Anyone know...

MagnumForce

...what percentage of killings in the world are religion related? it would be a nice statistic to know and throw in peoples faces from time to time when they preach the glory of their lords or how good is it to have faith or whathaveyou.

Dades

To be fair - that is an impossible statistic.

A lot of stuff done in the name of religion is just an cover for another agenda. Most religions save for their individual nutjob splinter groups do not condone killing.

A suggestion - you might have have more joy in a casual discussion rather than an "in your face" stat throwing.

Scofflaw

The Atheist wrote:

To be fair - that is an impossible statistic.

A lot of stuff done in the name of religion is just an cover for another agenda. Most religions save for their individual nutjob splinter groups do not condone killing.

A suggestion - you might have have more joy in a casual discussion rather than an "in your face" stat throwing.

I can't imagine any "religious" poster doing anything other than immediate critical disassembly of such stats, if we could even obtain them. For the stats to hold up you'd have to prove at least that:

1. religion was the only motive - as admitted by the perpetrator
2. that the perpetrator was telling the truth, and of sound mind
3. that the perpetrator had been correctly identified

and so on, for every single case. Even where it looks cut and dried, like the suppression of the Albigensian heresy, there was often another motive (cutting the local count down to size, land grabs, money).

The real numbers are, I suspect, counter-intuitively tiny.

cordially,
Scofflaw

MagnumForce

The Atheist wrote:

A suggestion - you might have have more joy in a casual discussion rather than an "in your face" stat throwing.

I wanted to used it as a secret weapon for use when I get tired of their closed minded drivel. I most often find anyway, that they are the ones least open to having a proper discussion, instead citing off a ream of so called "facts" with no evidence or prove, and when they do this continuously and especially when they start to repeat themselves, the conversation tends to dry up and they start to not listen to you, they just stand there quoting things. Its happened a few times. I just wanted this statistic as an added line of defense to use when the discussion becomes annoying.

Scofflaw wrote:

The real numbers are, I suspect, counter-intuitively tiny.

Im not just talking individual murderers, Im talking about killing in the name of religion for example:

1. The Crusades in the middle ages, non stop killing abound there
2. The Holocaust (Nazi's were technically non religious I know but they were killing a religious group and therefore it was a killing due to the existence of religion)
3. Massacres of countless "barbarians" for being "uncivilized" i.e. didnt believe in the god of those doing the killing, all over the world
4. The events leading up to and the current war in Iraq including killing of iraqis living in America and Iraq and Americans themselves, (someone might argue this was political, but it started as a Jihad or Holy War, upon The States by Al-Queda, and the previous Gulf War from whence this one came has religious roots.)
5. Burning of Witches and various other people deemed to be "heretical" at the time.
6.Countless other wars started due to conflicting religious views, and im sure theres plenty.
7. individuals killing individuals in normal living environments (i.e. in peace time and where territory isnt an issue) due to difference of religion
8. etc theres more examples out there somewhere, the list is seemingly endless

so, Scofflaw, add them all up and i dont think the number is going to be that "tiny" as you suggest.

Lets add together a few of those numbers:
9 Million for the various Crusades
6 Million Jews in the holocaust
about 200,000 witches and heretics (Ireland only burned four by the way)
100,000 deaths in Iraq since 2003 invasion
=
15,300,000 religion related deaths

and thats only a few, not such a "tiny" number after all is it, and im sure its a great many times bigger than that if you were to gather all the numbers.

oh and add to the the list Gods flood, im sure that killed a good few billion people and animals, it cant really be added though, cos it didnt happen, but its suggested. And its things like that in the bible which prompt people to go out and "cleanse" the "sinners". "It's God's will!!!" thats what they say, so it is.

it seems as though ive gravitated away from trying to find the percentage of killings on say a yearly basis attributed to religion, to all killings attributed to religion...ever...oops, either way its the same thing, just on a grander scale.

Dades

Just to take a couple of your examples individually. Firstly, the Nazi atrocities.

I'm not a historian but I think it is too black and white to say it was simply a religious issue. You have to look to the situation and wonder if either side were not of a particular persuasion would history be any different?

