A Christian apologist has this to say...
"Atheism's tireless argument that religion causes more wars is a myth. So put it to rest. Encyclopedia of Wars, chronicles 1,763 wars over the course of human history. Of those 123 categorized as being religious in nature which is 6.98% of all wars. subtracts out those waged in the name of Islam (66), the percentage is cut by more than half to 3.23%. So, all faiths combined – minus Islam – have caused less than 4% of all of humanity’s wars and violent conflicts. The Truth: non-religious motivations and naturalistic philosophies bear the blame for nearly all of humankind’s wars. see R. J. Rummel’s work "Lethal Politics" and "Death by Government"
As it happens, the statement begins with a straw man - no one had said religion causes more wars, so the statement could simply be ignored. It's interesting to note however that the statement includes statistics, and references to two books. But the statistics have not been taken from those books. This provides a fascinating case study on how religious apologists will misuse references. Let's examine...
The misuse of references
There's an interesting tactic used by religious apologists whereby they will quote an opinion or statistics, followed by a reference to a respected text book. Examination of the text book however reveals that the opinion or statistics are not to be found. It appears the book has been referenced to add some kind of credibility to the apologist opinion, on the assumption that no one reading the opinion will be inclined to check the actual sources. Here is an example.
Posted by ████ ████ on 4 Dec 2013 at 3:59AM
Encyclopedia of Wars, chronicles 1,763 wars over the course of human history. Of those 123 categorized as being religious in nature -6.98% of all wars. subtracts out those waged in the name of Islam (66), the percentage is cut by more than half to 3.23%.
First point to note is that this is a straw man argument. There was no argument that "religion causes more wars" - the premise seems to have been invented in order to refute it. Also, the reference to "Atheism's tireless argument" is confusing. How can atheism have an argument? Should "atheism" read "atheist"? Still doesn't make sense. How many atheists are making this argument? The Straw Man renders the entire argument pointless. But let's run with it, in order to examine how the references have been used.
The argument begins by referring to the "Encyclopedia of Wars" and to avoid any doubt the apologist making the argument provides a link to amazon.com which shows that this is the 3 volume work by Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod which costs around $300.
However, the statements which follow the reference to the book, don't come from the book. They come from a religious apologist website The Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry. It seems the text posted on the discussion board, and indeed the entire argument, is copied from this page...
So let's examine what's on that page. It seems that rather than "atheism's tireless argument" the article is referring to a comment by one atheist (Sam Harris) who said "faith and religion are “the most prolific source of violence in our history."
Note that Harris didn't use the word "war" - he used the word "violence". So we have yet another straw man on the CARM website. Harris did not make the claim that "Religion is the number one cause of war" but that's the premise that the CARM article uses to build its argument. But, again, let's run with it to see where CARM get their information from. Their article states:
"An interesting source of truth on the matter is Philip and Axelrod’s three-volume Encyclopedia of Wars, which chronicles some 1,763 wars that have been waged over the course of human history. Of those wars, the authors categorize 123 as being religious in nature, which is an astonishingly low 6.98% of all wars. However, when one subtracts out those waged in the name of Islam (66), the percentage is cut by more than half to 3.23%.
Note that this is the source of the post on the discussion board - it has been copied and pasted and left un-credited. One wonders why no reference was made to The Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry (CARM) as being the source. Let's also ignore the unexplained exclusion of Islam (which is obviously a religion) from the equation.
Let's examine how CARM came to their conclusion, by examining the 3 volume Encyclopedia of Wars. And first let's note that they are disingenuously avoiding the discussion of "violence" by referring to an encyclopaedia of "war". This work does indeed reference approximately 1700 wars. But it does not categorise any of them as "religious wars". The authors use no such category. So where did this categorisation and the statistics come from? Well, it actually came from page 104 of this book…
The Irrational Atheist: Dissecting the Unholy Trinity of Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens and the author is Vox Day (which is the pen name of a Creationist by the name of Ted Beale). Here's a review from Amazon...
"Very largely, it is a `rant' and a very personal one against Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris, something which makes for amusing reading, but doesn't represent a very edifying spectacle. Worse, it doesn't actually land very many, if any killer punches. It seems to rely heavily on the technique of drawing conclusions about the atheists which are inconsistent with what they have said or written and then proceeds to use these conclusions to prove further points. This approach makes for an interesting read since it is simple to understand, yet easily dismissed for its flawed logic, but is hardly consistent with being a `devastating critique.' Furthermore, if you then turn the technique round and use it in the same way against the author, then you find a great many inconsistencies in his position and many unsubstantiated statements, which make the whole book of limited value to anybody hoping to refute an atheist's position. Even where there is logic in the writer's position, it barely rises above that of a schoolboy, making it great fun to read, but nothing to take seriously."
