Body count - a quantitative review

[bjorn]

Recently there has been published a seemingly serious report on "Body counts" - a quantitative review of political violence across world civilizations - www.rissc.jo/docs/bodycount_final.pdf

I notice that it already is used in some circles to show that Islam is far less violent than Christianity.

Looking at the figures it is clear that the report in fact is based on a rather thorough and historical informed analysis.

However, there is a challenge in such cases, not to mention a temptation, to work a bit less on the slightly more difficult area - definitions. Which incidentially is the most important in such a report...

So the term "Christianity" is extremely broad, including both religious and secular events, as long as they take place within either a Western country or among nations or tribes with a predominent Christian population.

The results is that even if the report has more or less the correct numbers for the witch craze and crusades etc. , it counts the death toll of american indians as a result of Christianity (and not of germs) as well as both the First and Second World War.

When also every civil war and war in general in Europe or South America are counted (e.g. the Russian civil war and the Napoleonic wars), it is not strange that Christianity by far comes out worst, with the following conclusion (page 27):

The present study has, on the basis of empirical examination of political violence in the last two millennia, made some startling findings.

1. We have found that the total death toll from acts of political violence (war, civil war, democide, and structural violence) has been between 449.38 million and 708.61 million in the years 0-2008. The median figure of nearly 579.00 million amounts to twice the U.S. population in the year 2000.

Of these Christianity is counted with 178 millions, Antitheists with 127, Sinic 108, Primal-Indigenous 46 and Islam 32 millions.

As one easily could reduce the "Christianity"-figure with 100-150 millions, perhaps even more, it is hard to take the conclusion seriously.

On genocides the conclusion is similar, including every native american and Hutu-Tutzi masacre as Christian, not to mention all 16 million in (Christian of course) Nazi Germany :

The Christian civilization has been the most genocidal civilization, accounting for 14 instances of genocides with over 33 million deaths. As the total deaths derived from genocides are just over 50 million, the Christian share is nearly 2/3 of all genocide deaths. Although the Islamic civilization is second in numbers of genocidal acts, the Antitheist group as well as the Sinic civilization has higher death-tolls at respectively 8.25 million and 5.00 million, whereas the Islamic civilization’s genocide death toll is under 4 million.

In short a standard GIGO-analysis, providing figures that suit perfectly a lot of agendas, based on poor definitions.

No doubt it will be used for years.

[eckadimmock]

My first thought was that the raw scores are not adjusted for population: Currently there are approximately 2.1 billion Christians, 1.5 billion Muslims and 1.1 billion "secular, nonreligious". ( source ) There are no figures for "antitheist", but presumably they are a subset of "secular, nonreligious". "Primal indigenous" is listed as having 300 million adherents, and Chinese traditional religions as 394 m.

Obviously these are historical data so the numbers of adherents would have been different, but if we use those as a guide to relative size and divide body count by number of adherents to get 'deaths per current believer':

Sinic: .27
Pagan-Indigenous: .15
Anti-theist: .115 (using the figure of 1.1 billion)
Christian: .085
Muslim: .021

It still flatters Islam, but we don't look so bad, do we?

[unkleE]

I think these statistics will always be used selectively, by both sides, and therefore lose a lot of their force. If the authority under which people acted could be the prime basis for categorisation (e.g. a government is different to a church), then we'd have some more useful statistics, but how do you identify this? Familiar issues like the role of atheism in communism, or of christianity or paganism in Hitler, illustrate the difficulty.

But it is good to be aware of new polemic.

[ignorantianescia]

I found it interesting that the Mexican Revolution was solely labelled as Christian, while there was quite some anti-clericalism during it.

Anyway, has anybody seen this paper being used by any atheist online polemicists yet? Some tend to adopt Islamic apologetics with an eagerness I find really baffling.

[chuff]

Oct 12, 2010 14:23:28 GMT ignorantianescia said:

I found it interesting that the Mexican Revolution was solely labelled as Christian, while there was quite some anti-clericalism during it.

Anyway, has anybody seen this paper being used by any atheist online polemicists yet? Some tend to adopt Islamic apologetics with an eagerness I find really baffling.

I think it would be amusing to see some atheist cite this paper considering it managed to attribute 127 million deaths to them. If they try to use this paper in an appeal to consequences, then the obvious conclusion would have to be that we should all convert to Islam!

That being said, I'm sure we'll see it cited in the future anyways.

[elephantchang51]

Am I missing somethng here?Why doesn't a review of political violence attribute the bodycounts to political groupings?

[ignorantianescia]

Oct 12, 2010 16:28:33 GMT chuff said:

Oct 12, 2010 14:23:28 GMT ignorantianescia said:

I found it interesting that the Mexican Revolution was solely labelled as Christian, while there was quite some anti-clericalism during it.

Anyway, has anybody seen this paper being used by any atheist online polemicists yet? Some tend to adopt Islamic apologetics with an eagerness I find really baffling.

I think it would be amusing to see some atheist cite this paper considering it managed to attribute 127 million deaths to them. If they try to use this paper in an appeal to consequences, then the obvious conclusion would have to be that we should all convert to Islam!

That being said, I'm sure we'll see it cited in the future anyways.

Heh. Well, reading some of the more uninformed atheist writings about the development of science and the opposing macabre force of Christendom did give me the thought "Why didn't they convert to Islam if they are so fond of this line of thought?".

