Originally shared by John Fanavans

Originally shared by John Fanavans

Dangerous Ideas
Science Kills more than Religion

You know what you think?  You think that Religion is responsible for so much of the violence in the world. If you think that, you might be right. But I’mma gonna need me some evidence. Cause I’ve been looking around, and I’ve found out some pretty wild stuff.

The largest single war, WWII killed somewhere between 40m and 72m people in about 6 years.  That war was about a lot of things. But two things are pretty important about it. One, there was a hell of a lot of scientific advancement in it, remember it started with propeller planes and ended in Nuclear Bombs. Yey for science!  Two, there was a WHOLE scientific movement, call Eugenics (you might call it molecular biology these days) that was a pretty big cause of that war.

Yup. Scientific belief were instrumental in the rise of Hitler and the carrying on of WWII. Really, that science meme has a lot to be ashamed about. Luckily, no one ever talks about it.

In the slightly less than 100 years of the Crusades, about 1m to 3m people died and lest you say there was less people in the world, it was about 0.3%–2.3% of the world population. WWII was between 1.7%–3.1%. What were the Crusades about? A lot of things, but one of the big causes was religion. Religion has a lot to be ashamed about. Almost as much as science.

Of course, two examples doth not the truth make. And really, wars are always about power – see the Mongols, perhaps the best killers the World has ever known. You might want to see a great table on the Wiki about wars and their relative shittyness: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_and_anthropogenic_disasters_by_death_toll

Ultimately, this stuff about Religion being bad because of death is rubbish. Although the Inquisition was pretty shit, if you look at them in detail, you’ll find that actually and ironically the inquisition was the start of rationalism and the end of religion.