Hitler discriminated against Jews as an ethnic group, rather than on solely religious grounds. It wasn't the beliefs they held per-se but the role position they occupied in society. Hitler also discriminated against other minorities such as homosexuals and the handicapped. Arguments abound as to whether Hitler was atheist or Christian but this is probably irrelevant. He was Der Fuhrer and he had a plan.

Think Northern Ireland. If you asked your average joe to explain the differences in belief between Protestants and Catholics you'd get a short response. It's just a convenient label so you know who you're supposed to be hating.

100,000 deaths in Iraq since 2003 invasion

Hmm - because that's not about oil at all. A prime example of how people can use religion for ulterior motives. The fault there lies, as it always does - with people - not religion.

Funsterdelux

60% of the time, its religion related all the time

Wait a minute that doesnt make sense.

Rev Hellfire

Care to back that up.

Fallen Seraph

Isn't trying to find faults with religion counter-productive? I'm sure that's exactly what the religious do with atheism. Sit down and try to find what's wrong with it instead of evaluating it logically and impartially?

And to be fair, to blame all that stuff on religion is a bit one sided. Religion was probably, in most cases, simply an excuse for hatred, violence and bigotry that people would have justified some other way if they had no religion to do so.

For example the witch killings and heretic burnings were just good old cases of superstition and spectacle for the people.

And like the Atheist said, you can't blame the holocaust on religion. Religion was only incidental.

As for the crusades, chances are the christians would have been butchering each other if they hadn't had the common enemy to butcher.

MagnumForce

I knew someone would pick holes in the Nazi example, i know its not that clear cut and you could argue that its was purely genetic, as they also exterminated gypsies and such but not to the level of the Jews, and there would be no jews if it wernt for their beliefs, they would just be another group of people. (more holes to be poked in that paragraph i know, lets abandon that group of people as an example, theres plenty more)

The number of deaths above (9 million) in the Crusades includes Moor deaths and christian deaths including innocent civilians. Some of the crusades came about because the Christians believed the Muslims, moors and such were impure etc because they didnt beileve in "God" as they saw "him", they were thought to be barbaric and needed to be "civilised". The main crusade everyine knows was actually a Holy War waged by the Roman Catholic Church and sanctioned by the papacy, to recapture the "Holy Land" from the muslims. That's pretty clear cut religion induced killing dont you think?

Witch killings were only superstition and specticle? So the church didnt
systematically execute thousands of innocent women, and men, for being Heretics i.e. someone holding a conflicting view with the Church, and many time they didnt even have a conflicting view. Would this have happened if it hadnt been organised and revved on by the church. What about the Spanish Inquisition, that was all the Churches doing, are you saying they wernt as they saw it "Doing the will of god", but they were just a group of people being superstitious and having a bit of fun?

The americans may be doing it mostly for oil yes, but wars have two sides, the Iraqis are holding a Holy War, that sounds religion inspired to me. Iraqis are going around "punishing the infidels" and Americans are going around slaughtering the "towelheads" for their oil and for "god and country". Just listen to a few of the Americans involved, theyre very religiously motivated, as someone else in a different thread pointed out 97% of Americans are religious, I dont know how much of that is the varying degrees of Christianity, but its gonna be the majority. Plus the higher powers are doing it for oil, but what about the soldiers, what are they doing it for? (apart from revenge for 9/11 of course, which was revenge on the americans itself in the first place.)

And fault finding is a way of analysing something, are you saying we should learn and discuss things but ignore the negative side of things, Fallen Sereph? thats counter productive, sometimes the best way to truly know and understand things is to find its faults. Plus, we all know the positive side, thats all on the surface for everyone to see, we need to dig deeper to uncover all the parts to something.

Jesus, thats long, sorry ill ty keep it shorter in future!

Fallen Seraph

MagnumForce wrote:

Some of the crusades came about because the Christians believed the Muslims, moors and such were impure etc because they didnt beileve in "God" as they saw "him", they were thought to be barbaric and needed to be "civilised".

But what about all the other wars? The ones that were straight forwardly over money and territory? I don't know exact figures, but I'm pretty sure that the holy land was quite a profitable place and the muslims had quite an amount of plunderable wealth and that this was probably a bit motivation.