Though in fairness to atheists, those death tolls are credited to antitheists. Not all atheists are antitheists, though I think calling your site "No Beliefs" does nominate you for being an antitheist (royal you). Now Walker certainly seems bellicose to me!

[eckadimmock]

Oct 12, 2010 16:50:08 GMT elephantchang51 said:

Am I missing somethng here?Why doesn't a review of political violence attribute the bodycounts to political groupings?

or ethnicity, nations or economic criteria, for that matter? You'd think religious difference was the only reason that people murder each other.

[penguinfan]

I think you put more thought into this list of numbers than the author did.

Apparently this guy is a professor?

Wow.

On a slightly more serious note, it's interesting to note that the French Revolution is labeled (and I believe the Napoleonic Wars) a 'Christian' civil war but Ataturk and Saddam Hussein are anti-theists.

[gymnopodie]

I think it would be amusing to see some atheist cite this paper considering it managed to attribute 127 million deaths to them.

Then start to be amuzed. What I get out of this is not whether the wars can be attributed to religion but that the religions have not prevented the bloodshed!

[eckadimmock]

Oct 15, 2010 15:44:56 GMT gymnopodie said:

Then start to be amuzed. What I get out of this is not whether the wars can be attributed to religion but that the religions have not prevented the bloodshed!

If you accept these figures (and I think their attribution seems highly questionable), then who are these "anti-theists"? My guess is that communist regimes account for most of them, which means that the antis in about a century have slaughtered about 70% of the 'Christian' total for 2000 years.

If they'd been in charge since year 0 they'd have racked up about 2.5 billion at that rate.

However, religion has prevented most of that

[gymnopodie]

If you accept these figures (and I think their attribution seems highly questionable), then who are these "anti-theists"? My guess is that communist regimes account for most of them, which means that the antis in about a century have slaughtered about 70% of the 'Christian' total for 2000 years.

The anit-theists are those of the Communist bloc. I don't recall the Communists making claims that they are directed or influenced by an almighty God that promotes love and peace.

If they'd been in charge since year 0 they'd have racked up about 2.5 billion at that rate.

However, religion has prevented most of that

If religion had been doing its job, there wouldn't have been Communist nations. But they do seem to have done well on genocides though:

The Christian civilization has been the most genocidal civilization, accounting for 14 instances of genocides with over 33 million deaths. As the total deaths derived from genocides are just over 50 million, the Christian share is nearly 2/3 of all genocide deaths.

And the winner is:

In comparative terms, we have found the open secret of world history to be that the Christian civilization is the most bellicose on all counts: It is the civilization which is responsible for the highest number of death in world history

In conclusion:

The Christian civilization, therefore, emerges as the most violent and genocidal in world history.

[eckadimmock]

The Christian civilization, therefore, emerges as the most violent and genocidal in world history.

[/blockquote][/quote]

Yes, this piece of writing with Koranic verses all over it, published by "the Royal Aal al-bayt Institute for Islamic Thought" concludes that Islam is the most peaceful and Christianity the most violent.
(If the Southern Baptist Convention published a study showing that Protestant Christianity was the most peaceful religion I wonder if you'd be so quick to accept its findings?)

But don't just accept that: look at the numbers and think about them.

Statistical arguments are seldom made by raw numbers: you have to consider possible confounds. Are there any other explanations for violence other than religion? Are you comparing like with like? Does the author have a particular ideological agenda? (which wouldn't make him wrong automatically, but may lead him to jump to conclusions).

I've already made the point that the body counts should be adjusted for body count and time scale. One could also add economic conditions, ethnic rivalry and so forth. Then there's the basic assumptions: is labelling a civilization by religion even valid?


Still, if you're convinced by the argument, feel free to convert to Islam by all means.

[courtney]

Then start to be amuzed. What I get out of this is not whether the wars can be attributed to religion but that the religions have not prevented the bloodshed!

I dont think think many, if any of of them, have ever claimed that they would.

I don't recall the Communists making claims that they are directed or influenced by an almighty God that promotes love and peace.

No but they certainly promised peace, land and bread. Christianity never promised you would receive that from the hand of your fellow man. Communism did and failed.

[courtney]

On a slightly more serious note, it's interesting to note that the French Revolution is labeled (and I believe the Napoleonic Wars) a 'Christian' civil war but Ataturk and Saddam Hussein are anti-theists.

Good point. There is an interesting idea that the enlightenment itself has had a profound impact on the way wars have been fought.

books.google.lu/books?id=Pw5jup_LyHAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+first+total+war+enlightenment&source=bl&ots=wJFyfxnlO_&sig=tGvb05qoYQZVZO_eexPHwyE5YGc&hl=de&ei=FPC5TMerH4-fOrzM4M4M&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22thirty%20year%20war%22&f=false

The above link argues that the binding of these philosophical ideas with the French revolution and then the Napoleonic wars has had a brutalising effect on war - where we now see war as exceptional conflict that has to be fought to the ideological bitter end for the sake of progress and peace itself rather than as a consequence of man's flawed nature to be dealt with.

Unfortunately this body count study, allocating deaths to different religious cultures is so clumsy it really is too easy to pick holes in it. Apart from normalising for population growth and technology, we could throw in this idea that post- enlightenment thinking has alot to answer for. I would suggest that if we ran with this idea we could happily off load alot of the christian conflict (and some conflicts linked to other religons) with the anti-theists into an "enlightenment" category and come out with a more credible argument.

But personally, I'd prefer not to reduce the history of human conflict to simplisitc reductionism.