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[Order David Horowitz’s new book, America Betrayed, HERE.]
Almost anyone who has graduated from college in the last 50 years has repeatedly heard the statement, “More people have been killed in the name of God than in the name of anything else.” And most of them believe it.
It would take a long essay to respond to this claim. I will therefore only note here that if by “God” the people who make this statement are referring to the God of the Bible, and therefore to Christians (Jews rarely had enough numbers or power to persecute anyone), the statement is simply not true.
Yes, Christians killed Jews (though it was never official church doctrine to do so). For example, whole communities of Jews were slaughtered by Christians on their way to fight in the Crusades. And tens of millions of indigenous people in the Americas were killed as a result of Christian invasion and settlement — though most of those deaths were caused by European diseases to which people in the Americas had no immunity. And Christians killed fellow Christians who had a different theology. Between 1618 and 1648, in what became known as the Thirty Years’ War — a war between Europe’s Catholics and Protestants — somewhere between five and eight million people were killed.
But there are few other examples of largescale killings by Christians as Christians (as opposed to people who happened to be Christian killing people, as in the two world wars). For example, during one of the most widely cited examples of Christian killing, the Inquisition, no more than 5,000 people were killed — a number both Jewish and non-Jewish historians agree upon.
The number of people killed by Christians in the 2,000-year history of Christianity is far exceeded by the number of people killed in the Mongol invasions of Europe and China in the 13th century alone — approximately 40 million and 60 million respectively.
It is also dwarfed by the number of people killed by Muslims, mostly Arabs, from the advent of Islam in the seventh century. During the thousand-year Muslim rule in India alone, at least a hundred million Hindus were killed. (The Indian government rarely speaks of this for fear of introducing civil strife between its Hindu and Muslim populations.) With regard to the staggering number of Hindus killed by Muslims, historian Will Durant, in his magisterial 11-volume “The Story of Civilization” (co-authored with Ariel Durant), wrote: “The Mohammedan conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history.”
Given that those who say, “More people have been killed in the name of God than in the name of anything else,” are referring to Christians, it is not intellectually honest to include the Muslim murder of Hindus as those who have killed “in the name of God” without specifying that most of that killing was done by Muslims.
Finally, and most importantly, there is something in whose name more people have been killed — in the last century alone — than in the name of anything (except Allah). And that thing is “equality.” Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and other communist tyrants killed at least 100 million noncombatants and enslaved a billion others. All in the name of “equality.”
And that is inevitable. While “all men are created equal,” as the American Declaration of Independence put it, based upon the biblical, Judeo-Christian origins of the American Revolution, it is not possible to achieve equality without violence. That is why the French Revolution, rooted in “equality,” led to the guillotine, while the American Revolution, which was not rooted in equality, led to the freest country ever created.
Why egalitarianism is a monstrous ideology is the subject of my next column.
More people have been murdered in the name of FAITH in the unprovable, the unreal, the unearned, the irrational, the supernatural, the anti-rational, anti-reality, pseudo-science, false reasoning, false claims, mysticism, than anything else. There, fixed it for ya.
Irrational beliefs can be claimed to be based on reality and reason, based on science and logic, but that doesn’t mean that’s so.
“I have said that faith and force are corollaries, and that mysticism will always lead to the rule of brutality. The cause of it is contained in the very nature of mysticism. Reason is the only objective means of communication and of understanding among men; when men deal with one another by means of reason, reality is their objective standard and frame of reference. But when men claim to possess supernatural means of knowledge, no persuasion, communication or understanding are possible. Why do we kill wild animals in the jungle? Because no other way of dealing with them is open to us. And that is the state to which mysticism reduces mankind—a state where, in case of disagreement, men have no recourse except to physical violence. And more: no man or mystical elite can hold a whole society subjugated to their arbitrary assertions, edicts and whims, without the use of force. Anyone who resorts to the formula: “It’s so, because I say so,” will have to reach for a gun, sooner or later. Communists, like all materialists, are neo-mystics: it does not matter whether one rejects the mind in favor of revelations or in favor of conditioned reflexes. The basic premise and the results are the same.” – Ayn Rand
We established that you had discovered the flaw in Randism, you were selfishly demanding that FPM behave altruistically.