Then we have a cherry-picked reference to R. J. Rummel’s book "Lethal Politics and Death by Government". Rummel's book focuses on what he called "democide" which is defined as "the murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide and mass murder." Rummel created the term to include forms of government murder that are not covered by the term genocide. Again, the CARM authors have ignored the premise of the book as explained in the introduction (pages xv and xvi)…
"As will be seen the results here clearly and decisively show that democracies commit less democide than other regimes. These results also well illustrate the principle underlying all my findings on war, collective violence and democide; The less freedom people have, the greater the violence; the more freedom, the less the violence. I offer this proposition here as the Power Principle: power kills, and absolute power kills absolutely."
Rummel makes no judgement on religion at all. His argument is that evidence shows democracy provides the best chance of a peaceful future.
SUMMARY
A seemingly well informed post on a discussion board fails to provide its source. And when the source is examined we discover:
A straw man argument, which is not even original but copied from a Christian apologetics website, which was not credited. The website is run by a pastor in Idaho, who has copied the argument from a widely derided book written by a Creationist. Two text books written by political scientists are mentioned, implying that the opinions in the article come from those books, but they don't.
APPENDIX
The wars in the "Encyclopedia of War" which are classified as "Religious Wars" according to "The Irrational Atheist"
Albigensian Crusade
Almohad Conquest of Muslim Spain
Anglo-Scottish War (1559–1560)
Arab Conquest of Carthage
Aragonese-Castilian War
Aragonese-French War (1209–1213)
First Bearnese Revolt
Second Bearnese Revolt
Third Bearnese Revolt
First Bishop’s War
Second Bishop’s War
Raids of the Black Hundreds
Bohemian Civil War (1465–1471)
Bohemian Palatine War
War in Bosnia
Brabant Revolution
Byzantine-Muslim War (633–642)
Byzantine-Muslim War (645–656)
Byzantine-Muslim War (688–679)
Byzantine-Muslim War (698–718)
Byzantine-Muslim War (739)
Byzantine-Muslim War (741–752)
Byzantine-Muslim War (778–783)
Byzantine-Muslim War (797–798)
Byzantine-Muslim War (803–809)
Byzantine-Muslim War (830–841)
Byzantine-Muslim War (851–863)
Byzantine-Muslim War (871–885)
Byzantine-Muslim War (960–976)
Byzantine-Muslim War (995–999)
Camisards’ Rebellion
Castilian Conquest of Toledo
Charlemagne’s Invasion of Northern Spain
Charlemagne’s War against the Saxons
Count’sWar
Covenanters’ Rebellion (1666)
Covenanters’ Rebellion (1679)
Covenanters’ Rebellion (1685)
Crimean War
First Crusade
Second Crusade
Third Crusade
Fourth Crusade
Fifth Crusade
Sixth Crusade
SeventhCrusade
Eighth Crusade
Ninth Crusade
Crusader-Turkish Wars (1100–1146)
Crusader-Turkish Wars (1272–1291)
Danish-Estonian War
German Civil War (1077–1106)
Ghost Dance Uprising
Siege of Granada
First Iconoclastic War
Second Iconoclastic War
India-Pakistan Partition War
Irish Tithe War
Javanese invasion of Malacca
Great Java War
Kappel Wars
Khurramite’s Revolt
Lebanese Civil War
Wars of the Lombard League
Luccan-Florentine War
Holy Wars of the Mad Mullah
Maryland’s Religious War
Mecca-Medina War
Mexican Insurrections
War of the Monks
Mountain Meadows Massacre
Revolt of Muqanna
Crusade of Nicopolis
Padri War
Paulician War
Persian Civil War (1500–1503)
Portuguese-Moroccan War (1458–1471)
Portuguese-Moroccan War (1578)
Portuguese-Omani Wars in East Africa
Rajput Rebellion against Aurangzeb
Revolt in Ravenna
First War of Religion
Second War of Religion
Third War of Religion
Fourth War of Religion
Fifth War of Religion
Sixth War of Religion
Eighth War of Religion
Ninth War of Religion
Roman-Persian War (421–422)
Roman-Persian War (441)
Russo Turkish War (1877–1878)
First Sacred War
Second Sacred War
Third Sacred War
Saladin’s Holy War
Schmalkaldic War
Scottish Uprising againstMary of Guise
Serbo-Turkish War
Shimabara Revolt
War of the Sonderbund
Spanish Christian-Muslim War (912–928)
Spanish Christian-Muslim War (977–997)
Spanish Christian-Muslim War (1001–1031)
Spanish Christian-Muslim War (1172–1212)
Spanish Christian-Muslim War (1230–1248)
Spanish Christian-Muslim War (1481–1492)
Spanish Conquests in North Africa
Swedish War
Thirty Years’ War
Transylvania-Hapsburg War
Tukulor-French War
Turko-Persian Wars
United States War on Terror
Vellore Mutiny
Vjayanagar Wars
First Villmergen War
Second Villmergen War
Visigothic-Frankish War.
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