Is Religion Really Responsible for Most Wars?

Atheism has been responsible for more deaths proportionally than religion.

Karl Friedrich Lessing (1808-1880), “The Return of the Crusader”
Karl Friedrich Lessing (1808-1880), “The Return of the Crusader” (photo: Public Domain)

Anti-Catholics, in their anger and deep-rooted desire to convince everyone they're right about all things, all the time, (i.e.,  omniscient) would have people believe that:

Nine Crusades

are greater than

all wars every fought since mankind differentiated as a species including all of the atheist-inspired ones (e.g., the Reign of Terror, the Cristero Wars, the Napoleonic Wars, the Shining Path, Sino-Vietnamese War, Korean War, Chinese Civil War, Guatemalan Civil War, Spanish Civil War).

The First Crusade started in AD 1099, which was more than 400 years after Moslems invaded every Christian country in Northern Africa and the Middle East killing, raping, pillaging and forcing Christians to convert at the point of a sword or because of the jizya. Moslem troops had attacked and harried the Byzantium Empire, the first Christian empire, for 400 years before Christians got the idea of starting the Crusades in response to Moslem violence. Moslem troops had ensconced themselves in Spain, Portugal and Italy for 300 years before the Crusades started. Even the horrific sacrilege and desecration of the Destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the holiest site in Christendom in AD 1009, was 100 years before the Crusades started. Instead of proving Christians to be violent, it rather shows their remarkable restraint.

Elias Plutarco Calles, the genocidal atheist jefe general of Mexico, started slaughtering innocent unarmed Catholic priests in their churches simply because he wanted more power for himself. He thought that by exterminating Catholics and their priests, he would “cleanse” Mexico and make it a secular paradise. He didn't wait 100 years, 200 years, 300 years or 400 years before he killed Catholics. Neither did the atheist maniacs who started the Reign of Terror or the October Revolution. Therefore, his intentions were atheist and secular and absolutely not religious.

A person who is knowledgeable of the Crusades wouldn't think it was due to Christian opportunism, hatred and expansionism. An intelligent person would realize that he had a natural right to defend himself, his family and his nation against an unjust attacker — and that Islam doesn't teach an understanding of human rights. 

Some people are so steeped in their own hatred and the illusion of their moral and intellectual superiority, they neither read books because they might show them to be wrong nor do they question any negative gossip they come across as long as it justifies their opinions. Without having read a book on the subject or having access to a time machine, they know, for a fact, that religion (i.e., Catholicism) has started more wars than any other cause. When pressed for examples, they jump and yell out “the Crusades!” Some will have the wherewithal to add Moslem jihads to their list. I've yet to meet an atheist intelligent and knowledgeable enough to add the Hundred Years War or the Yellow Turban Rebellion to the list. But after these admissions, they sort of trail off presuming that their sternly worded response should be sufficient for a theist to run off screaming and wailing with his tail tucked between his legs.

In reality, it's atheism which has been responsible for more deaths proportionally than religion. Stéphane Courtois, in his 1999 book, The Black Book of Communism, estimated that atheists and atheism are responsible for 100 million people dead in the course of merely 87 years between the Russian Revolution in 1912 and publication of his book. 

But if all or most wars were instigated by religion, what about all three Punic Wars? The Franco-Prussian War? The Boxer Rebellion? The Vietnam War? World War I? World War II? The Vietnam War? The American Revolutionary War? The Texan War of Independence? The French Revolutionary War? The Finnish Civil War? The Manchu Conquest of Ming China? The Mongol Invasion of Eurasia? The Hun Invasion of Eurasia? The Viking Invasion of Europe?

What religion instigated all of the wars perpetrated by the atheists in charge of the Soviet Union, Vietnam, Cuba, North Korea and Maoist China including the October Revolution, the Chinese invasion of Aksai Chin and North Vietnam invasion of South Vietnam? What inspired the Vandals, the Goths, the Romans, the Babylonians, the Zulu, the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Persians, the Thracians and the ancient German tribes? What god prompted the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor or Singapore or Malaysia or commit genocide in China, Manchuria, Taiwan, Malaysia and Korea? The Vietnamese War had no religious instigation nor did the Sino-Indian War of 1962. Even the Six-Day War and all other wars fought by the modern state of Israel were essentially atheistic as there were no references or declarations of God's inspiration during those wars.

Instead of being started by religions, all of these wars were started by greedy, racist, violent secularists who had no interest in practicing peace. None worshiped a God of Peace and Love. Fundamentalist atheists are the cultural and intellectual descendants of the Protestant purveyors of the Black Legend. To them, facts don't matter—only feelings do. The ends justify the means. The end of the Catholic Church would be a “blessing” for all of humanity. Blind hatred like this should be feared, not condoned. It should be fought head-on and not acquiesced to for the sake of political correctness.