Q&A: Who Murdered More — the Religious or the Secular? And What Role Does Technology Play in That?
Who Murdered More — the Religious or the Secular? And What Role Does Technology Play in That?
Question
It has often been said, and it seems to me that I may have heard this from you as well, that the secular world is responsible for a far greater number of murders in history than the religious world, with Stalin and Hitler commonly cited as examples.
However, this raises the question: to what extent can the enormous scale of the killing in their time be attributed to the fact that they operated in a modern era, when advanced technological means and powerful state machinery were at their disposal?
And what would happen if we switched the conditions: if the religious societies of a thousand years ago had access to today’s technology, while the secular societies of today were limited to the means that existed a thousand years ago — what would the balance of violence and murder look like in that situation?
Answer
I didn’t write that it was much more. On the contrary, I wrote that I have no insight at all into the question of who caused more killing. There are many other parameters that affect the issue as well (in the past, everyone was religious, so what’s surprising about the fact that the murders throughout history were committed by religious people?). The question is not interesting, and it’s a shame to spend time on it.