My main point is that religion is just an excuse for people to do things that they'd probably have done anyway.

Witch killings were only superstition and specticle? So the church didnt
systematically execute thousands of innocent women, and men, for being Heretics i.e. someone holding a conflicting view with the Church, and many time they didnt even have a conflicting view. Would this have happened if it hadnt been organised and revved on by the church. What about the Spanish Inquisition, that was all the Churches doing, are you saying they wernt as they saw it "Doing the will of god", but they were just a group of people being superstitious and having a bit of fun?

I suppose I must conceed this. It's not really possible to argue religion being incidental there.

The americans may be doing it mostly for oil yes, but wars have two sides, the Iraqis are holding a Holy War, that sounds religion inspired to me. Iraqis are going around "punishing the infidels" and Americans are going around slaughtering the "towelheads" for their oil and for "god and country". Just listen to a few of the Americans involved, theyre very religiously motivated

I don't mean to hold prejudices myself, but, again, I really get the impression that these americans are just using religion for an excuse to be bigoted. I mean these are (mostly) the guys who trumpeted the virtues of freedom during the american civil war and yet demanded their right to keep slaves... They're really just full of bile... I do suppose it could be argued that religion plays a part in it though. Equally, as is my understanding, the muslims have some very legitimate reasons to be thoroughly pissed with the americans.

robindch

> My main point is that religion is just an excuse for people to do things
> that they'd probably have done anyway.

Not true -- groups of people need to be given a reason (even a bad one) before they're start doing bad things as a group and under somebody's leadership. If you take away the motivating reason then the leaders have nothing to manipulate their pliant populations with.

It's irrelevant that any particular religion says that it provides a moral code, that it's Truth etc, etc. The fact is that religion, together with its doppelganger, a generalized tribalism, are the two main motivating factors in virtually every group conflict.

Put more simply, if people didn't divide themselves artificially up by tribe or religion, then they wouldn't know which group to hate, because opposing different groups to their own simply wouldn't exist. It's pretty easy really

Fallen Seraph

robindch wrote:

The fact is that religion, together with its doppelganger, a generalized tribalism, are the two main motivating factors in virtually every group conflict.

Put more simply, if people didn't divide themselves artificially up by tribe or religion, then they wouldn't know which group to hate, because opposing different groups to their own simply wouldn't exist.

But don't you think that that's an incredibly big if? It's human nature to divide up into tribes. It's inevitable. I don't deny that what you say is true, but it's like communism; a great idea on paper, unfortunately people don't actually work that way.

edit: either way, yeah, I'm convinced. Religion for the lose.

Scofflaw

Hmm. I'd still dismiss most of these as having some other driving force:

MagnumForce wrote:

1. The Crusades in the middle ages, non stop killing abound there

While many Crusades were organised, only those that were supported by secular leaders actually happened to any great extent. Secular leaders only supported Crusades when they had a lot of excess fighting men sitting around. As to the motives of the fighters themselves - a combination of piety (which would count), sporting instinct (which wouldn't), pride and honour (which wouldn't). Given a social stratum reared, trained, and organised for war as were the aristocracy of the Middle Ages, and it's difficult to distinguish religious impulses from workmanship and motives of honour.

I would suggest instead the original expansion of Islam.

MagnumForce wrote:

2. The Holocaust (Nazi's were technically non religious I know but they were killing a religious group and therefore it was a killing due to the existence of religion)

It's been said, but for completeness, I'd also consider this ethnic - although it's known that Hitler considered he was doing the right thing in the eyes of God!

MagnumForce wrote:

3. Massacres of countless "barbarians" for being "uncivilized" i.e. didnt believe in the god of those doing the killing, all over the world

Almost invariably land-grabs. The Church always preferred that pagans were converted rather than killed, but their reliance on secular fighters meant they had to put up with "clearance" of the existing pagans. The motives were always murky, even in cases that appear straightforward (have a read of The Northern Crusades, about the crusades around the Baltic).

MagnumForce wrote:

4. The events leading up to and the current war in Iraq including killing of iraqis living in America and Iraq and Americans themselves, (someone might argue this was political, but it started as a Jihad or Holy War, upon The States by Al-Queda, and the previous Gulf War from whence this one came has religious roots.)

