FINALLY!! For over a year now I’ve binge watched debates, documentaries, and binge read History books at about 7 different libraries. I’m not proud of the fact that my late fees are exponentially increasing… Why? Because learning should never stop, and quite frankly I miss academia, I miss the environment of bright intellectual people on their quests for knowledge, and the smell of old books with yellowed pages. I began an intense research project on my own time. The list of sources is excruciatingly extensive so I have listed it on the bottom for anyone and everyone interested in History who wants to read up.
Yes. Is it also to show the startling statistical death toll difference between religious vs. nonreligious [secular] leaders?
Yes. Why?
Because let’s face it… “for scientists like Richard Dawkins and his cronies, who are persuaded that there is no God, there is no finer pleasure than recounting the history of religious brutality and persecution. Remember those
YouTube videos I mentioned earlier? More than half of all the debates I’ve watched seem to be them going back to the Muslim conquests, the Crusades, Sam Harris’s personal favorite, the Spanish Inquisition, a recount of Jewish canaanite conquests. How “religion doesn’t have a monopoly on morality” that is another HUGE essay bubbling inside me. But I assure you, like prominent atheist Dr. Ruse said, none of these men are experts in history, [especially ancient hebrew history, they are always quoting belligerently and haphazardly out of context] and even more so logic. It amazes me how they gloss over the most brutal, bloodiest century of ALL human history, the 20th century. The first secular century of human history. There is no need to argue the point. A great deal of human suffering has been caused by religious fanaticism. If the inquisition no longer has the power to compel our indignation, the Moslem world often seems quite prepared to carry the burden of exuberant depravity in its place. [Judaism and Christianity easily exceed over 17,000,000 murders throughout Human History]
Here is rather a more accurate assessment of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Anyone persuaded that they represent a “shockingly happy picture” should make the modest imaginative effort to discern the immense weight of human misery conveyed by these statistics:
Somalia (1991 et seq.): 400,000
In considering Pinker’s assessment of the times in which we live, the only conclusion one can profitably draw is that such an excess of stupidity is not often to be found in nature.”
Needless to say, I’m not bashing atheism. These are numbers… any historian from various different geopolitical boundaries will produce slightly different numbers, perhaps more accurate, perhaps more skewed, depending on their ethics and standards. Again, I’ll list some sources if you are curious, intellectual, have A BAJILLION HOURS of free time, or all of the above! The moral of the story here is don’t be a bigot like Dawkins & co. You are free to believe in whatever you want to believe in, I have no judgements, just my faith in what truth is, and to me Truth is a Person, Truth is Love, Love is a Person. I also do not seek to diminish the atrocities committed even to this day by members who consider themselves Christian but have NEVER actually opened their Bibles to read what Yeshua said. Westboro Baptists for instance, a group full of hate and most likely headed toward hell. In a like manner, Richard Dawkins and friends DO NOT, and SHOULD NOT represent ALL atheists with their hate rhetoric and overt bigotry… many of you my friends are atheist, perfectly decent human beings that certainly put those baptists to shame… perhaps the benefit of the doubt is the Westboro baptists are actually hypocrites while Dawkins is simply acting out the ancient idea of homo homini lupu [man is wolf to man] which seems to be the natural order, a bestial survival of the fittest mentality in a supposed evolved homo sapien. The Westboro Baptists are hypocrites because they should at the very least know the 10 commandments… it seems they’ve memorized the entire book of Leviticus, but tossed out the context and the other 99% of the bible that mentions a perfect and Holy God full of steadfast love, mercy, and compassion culminating to His arrival on earth to die for us, people, in order that we may be transformed from the inside out, to be agents of love and reconciliation, giving to the poor and needy, visiting the prisoners, supporting the afflicted and derelict of society, etc. [I typed that all in one breath]
To conclude my rant, death is death, murder is wrong. It has always been wrong because God commanded it “Thou shalt not murder” and Jesus made it an even more intense standard of perfection by saying, “if you so much as look at a person in anger, hate, [spewing insults at them] you’ve already committed murder in your heart.” [Matthew 5:22] And this means we have all broken that one… even Confucius, the great Buddha, Dalai Lama, the Pope, Ghandi, Mother Theresa, were angry and hated people in some way, shape, or form. I learned a lot… my journey back into academia may commence soon, although I’m passionate about history, anyone who knows me, my passions wax and wane with time. There are wars that I learned about in the last year which I had no idea existed… again history can repeat itself given the track record of human beings sucking. The old adage of homo homini lupus I hope, pray, and work towards the goal that it is a thing of the past, something eventually we will get right. Not on our own of course. The evidence thus far and what is exponentially increasing with the human population curve, is obviously an impossibility, but in my humble opinion, with God’s help, this is possible. I have learned to love my enemies, to love everyone always, because He first loved me.
If you want to explore more on Christian apologetics [some of whom converted from atheism], please check out works by St. Thomas Aquinas, Saint Augustine, Astrophysicist Dr. Hugh Ross (<Dinesh D’Souza, Lee Strobel , Timothy Keller, Frank Turek, Ravi Zacharias, I can list more if you’d like, just DM me. I paraphrase and extract many excerpts from secular Jewish author David Berlinski’s work. Here come the sources…
you ready for this?