Huh? We haven’t established anything. Pass that by me again. Please explain. I have no idea what you’re talking about.
You demanded Danusha be allowed to write every Friday for your own selfish reasons. That’s how all “socialist, communist, Marxist, objectivist political scientists” think but reality gives us mass murder that the same people blame on religion of some sort.
Good comment.
I remember that remark from him. It was almost like the heroin needle got pulled from his arm.
I haven’t seen such a pathetic suck up on this comment board ever. It went on for several comments that day.
It’s almost like THX is hoping to date her.
I demanded that Danusha Goska be allowed to write every Friday for my own selfish pleasure?
That is NOT a demand that FP Magazine sacrifice itself for me at all. If FP Magazine and Danusha Goska want to publish a Goska article every Friday, then fine, if not I’m not going to force them to do it.
A request is not a COMMAND!
A demand is NOT a COMMAND. A request is NOT a DUTY. An attempt at PERSUASION is NOT a gun to your head.
Next, you’re going to tell me that a customer at a grocery store requesting that the store offer more of one kind of bread, or eggs, is COMMANDING the grocery to provide him with that bread and eggs for free!
You simply have NO understanding of what altruism really means or what rational selfishness really means, and most of all you don’t want to be bothered to understand, it would shatter your world view and cause you too much emotional turmoil.
Neither Rand nor anyone else who has understood and adopted her philosophical principles refers to them as “Randism”. She called her philosophy “Objectivism”, you commie clown.
I think “Randism” is meant as an insult. I use it all the time. I also use Objectionism.
I love a good insult it shows the message hit a nerve 😂
If you love insults, I have plenty to offer for Christianity, I have refrained from using them, but I’ll be happy to give you the pleasure.
This article is right up your deranged alley. Naturally you provide zero proof of your claim. But I am not surprised. It’s simply business as usual for you, the laziest of lazy God hater.
Quoting a long dead bitter angry insane woman is not the way to document a claim.
Depraved psychopathic murderous berserk delusional intolerant hate-filled freedom crushing Islam has been a scourge on humanity for 1400 years.
Enough already.
And not only that the west has imported a 1,500-year feud between the followers of Muhammad and the Jewish community who refused to accept his claims to be a legitimate prophet speaking on behalf of their God.
More people have been murdered in the name of idolatry of man(greed) in the provable, all too real, the humanistic, rational, arrogant, evil, anti-reality, pseudo-science, fraudulant(science=money), false claims, delusional, than anything else. There fixed it for you.
There, I just put you to shame, by highlighting your duplicity and ‘Selective Illiteracy Syndrome’.
Whyman — this was meant for me or THX? …cause you and I are making the same point.
“He who answers a matter before he hears it- this is folly and disgrace to him”
PROVERBS 18:13
Thank you for your unwitting admission that you never read the article which already disproved your thoughtless, regurgitated statement.
Here is another resource which unequivocally underscores your willful ignorance, with cold, hard verifiable facts…….that you will pretend in vain doesn’t exist:
Personally, I see atheism as “just another religion” as it is based upon an unprovable belief (there IS no god), its followers are often fanatical in their belief, and they all too often evangelize, and they see and often treat their logical twins (theists and deists) as stupid.
In a quantum universe, agnosticism is the ONLY credible belief structure as all others are really faiths including atheism.
Islam while hiding behind its religious facade (which is responsible for most of its success) is an ideology that rewards greed, lust and barbarism and the vague promise of an exotic afterlife for those who hurt non musims and fellow muslim “heretics” in any way. Criminals eagerly convert to islam as now they are conscience free of their past crimes and can continue to hurt people but now they can be proud of it (Mum I killed 10 Jews today etc.).
During the Holocaust gas chambers were used because those involved in the shooting of men, women and children (EinzatzGruppen) had an exceptional high rate of suicide, psychosis, drug addiction and alcoholism as all came from a Christian society and felt guilt to a greater or lesser degree.
But a muslim feels joy each time he kills for allah and NEVER regret.
Always remember that THIS defines islam the scourge of the planet and it will NEVER stop while ONE copy of the koran or one muslim exists.
