmed divine right fascists felt during WW2 to rule others as decreed by their holy men?
NAZI 'DIVINE RIGHT' TO RULE ASSERTED; Dr. Ley Says Reich's 'Mission' to Dominate Other Nations Is Among War Aims WOULD WIPE OUT BRITAIN 'Annihilation' of Obstacle to German Destiny Demanded by Labor Front Head
The only way to end the cycle of violence is by embracing the scientific method, rationality, and empathy. Anything else is a step to madness. Voltaire said it best,
There have been people who once said, you believe incomprehensible, contradictory, impossible things, because we have ordered you to do so; therefore do unjust things because we order you to do so. These people reasoned wonderfully. Certainly, whoever has the right to make you absurd has the right to make you unjust.
Or, more succinctly, as Desmond MacCarthy put it via a fictional Voltaire,
Ah, my child, as long as people continue to believe absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities!
We must fight irrational lunacy and ensure that the light of enlightenment doesn't die out.
> We now live in the most peaceful time in human history.
I would say we live in the most widespread Uneasy Peace in human history. And unlike religious peace which had occasional conflicts, a break in the peace now would mean annihilation. Is general peace, risk of annihilation better than occasional petty wars without annihilation?
> And just to be clear, we're contrasting this time of unprecedented peace with entities that have killed in spasms of violence with no apparent public casus belli than "my book is better than your book and it told me to do so?"
I quoted The Washington Post's opinion, which is hardly the number most favorable to religious causes. Plus, older books had higher numbers than newer scholarship.
> NAZI 'DIVINE RIGHT' TO RULE ASSERTED; Dr. Ley Says Reich's 'Mission' to Dominate Other Nations Is Among War Aims WOULD WIPE OUT BRITAIN 'Annihilation' of Obstacle to German Destiny Demanded by Labor Front Head
Well, considering that they murdered priests and pastors in their camps, were they really friendly to religion? Particularly Catholic Priests, who represented 94% of the clergy they executed.
> Or, doctrines like "Manifest Destiny" that were religious in origin and preached in church?
Let's not confuse Protestant fundamentalism motivated by political ends with religion in general.
> The only way to end the cycle of violence is by embracing the scientific method, rationality, and empathy. Anything else is a step to madness.
So said the French Revolution. They did everything they could to break away from religion - they even invented a new calendar starting at year 0 because... anyway. Didn't go so well, there were a few smaller revolutions afterward to get to modern France.
> Let's not confuse Protestant fundamentalism motivated by political ends with religion in general.
This is the rule, not the exception. Throughout history, instances where religious war was waged or religious atrocities occurred, there was often an underlying political logic to them. Religion has less to do with the underlying morality of the scripture and more to do with what religious leaders of the time say it is, and their interpretation can be...flexible.
> So said the French Revolution.
What followed the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars was one of the most peaceful 99 years on the European continent since Pax Romana.
> What followed the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars was one of the most peaceful 99 years on the European continent since Pax Romana.
This was the period when the Austro-Hungarian empire was dissolved, the Ottoman possessions in Europe were lost, the Prussian empire formed, the Italian nation formed, and many European monarchies fell during the liberal revolutions. Amongst the conflicts between the leading European powers, there was the Franco-Prussian War, the Boer War, the Anglo-Russian war in the Crimea. And then, just after your carefully-chosen 99 years, the Great War, and Russian Revolution. Hardly peaceful.
Hey, I'm not the one who coined "Pax Britanica." People can read for themselves why this period of history is called that, and why it compares favorably to Pax Americana and Pax Romana as opposed to the rest of history on the continent, instead of relying on what you or I say. :)
I don't think you understand what the term Pax Romana means (or the other derivative terms you cited). It's a period of unnatural political calm, after every instance of rebellion has been crushed by overwhelming force, and the "rebels" put to torture or death. It has nothing to do with peace, and doesn't really contribute much to your argument.
> What followed the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars was one of the most peaceful 99 years on the European continent since Pax Romana.
Yeah... on the continent. They were merciless to indigenous populations across the globe during that century. Big improvement there - instead of fighting each other, we'll invade everyone else with the full takeover of India in 1858, and the New Imperialism of the 1870s which added 8.8 million square miles of land to European possession.