From the Al-Qaeda point of view, this is a religious war, so their casualties should certainly be counted.

MagnumForce wrote:

5. Burning of Witches and various other people deemed to be "heretical" at the time.

Heretics, yes, witches, no.

MagnumForce wrote:

6.Countless other wars started due to conflicting religious views, and im sure theres plenty.
7. individuals killing individuals in normal living environments (i.e. in peace time and where territory isnt an issue) due to difference of religion
8. etc theres more examples out there somewhere, the list is seemingly endless

Most of this would be cultural. It's fairly rare for people who share the same culture to slug it out over religion, really. Look at NI, which many would count as a religious war...

MagnumForce wrote:

so, Scofflaw, add them all up and i dont think the number is going to be that "tiny" as you suggest.

Lets add together a few of those numbers:
9 Million for the various Crusades
6 Million Jews in the holocaust
about 200,000 witches and heretics (Ireland only burned four by the way)
100,000 deaths in Iraq since 2003 invasion
=
15,300,000 religion related deaths

and thats only a few, not such a "tiny" number after all is it, and im sure its a great many times bigger than that if you were to gather all the numbers.

I'd knock off the 6 million Jews, which brings it down to 9.3 million, nearly all of which is made up of the numbers killed in the Crusades. That figure I have seen in the following sense: "the total number of deaths due to the crusades had been estimated at around nine million, at least half of which were Christians. [1] Many of these were simply innocent civilians caught in the carnage." I've also seen these figures:

Casualties
Total deaths during the Crusades (1096-1270) are estimated at about 1.5 million. Many of the deaths are attributed to starvation and disease.
Pilgrim deaths due to disease . . . .50,000
Fall of Antioch (1098) . .100,000 Muslims
Fall of Jerusalem (1099) .70,000 Muslims
Children's Crusade (1212) . . . . . . . .50,000

I presume that the 9 million includes all possible attributable deaths, but I don't know how you come to ascribe all these deaths to religion - did the civilians attacked by undisciplined crusaders die for religous reasons? Surely not.

MagnumForce wrote:

oh and add to the the list Gods flood, im sure that killed a good few billion people and animals, it cant really be added though, cos it didnt happen, but its suggested. And its things like that in the bible which prompt people to go out and "cleanse" the "sinners". "It's God's will!!!" thats what they say, so it is.

it seems as though ive gravitated away from trying to find the percentage of killings on say a yearly basis attributed to religion, to all killings attributed to religion...ever...oops, either way its the same thing, just on a grander scale.

Well, if you wanted to go with the fundie view, then God probably kills several hundred thousand people a year with tsunamis, earthquakes, AIDS, etc etc, pour encourager les autres. Sadly, pointing this out doesn't bother any of the fundies I've met!

I am playing Devil's Advocate somewhat here, but there's nothing to stop a theist using these arguments.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Scofflaw

robindch wrote:

> My main point is that religion is just an excuse for people to do things
> that they'd probably have done anyway.

Not true -- groups of people need to be given a reason (even a bad one) before they're start doing bad things as a group and under somebody's leadership. If you take away the motivating reason then the leaders have nothing to manipulate their pliant populations with.

It's irrelevant that any particular religion says that it provides a moral code, that it's Truth etc, etc. The fact is that religion, together with its doppelganger, a generalized tribalism, are the two main motivating factors in virtually every group conflict.

Put more simply, if people didn't divide themselves artificially up by tribe or religion, then they wouldn't know which group to hate, because opposing different groups to their own simply wouldn't exist. It's pretty easy really

Unfortunately, you've stated two contradictory propositions here. Religion is either a main motivating factor that brings about conflict, or an excuse that is used in group conflict by way of being a "tribal marking".

One way religion is a cause of deaths, the other way tribalism is a cause of deaths. I tend to believe the tribalism, rather than the religion, is the cause. Religion is just one excuse.

If we suppressed all current tribal markers, people would invent new ones. Sure, they wouldn't be hallowed by time and custom, but I'm sure we'd manage.

cordially,
Scofflaw

robindch

> you've stated two contradictory propositions here.

