Virtually anybody who has graduated from school within the final 50 years has heard the assertion, “Extra folks have been killed within the title of God than the rest.” And most of them imagine it.
It will take a protracted essay to reply to this declare. So I am going to simply level out right here that if by “God” those that make this assertion are referring to the God of the Bible and subsequently to Christians (Jews hardly ever had adequate numbers or energy to persecute anybody), the assertion is just not true.
Sure, Christians killed Jews (though this was by no means official church doctrine). For instance, Christians killed complete communities of Jews on their approach to combat within the Crusades. And Christian invasion and settlement killed hundreds of thousands of Native Individuals within the Americas — though most of those deaths have been attributable to European ailments to which the folks of America had no immunity. And Christians killed fellow Christians who had totally different theologies. Between 1618 and 1648, in what turned referred to as the Thirty Years’ Struggle — a conflict between Catholics and Protestants in Europe — someplace between 5 and eight million folks have been killed.
However there are few different examples of large-scale killings by Christians as Christians (versus folks killing Christians, like within the two world wars). For instance, in one of the vital broadly cited examples of Christian killings, in the course of the Inquisition, not more than 5,000 folks have been killed — a quantity each Jewish and non-Jewish historians agree on.
The variety of folks killed by Christians within the 2,000-year historical past of Christianity is larger than the variety of folks killed within the Mongol invasions of Europe and China within the thirteenth century alone—about 40 million and 60 million respectively.
It’s also dwarfed by the variety of folks killed by Muslims, principally Arabs, for the reason that creation of Islam within the seventh century. Throughout the thousand years of Muslim rule, at the very least one crore Hindus have been killed in India alone. (The Indian authorities hardly ever talks about this for worry of inciting civil conflict between its Hindu and Muslim populations.) Of the staggering variety of Hindus killed by Muslims, historian Will Durant writes in his magisterial 11-volume “Story of Civilization.” (co-author with Ariel Durant), wrote: “The Mohammedan conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in historical past.”
Provided that those that say, “Extra folks have been killed within the title of God than the rest,” are referring to Christians, it’s not intellectually trustworthy to incorporate Muslims who killed Hindus. Identify of God” with out mentioning that a lot of the killings have been by Muslims.
Lastly, and most significantly, there’s something within the title of which extra folks have been killed — within the final century alone — than the rest (besides God). And that factor is “equality”. Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and different communist tyrants killed at the very least 100 million non-combatants and enslaved one other billion. All within the title of ‘equality’.
And that’s inevitable. Though “all males are created equal,” as acknowledged within the American Declaration of Independence, based mostly on the biblical, Judeo-Christian origins of the American Revolution, equality can’t be achieved with out violence. Because of this the French Revolution, which was rooted in “equality” led to the guillotine, whereas the American Revolution, which was not rooted in equality, led to the freest nation ever.
Why egalitarianism is a monstrous superb is the topic of my subsequent column.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His commentary on Numbers, the fourth quantity of “The Rational Bible,” his five-volume commentary on the primary 5 books of the Bible, shall be printed in November 2024 and is now accessible for presale on Amazon. He’s the co-founder of Prager College and will be contacted at dennisprager.com.