Those muslims forced into the Red Army in WW2 were rarely good soldiers but they were excellent rapists and murderers of civilians and the main Red Army fighting units had obvious contempt for them but Stalin liked what they did to Germany. They were not allow to pray and had to eat SPAM but underneath the muslim was still there. That is how deep is centuries of childhood indoctrination and why the Inquisition became a necessary force in reconquered Spain (to detect false muslim to Christian converts)
Islam is a depraved psychopathic murderous intolerant, delusional berserk freedom crushing political ideological cult.
Islam in no way can be considered a religion in the Western sense.
It has been a scourge on humanity for 1400 years.
Any historian or just a decent human being can see that.
Islam is a religion in the Western, the rational, and the objective sense of the word.
The definition that a true religion cannot lead to evil, but only to good, is a false definition.
The claim that a true religion does not lead to theocratic implications and a theocracy is also false.
It may be argued that Islam is more brutal, more primitive, and more savage than any other religion we know of TODAY, or maybe ever (except maybe for the religion of the Aztecs and the Incas), but all religions, including Judaism and Christianity, have had their periods of brutal theocracies.
Christianity was the fundamental cause of the nearly one-thousand years of the stagnation of the West, what are called the Dark and Middle Ages, can be properly called the Christian Dark and Middle Ages.
Conflating Islam with other specific religions is incorrect.
Depraved psychopathic murderous freedom and mind crushing Ideological political military cults such as Islam itself can in no be be considered a religion.
Islam belongs in a cult category all its own.
Islam is berserk in a way that no other ideology is berserk.
Islam is an utterly evil brainwashing machine from infancy to the grave that uses the human brain’s lower brain stem to indoctrinate brainwash and pervert the education of children so that they can never grow up as a decent human being.
Islam cannot in any sense be conflated into any rational sense of religion.
Islamic ideology is designed to destroy the human mind and understanding.
Islam is the most insidious and destructive force to have been contrived.
You actually miss an important point: there is religion and there are churches. Once a religion begins to become organized it evolves into a church which then controls money and power and begins to tell its followers what they can and cannot do. Not only for money but for control and slowly it becomes an ideology riding on the back of a religious horse.
Christianity as a religion, has given us the west, like it or nor although the churches often tried to bar the way but eventually failed. The true religion of Christianity is quite apparent in the words of the man JoN. But all else is added by those who control the churches.
Islam began as a way to stop “ferocious” arabs from running when they were losing a battle as up until the invention of the 72 houri garbage they preferred not to die. This promise of an afterlife was what islam and Christianity had in common and the source in islam is as false as it is in Christianity where the original Jerusalem Christians had no such views.
The difference between the two in religion terms was the difference in virtues: one was essentially altruistic and peaceful while the other was vindictive and violent.
Using this religious facade as a front for control enabled the evolution of two ideologies: one that the Vatican controlled “Christian” church and the other of islam. The blatant corruption of the former enabled the reformation which began the uncoupling of church control and the degradation of it as an ideology.
No such event has marked islam (there have been failed attempts) and it still sits as an ideology supreme, using religion to control EVERY aspect of muslim life. But those who control it have power and wealth and are NEVER hindered by the rules forced upon followers. Check up on just how the Saudi princes live compared with the average muslim there.
An ideology has an aim, is well organized and it has or seeks absolute control of its people. islam IS an ideology Christianity once was and that is why many Christians are falling back to the suicidal (if virtuous) first principles of JON .
The west has enemies (communism nd islam) that see any use of virtues(compassion. kindness, altruism, honour etc.) as weaknesses to exploit, so first principles FAIL totally against such enemies.
This was why it took 500 years to reclaim Spain and start up the Crusades: the penny had dropped that an “eye for an eye” was all that islam understood and it STILL applies now.
Your last paragraph is absolute rubbish. Sure, the ideology of the Vatican hindered things, but it was the steamrolling effect of islam and its constant attacks on the west that created the dark age and that included not just the fall of the Rome based Roman empire but of the Byzantine one as well however longer the latter took.
I suggest that you study that period using OLD textbooks (PreWW2) NOT the leftist revised ones all too often recommended.
