“Religions cause so many wars!” “I don’t want to deal with religion because it causes so much hate and violence.” How many times have we heard such phrases in our lives, online, or on television?

But do they have merit? Like any claim, we have to see if they can truly be backed up with facts. So let’s look at some statistics. We’ll keep it simple – we’ll look at all the wars, invasions, and conquests in history, see which caused the most deaths, and see if religion was the main reason behind them.

Event	Lowest Estimate	Highest Estimate
World War II	70,000,000	118,357,000
European colonization of the Americas	8,400,000	80,000,000
Mongol invasions and conquests	30,000,000	57,000,000
Taiping Rebellion	20,000,000	40,000,000
Transition from Ming to Qing	25,000,000	25,000,000
Second Sino-Japanese War	18,000,000	22,000,000
World War I	15,000,000	22,000,000+
An Lushan Rebellion	13,000,000	13,000,000
Chinese Civil War	8,000,000	11,692,000
Dungan Revolt	10,000,000	10,000,000

Ask yourself- was religion the cause of any of those?

Now let’s talk about some individuals. Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong – under each of them, millions have been killed. Did any of them kill in the name of religion?

Let’s talk about a more modern example. How about the War on “Terror”? Sadly, some of us ignorantly make the “religion is violent” claim based on what happened in the Middle East. Yet, the vast majority of the deaths were caused by the US and other western countries. According to a 2021 study conducted by the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, these wars caused the deaths of 4.5-4.6 million people, and cost $8 trillion. Not to mention that tens of millions have been displaced.¹

Many atheists claim that if religion is out of the picture, the world would be better. Yet, religion has been around since the dawn of time and only in recent history have secular beliefs been so prevalent. However, if you look at everything we spoke about, it suggests that secularism has resulted in more violence.

So let’s be honest and academic. Colonialism causes violence. Greed causes violence. Power, fame, racism, hate, and yes, extreme secularism causes violence.

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1. https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/