> This is the rule, not the exception. Throughout history, instances where religious war was waged or religious atrocities occurred, there was often an underlying political logic to them. Religion has less to do with the underlying morality of the scripture and more to do with what religious leaders of the time say it is, and their interpretation can be...flexible.
Nah, ask a historian. The history of Europe over the last 1500 years or so is long, but you can only name a few incidents and examples. And even then, you can't show of a change where one thing was widely unacceptable and became acceptable to this day. The Catholic Church, for example, still condemns premarital sex and always has.
I did. They call it "Pax Britanica," and there's loads of things you can read about that outline why historians put this period of history in the same category as Pax Americana and Pax Romana.
You answered the wrong question. I said to ask a historian regarding the unfounded assertion that "Religion has less to do with the underlying morality of the scripture and more to do with what religious leaders of the time say it is, and their interpretation can be...flexible."
Prove that. You can name a few examples where there was a widespread spirit in the air (Crusades, Spanish Inquisition [even though the death count was only about 14 executions per year]), but you can't show an example where Christians ever believed premarital sex was OK, or Muslims ever believing you could eat pork one morning. You can show plenty of flexibility of Protestantism though, but that's unique to that religion which rejects centralized authority or the importance of traditional views for scriptural interpretation.
My assertion isn't that the moral justification isn't there, it's that whatever moral justification that is in vogue at the time just so happens to dovetail with personal gain and/or political expediency.
Before I begin, I believe that everyone has the right to believe and (if they choose to do so) worship and pray as they want.
The reason why I wrote the above language, quite explicitly, is because religions, in the long-term, do not agree with such co-existence. Eventually, there's a reversion to the mean, or a splintering that spreads fundamentalism and decries other groups.
> I would say we live in the most widespread Uneasy Peace in human history. And unlike religious peace which had occasional conflicts, a break in the peace now would mean annihilation. Is general peace, risk of annihilation better than occasional petty wars without annihilation?
When was this religious peace? Here's a graph of human history, could you kindly tell me when you think this religious peace lies in this graph? https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EGL9VKKXkAAVhwB.jpg
As far as I can tell, this peace we experience is truly un-precedented in the original sense of the word, i.e. there is no prior precedent.
> Well, considering that they murdered priests and pastors in their camps, were they really friendly to religion? Particularly Catholic Priests, who represented 94% of the clergy they executed.
They believed that they were the true chosen people of god and everyone else was less. Their persecution of jewish people was (partly, not completely) driven by the belief that they were the ones who killed god.
Expanding on this, with the following statement,
> Let's not confuse Protestant fundamentalism motivated by political ends with religion in general.
That's the problem. Whose book and under what interpretation and rules?
You can't just say, "these events wouldn't occur under my doctrine. My religion is the only religion and the others aren't."
When you create rules by fiat, "X is Y because I/holy book/prophet said so." Then is it surprising that others will make rules by fiat as well? What makes their rules more valid than yours? You believe that you have god's mandate. Well, so do they. They're both equally absurd claims with equal validity to an outside observer.
The point of the enlightenment is to look towards something more concrete; ideals that have been honed via debate and examination of history. Ideals that are subject to change as we learn more. Ideals that are more real, because they become real in their execution.
You may say, well, that's religion as well, but I am not aware of any religion where things are subject to true debate (can you even question the existence of the deity?), or religious groups that are open to changes in their fundamental philosophies.
Mandatory reminder that many of the "but the Crusades" arguments are also misleading. Sure, ~1.0-1.7 million people died in the Crusades according to modern scholarship. However, the Crusades were an extremely diverse set of conflicts that spanned a 196-year period, with both sides having their own atrocities.
The last 196-years of secular government has killed, let's just say, way more than ~1.0-1.7 million people. Even the nice ones like France, which killed ~1.5 million Algerians from 1954 to 1962, so small by comparison to other atrocities you probably didn't even hear about it. That's before even considering the Reign of Terror, Communist Governments of all kinds, US Forced Sterilization in the name of science for decades, and on and on.
And as for the Spanish Inquisition, despite the horrible memory, modern estimates now show the total death count was about 3,000-5,000 people over a 350 year time span. At worst, 14 executions per year. Secular courts were far less forgiving. Even Wikipedia has updated their numbers accordingly.
The last 196 years of secular government took place in wake of the industrial revolution and the unprecedented population growth which those advances enabled.
