A book I read a few years ago, A Concise History of the Crusades by Thomas F. Madden, gives a history of the source of the Crusades and a breakdown of what happened during each of the Crusades. I won't break each Crusade down unless one of you responds that you would like that, but here's the short of it. The beginning was the threat of Islam that had conquered North Africa, the entire Middle East (which had been Christian), extended into Asia, parts of Italy, most of Spain and had ships sailing up the Danube, with most of Eastern Europe conquered.. Western Europe was under attack so the First Crusade was launched as a counter attack. It was successful. Islamic armies were pushed back because they had to protect their homeland. The rest of the Crusades were failures. What you were taught in school and even in church is woefully wrong. Come to think of it, I'll break it down in a later blog. I have an ongoing burning desire to buttress my arguments, and an overview won't do. I'll just repeat here that most of the Crusades were failures, and several didn't even make it out of Europe.
The second attack on murderous, warmongering religion and Christianity specifically, is that hundreds of thousands of people were murdered. It didn't happen that way. Another book I read, The Spanish Inquisition by Henry Kamen, actually analyzed the history of the Inquisition. (Don't I live an exciting life? I've also read a history of taxes from Ur and Sumeria to the present. Doesn't the idea of that just set your pulse pounding with excitement?) Did it target Jews as we were taught in history class? No. If asked, I'll blog more history about this, because there are some gray areas and distinctions. I'm just trying to not be over long here. To that end, several things were going on. The short of it was that, as regrettable as this is, over 350 years there were an estimated 2000 deaths, not tens of thousands. The trials were interesting too, and not as cruel and harsh as we were taught.
Salem witch trials. How many deaths do you think, or have you been taught? Again, hundreds to thousands. Some historians say even as many as a million. The most aggressive estimate is under 100,000. Again to keep it short as possible, the 'Thirty Years War' was about emerging nation states vying for power, and what we were taught were these religious wars; but they were ethnic wars.
So yes, there have been religious conflicts, and dastardly things done in the name of religion; and some things religion has been blamed for, but didn't happen. Now the comparison. Remember the statement of fact by anti-religionists, that religion has caused more, etc… What have atheistic governments brought us?
Communist Russia, Communist China, and Nazi Germany to start. Stalin was responsible for about twenty million murders, and millions more imprisoned. Mao is estimated at sixty million murders, and millions more imprisoned. Hitler a mere estimated ten millions, and millions more imprisoned. Then there's the small time players, Pol Pot from 1975-1979 murdered about 20% of the Cambodian population, 1.5 to 2 million souls. That's a larger proportion of his population than either Stalin or Mao. By the way, these murders were done in peace time. Other murderous atheists and their regimes that were small time players, which have murdered millions, include Castro, Ceausescu, and Kim Jong-Il. More people, over one hundred million, in just the Twentieth Century, have been murdered, and more imprisoned, than in three thousand years of religious history. The total religious count for the Crusades, Inquisitions, witch burnings account for an estimated 200,000 people. That's hundred million to 200,000, atheist governments compared to religions. Unless you've gotten out of public school recently, the first number is bigger. My conclusion is that atheist governments are the most responsible for more murders, not religions.
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