Just a brief look at maps of islam’s expansion and the coastal denuding effect of the razzias (millions starved) might give you an idea
I actually respect your views mostly, and I agree with some of rand’s views but NOT all of it. But you allow your hatred of Christianity/religion to ruin much of what you say here allowing the plethora of indignant christian replies.
The ideology of islam has killed more people on this planet that the nazis, black plagues, communism, the Huns, and the Mongols as many millions in Africa, the ME, India and the west, starved to death long ater they had set fire to everything and left. Only the CCP has come a distant second to islam.
“There are no conflicts of interest among rational men.”
“Happiness is not to be achieved at the command of emotional whims. Happiness is not the satisfaction of whatever irrational wishes you might blindly attempt to indulge. Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy—a joy without penalty or guilt, a joy that does not clash with any of your values and does not work for your own destruction, not the joy of escaping from your mind, but of using your mind’s fullest power, not the joy of faking reality, but of achieving values that are real, not the joy of a drunkard, but of a producer. Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values and finds his joy in nothing but rational actions.
Just as I support my life, neither by robbery nor alms, but by my own effort, so I do not seek to derive my happiness from the injury or the favor of others, but earn it by my own achievement. Just as I do not consider the pleasure of others as the goal of my life, so I do not consider my pleasure as the goal of the lives of others. Just as there are no contradictions in my values and no conflicts among my desires—so there are no victims and no conflicts of interest among rational men, men who do not desire the unearned and do not view one another with a cannibal’s lust, men who neither make sacrifices nor accept them.” – John Galt, Atlas Shrugged
“Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values and finds his joy in nothing but rational actions.”
That’s an irrational statement in itself, pop into any church and you will see happy people.
So, you’re conceding that Christianity is irrational and yet Christians are happy in an irrational way.
Drunks and potheads can also be said to be “happy” in an irrational, artificial, fantasy induced way, but that isn’t what Ayn Rand is speaking of, that isn’t rational happiness based on the facts of reality.
The Palestinian Muslim savages were seen to be “happy” on October 7th, but that was not rational happiness, and they have been paying a savage price of real misery for their savage, fantasy, “happiness” ever since.
Bernie Madoff, his family, and his investors were “happy” for decades, an essentially irrational, fantasy, not based on the facts of reality happiness, until reality came knocking at the door.
I remember one of Bernie’s investors saying that a 12% return was hard to believe but that he and his wife soothed away their concerns by telling themselves that God wanted them to have all that money. Until reality came knocking at their door.
Yes, you are that much of a God hating idiot. Love the moral equivalency between church goers, pot heads and Hamasimians.
Desperate much?
This article is right up your deranged alley. Naturally you provide zero proof of your claim. But I am not surprised. It’s simply business as usual for you, the laziest of lazy God hater.
Quoting from a book by a long dead bitter angry insane woman is not the way to document a claim.
Here’s hint for ya, John Galt isn’t real.
How many haved died over Darwin’s Crack-Pot Theory? Its what the Nazis used the Commies to
Darwin had nothing to do with the crack-pot ideology of “Social Darwinism” and he was opposed to it. He rejected Social Darwinism.
The Theory of Evolution and natural selection and Social Darwinism are two separate, different, and incompatible ideas. Don’t get them confused.
What Ayn Rand said about racism is also true of Social Darwinism, you can substitute Social Darwinism for racism in the following quote:
“Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes. It is a barnyard or stock-farm version of collectivism, appropriate to a mentality that differentiates between various breeds of animals, but not between animals and men.” – Ayn Rand
Too bad no one has proven the validity of the theory of evolution. Hence it is only a theory.
But atheist losers like you glom on because it is easy in the age of easy emotion and solutions.
Evolution takes millions of years. But since none of us were around for the age of dinosaurs which lasted for 200 Million years it’s hard to prove.
So c’mon genius….prove it. But not with your warped Objectivism. Your personal evolution seems to have ceased during the time of the Neanderthal
One of the things that evolution is completely unable to explain, is the alleged transition from avian/amphibian reproduction, to that which characterises mammals. How would a change from laying a large number of eggs outside the body, to nurturing embryos within it, occur, and what would its intermediate stages be? How would females survive during those intermediate stages, and what would their offspring be like? How did infants survive when mammary glands were still at an intermediate stage of development? And where is there a fossil record of any of it? This is not just a missing link but an entire suit of chainmail.