I don't believe so -- I listed religion and tribalism separately because people tend to get offended if you refer to religion as a proxy tribalism, which is what it is.

> If we suppressed all current tribal markers, people would invent new ones.

Suppression of markers isn't the way forward, as the break up of Yugoslavia showed and I don't believe that there's much evidence to suggest that people would invent sufficiently credible new markers to be able to cause widespread mayhem.

I do believe, though, that appropriate education could be a way out of the current prejudicial pickle and the work of the former school-teacher, Jane Elliott is useful in this respect. She runs an outstanding exercise/demo/course called the Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes in which she creates an artificial division within a group of otherwise-homogenous people, and gets them, very easily, to rip each other to shreds over precisely nothing. I wonder how our colleagues over in the christianity forum would feel like if they were the object, rather than the source, of some of the homophobic nonsense doled out there over the last year.

Anyhow, I believe that if Elliott's exercise were a normal part of schooling, that many people would understand the arbitrary nature of irrational prejudice and, perhaps, it might decrease in society as a whole. I'm an optimist in this

.

Scofflaw

robindch wrote:

> you've stated two contradictory propositions here.

I don't believe so -- I listed religion and tribalism separately because people tend to get offended if you refer to religion as a proxy tribalism, which is what it is.

Apologies - I had taken "motivating" in the sense of "motive" rather than "call to action", which made the comments contradictory.

On the other hand:

robindch wrote:

> If we suppressed all current tribal markers, people would invent new ones.

I don't believe that there's much evidence to suggest that people would invent sufficiently credible new markers to be able to cause widespread mayhem...

...in which she creates an artificial division within a group of otherwise-homogenous people, and gets them, very easily, to rip each other to shreds over precisely nothing.

Er...

cordially,
Scofflaw

robindch

> Er...

Note the use of the word 'widespread'! Her thing works well in small groups which are intensively coached by her personally (have you seen her in action? She's a horror!) However, I don't think that her divisive blue eyes/brown eyes strategy would work with a large population -- it would need too many coachers and I'm having difficulty believing that people could be that stupid as a population, but then again, as above, I'm an optimist in this.

Scofflaw

robindch wrote:

> Er...

Note the use of the word 'widespread'! Her thing works well in small groups which are intensively coached by her personally (have you seen her in action? She's a horror!) However, I don't think that her divisive blue eyes/brown eyes strategy would work with a large population -- it would need too many coachers and I'm having difficulty believing that people could be that stupid as a population, but then again, as above, I'm an optimist in this.

Highly optimistic, given the history of the 20th century. Just how many dictators and revolutionary governments thought up new markers, and got the people lined up behind them? The Nazi regime traded on a pre-existing anti-Semitism, but Communism didn't for its condemnation of "capitalist lackeys", or "Trotskyites", nor did the US in the McCarthy era. Consider the Cultural Revolution, or "incorrect thinking", or "political correctness", or....well, the list is long, and many of these are proxy markers that are both recent, widespread, and fatal.

pessimistically,
Scofflaw

MagnumForce

Scofflaw wrote:

While many Crusades were organised, only those that were supported by secular leaders actually happened to any great extent. Secular leaders only supported Crusades when they had a lot of excess fighting men sitting around. As to the motives of the fighters themselves - a combination of piety (which would count), sporting instinct (which wouldn't), pride and honour (which wouldn't). Given a social stratum reared, trained, and organised for war as were the aristocracy of the Middle Ages, and it's difficult to distinguish religious impulses from workmanship and motives of honour.

But ask yourself one question, would it have happened without the presense of religion. in the end you can bring up all the different reasons, but the bottom line is that they were holy wars inspired by religion and had religious motives therefore any deaths are attributed to religion. There were plenty of other wars in the middle ages to keep people occupied, this one was organised by the church, the ****in church itself, so I think that a war organised by the leaders of the catholic religion is religion based, dont you?

Scofflaw wrote:

Almost invariably land-grabs. The Church always preferred that pagans were converted rather than killed, but their reliance on secular fighters meant they had to put up with "clearance" of the existing pagans. The motives were always murky, even in cases that appear straightforward (have a read of The Northern Crusades, about the crusades around the Baltic).

