> Rick Adams: > Sorry, Jim. I'm not attacking religion, but the fact remains that > religion HAS resulted in more deaths by violence than any other single > cause.
Empirically how might this compare to those killed due to greed for wealth and lust for power and ethnic prejudice? My assertion, on as firm a foundation of conjecture as Rick A.'s, is that each of those, on their own, have accounted for more deaths by violence than those due to religion as a primary motivation. Of course, some of these people have attempted to marshal religion in the service of these other motivations (Prozac for the masses?) but I wonder if the primary motivations were not religious but a little more basic. I will grant you the Crusades (and even there I have no doubt that many of those involved in the grunt work were there for more mercenary and less religious reasons). On the other hand, do you think there would be a big conflict between Jews and Arabs for religious reasons if there were not a basic land dispute? Genghis Khan, Stalin, Milosevic and Saddam were not known to be religious fanatics but they certainly killed their share. Oh yeah, Charles Taylor was reputed to be a Baptist. Would you count the abolitionists in the US who made their religious belief the foundational reason for their support of the Union in the Civil War? Or do we only count as religious those who killed for reasons we don't agree with? I don't think any major war in the last century was fought for primarily religious motivations (WWI, WWII, Viet Nam, Korea, Afghanistan, Grenada :)) although there are some ongoing high casualty skirmishes (and the War on Terror may already be a religiously motivated war, at least on one side). I just don't think the evidence is there to support the argument that religion has been the primary motivation for more deaths than either greed for wealth, lust for power or ethnic prejudice. Rick Dr. Rick Froman Associate Professor of Psychology John Brown University 2000 W. University Siloam Springs, AR 72761 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (479) 524-7295 http://www.jbu.edu/academics/sbs/rfroman.asp --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