That’s why it’s called a “theory”
The Theory of Noah’s Ark is so much better, isn’t it?
Where did Noah find two kangaroos, two platypuses, and two bald eagles in the Middle East? How did he build an aquarium big enough to hold two of every kind of fish in every river, lake, sea, and ocean on earth, and fit it inside his ark?
God just willed it with his magic wand and the magic happened. like Mickey Mouse in the movie “Fantasia”. Yeh, that’s really a theory based on the facts of reality.
Naive and childish, but mostly sophomoric and unsophisticated arguments
Most of us are past puberty
Wasn’t Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of the USA,
an acolyte of Ayn Rand and the philosophy of Objectivism ?
Yes, he was. Greenspan was also a follower of the Austrian School of Economics icon, Ludwig von Mises. Greenspan was an Austrian School of Economics economist.
He also wrote several brilliant, pro-Laissez-Faire Capitalism essays for Ayn Rand’s book, “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”. Which are still contained in that book.
I doubt that without Rand he would have become famous. But he threw it all away, he walked away from Rand and Objectivism. He walked away and betrayed all the ideas and principles that he wrote about in “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”.
He sold his soul to the Establishment for wealth and power. He became a RINO.
“How can Alan Greenspan go from writing “Gold and Economic Freedom” to being such a corrupt and intellectually dishonest statist?” – Leonard Peikoff
According to the Austrian School of Economics that follows the teachings of Ludwig von Mises, America and the world are headed for a great debt/credit crisis/collapse … an American/World economic and financial Apocalypse.
I just hope my timing is right so I can make a fortune going short various paper assets and going long on gold.
I wonder what Greenspan is speculating on now. He is 98 years old.
Paul Volker communicated and wrote books and gave interviews
until he died a few years ago at 91.
Volker was concerned and worried that America was devolving into an elite ruling class oligarchy.
How come Greenspan will not share any of his late life wisdom and insights like Volker did ?
I have no idea.
Alan Greenspan chose to become so thoroughly intellectually corrupt and dishonest that — what wisdom or insights can he possibly offer?
Other than admitting to himself and the world that he chose to become thoroughly dishonest and corrupt? How likely is that to happen?
God forbid anyone who rejects Randianism incurs your limp wrath. Maybe he simply realized how full of sh*t she was.
People have equal rights in the free countries. As long as they don’t violate other people’s rights.
But people are not equal in any shape or form. Each individual is unique. Superiority of some over others is a fact.
Simple example: Mr. A is taller than Mr. B. Mr. B is stronger than Mr. A.
That goes for ever aspect of every person. One is always superior to the other on many aspects.
It’s a major flaw to assume people are equal, let alone use it as the base of any philosophy.
Any false ideology will fail.
Marxism/socialism/communism is a psychopathic ideology. Psychopaths lie and manipulate all the time. They deceive and use ignorant people. The leaders live like Kings and the people suffer anytime/anywhere a psychopathic ideology is adopted.
Muhammad the pedophile from Arabia was a full blown psychopath. The core of islam is pure evil.
Muslims have killed more than 100 million, a lot more.
Many psychopaths have perverted Christianity to gain power, wealth and control. But that is not what the core of Christianity is.
Defensive wars by Christians is fully justified.
Whatever ideology one goes to war in the name of, it doesn’t matter. Even without religion, philosophy or politics, men would still find a reason to go to war. Cynical but true.
I see that idea ( that more people have been killed in the name of God ) in comment sections and I wonder where have these people been for the last 100 years. The answer: at college. That’s why they are totally clueless about the history of the 20th century and the bloody failure of communism. Diversity means anti-white racism. Equity means communism and inclusion means incompetence.
The American revolution didn’t have its origins in the so-called judeo-christian tradition. Christianity superceded Judaism and therefore its one ir the other, not both
The values, morals & ethics have been passed on from the Jews to Christianity.