I don’t think you’re ready for this jelly.
[shakes bootylicious bottom]
—————
Works Cited
“B&J”: Jacob Bercovitch and Richard Jackson, International Conflict : A Chronological Encyclopedia of Conflicts and Their Management 1945-1995 (1997)
Berlinski, David, The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and its scientific pretensions (2009)
Bodart, Gaston, Losses of Life in Modern Wars (1916)
Britannica, 15th edition, 1992 printing
Brzezinski, Zbigniew, Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the Twenty-first Century (1993).
The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Africa(1981)
The Cambridge History of Africa(1986), ed. J. D. Fage and R. Oliver
CDI: The Center for Defense Information, The Defense Monitor, “The World At War: January 1, 1998”.
Chirot, Daniel: Modern Tyrants : the power and prevalence of evil in our age(1994)
Chomsky, Noam, The Chomsky Reader(1987); Deterring Democracy (1991)
Clodfelter, Michael, Warfare and Armed Conflict: A Statistical Reference to Casualty and Other Figures, 1618-1991
Compton’s Encyclopedia Online v.2.0(1997)
COWP: Correlates of War Project at the University of Michigan [http://www.correlatesofwar.org/]
Courtois, Stephane, The Black Book of Communism, 1997
Davies, Norman, Europe A History (1998)
Dictionary of Twentieth Century World History, by Jan Palmowski (Oxford, 1997)
Dictionary of Wars, by George Childs Kohn (Facts on File, 1999)
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Dumas, Samuel, and K.O. Vedel-Petersen, Losses of Life Caused By War(1923)
Eckhardt, William, in World Military and Social Expenditures 1987-88 (12th ed., 1987) by Ruth Leger Sivard.
Edgerton, Robert B, Africa’s armies: from honor to infamy: a history from 1791 to the present (2002)
FAS 2000: Federation of American Scientists, The World at War (2000)
Gibbon, Edward, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Gilbert, Martin, A History of the Twentieth Century (1997)
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Grenville, J. A. S., A History of the World in the Twentieth Century (1994)
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Harff, Barbara & Gurr, Ted Robert: “Toward an Empirical Theory of Genocides and Politicides”, 32 International Studies Quarterly 359 (1988).
Hartman, T., A World Atlas of Military History 1945-1984 (1984)
Henige, David, Numbers From Nowhere, (1998)
Johnson, Paul, Modern Times (1983); A History of the Jews (1987)
Kuper, Leo, Genocide: its political uses in the Twentieth Century (1981)
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Marley, David, Wars of the Americas(1998)
Obermeyer, Ziad. “Fifty Years of Violent War Deaths from Vietnam to Bosnia.” British Medical Journal (2008)
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Porter, Jack Nusan, Genocide and Human Rights (1982)
Prinzing, Friedrich, Epidemics Resulting from Wars (Oxford: Clarendon, 1916)
Rosenbaum, Alan S., Is the Holocaust Unique? Perspectives on comparative genocide (1996)
Rummel, Rudolph J.: China’s Bloody Century : Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900 (1991); Lethal Politics : Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917 (1990); Democide : Nazi Genocide and Mass Murder (1992); Death By Government (1994), http://www2.hawaii.edu/~rummel/welcome.html.
Sheina, Robert L., Latin America’s Wars: The Age of the Caudillo, 1791-1899 (2003)
“S&S”: Small, Melvin & Joel David Singer, Resort to Arms : International and Civil Wars 1816-1980 (1982)
Singer, Joel David, The Wages of War. 1816-1965 (1972)
SIPRI Yearbook: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
Skidmore, Thomas E. (and Peter H. Smith), Modern Latin America, 4th ed., 1997
Smith, Dan: The State of War and Peace Atlas (1997); The New State of War and Peace (1991); The War Atlas(1983) with Michael Kidron
Sorokin, Pitirim, Social and Cultural Dynamics, vol.3 (1937, 1962)
Timeframe AD 1900-1925 The World In Arms (Time-Life)
Timeframe AD 1925-1950 Shadow of the Dictators (Time-Life)
Timeframe AD 1950-1990 Nuclear Age(Time-Life)
Totten, Samuel, ed., Century of Genocide: Eyewitness Accounts and Critical Views (1997)
Urlanis, Boris, Wars and Population(1971)
Wallechinsky: David Wallechinsky’s Twentieth Century : History With the Boring Parts Left Out (1995).
War Annual: The World in Conflict [year] War Annual [number].
Wertham, Fredric, A Sign For Cain : An Exploration of Human Violence (1966)
White, Matthew, The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History’s 100 Worst Atrocities (W. W. Norton, 2012) http://necrometrics.com/pre1700a.htm#Total (1999-2010 with last update Jan. 2012)
“WPA3“: World Political Almanac, 3rd Ed. (Facts on File: 1995) by Chris Cook.
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