Thu 21 Feb, 2008
“The Irrational Atheist”
10:35 am Comments (19) Filed under: New AtheismTags: Christianity, Islam, War
First Things has published Anthony Sacramone’s review of Vox Day’s book, The Irrational Atheist: Dissecting the Unholy Trinity of Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens. It includes:
To take just one of many examples, a common trope among atheists is that religion is the No. 1 cause of wars in history. “If religion were an important element of warmaking, one would expect to find a great deal of text commenting upon it,” Day writes. But you don’t. After reading the great war theorists, from Sun Tzu to Von Clausewitz, Day found pages and pages about perseverance, spies, geometry, inspirational music—but virtually nothing about religion.
As for the nature of the wars themselves, talk about specific: Day found 123 wars that could validly be claimed to have religion at their heart—a grand total of 6.98 percent of all wars fought. “It’s also interesting to note that more than half of these religious wars, sixty-six in all, were waged by Islamic nations,” Day offers as an aside.
About 7% of identifiable wars in history war fought for religious reasons. Most of those were initiated by Muslims. This does not justify any war fought for the purpose of advancing Christianity. But it certainly puts the lie to beliefs that Christianity bears the blame for a large part of the violence in world history.
We might as well add this current item to the point, too: 150 million murdered in the 20th century–by whom?
Hat Tip: One Eternal Day