My point still stands. of course it was land grabs, on paper/internet its a little different to reality. At the time, the people doing the slaughtering belived they were doing the right thing in the eyes of god.

Scofflaw wrote:

Heretics, yes, witches, no.

Witches were considered the slaves of Satan, and tortured and killed by the church and people influenced by the church. sound religious to me. anyway, witches were counted as heretics, therefor your point is invalid.

Scofflaw wrote:

Most of this would be cultural. It's fairly rare for people who share the same culture to slug it out over religion, really. Look at NI, which many would count as a religious war...

Religion is a major part of a race's culture. people dont go to war over parts of peoples culture like how they built their houses, or how they like to spend their holidays or whatever. Plenty of people who share the same culture go to war, you've just given an example yourself, the NI "troubles" us, NI and britain have basically the same culture dont we? but that actually was a land thing, it just had religion round the outsides.

Scofflaw wrote:

I'd knock off the 6 million Jews, which brings it down to 9.3 million, nearly all of which is made up of the numbers killed in the Crusades.

yeah knock the jew off the list since thats too complicated to even bother discussing. but you're talking like theyre the final figures, theyre just a few figures i added together as examples, the actual number would be many times that.

Scofflaw wrote:

I presume that the 9 million includes all possible attributable deaths, but I don't know how you come to ascribe all these deaths to religion - did the civilians attacked by undisciplined crusaders die for religous reasons? Surely not.

would they have died if there hadnt been any crusades? religious crusades. would they have died if the crusaders wernt there on their holy war? no, they would have lead a life perfectly uninterupted by death by crusaders. so yes, their deaths are counted as religious. due to the fact that without religion, the crusaders wouldnt have been there to kill them.

Scofflaw wrote:

Well, if you wanted to go with the fundie view, then God probably kills several hundred thousand people a year with tsunamis, earthquakes, AIDS, etc etc, pour encourager les autres. Sadly, pointing this out doesn't bother any of the fundies I've met!

i just threw that in there for fun really (woo, fun! party! can you feel the excitment?) but anyway, none of the tsunamis, earthquakes, AIDS etc were attributed to God in a book used as a holy text and the basis of a religion.

Scofflaw wrote:

I am playing Devil's Advocate somewhat here, but there's nothing to stop a theist using these arguments.

No, go ahead, its interesting, and sort of fun, in a boring college lecture sort of way...

Have you notices that most of the arguments and discussions are Christianity based, theres never much talk of other religions, except muslim and jewish. Maybe the other religions just dont cause any trouble.

I wonder if we could count the lack of religion as a religion based killing, like deaths caused by communism in the USSR and China...i suppose we couldent due to the complications n all

robindch

> Maybe the other religions just dont cause any trouble.

Hmm... been to the Middle East recently?

Rev Hellfire

MagnumForce wrote:

I wonder if we could count the lack of religion as a religion based killing

You have to laugh at the logic. Its all the fault of religion because all wars are started because of religion and the ones that aren't are because not having a religion is also a religion.

Scofflaw

MagnumForce wrote:

But ask yourself one question, would it have happened without the presense of religion. in the end you can bring up all the different reasons, but the bottom line is that they were holy wars inspired by religion and had religious motives therefore any deaths are attributed to religion. There were plenty of other wars in the middle ages to keep people occupied, this one was organised by the church, the ****in church itself, so I think that a war organised by the leaders of the catholic religion is religion based, dont you?

None of the above.

MagnumForce wrote:

Witches were considered the slaves of Satan, and tortured and killed by the church and people influenced by the church. sound religious to me. anyway, witches were counted as heretics, therefor your point is invalid.

No, witches/sorcerors get killed in all cultures.

MagnumForce wrote:

Religion is a major part of a race's culture. people dont go to war over parts of peoples culture like how they built their houses, or how they like to spend their holidays or whatever. Plenty of people who share the same culture go to war, you've just given an example yourself, the NI "troubles" us, NI and britain have basically the same culture dont we? but that actually was a land thing, it just had religion round the outsides.

Loyalists and nationalists in NI don't share the same culture.

MagnumForce wrote:

No, go ahead, its interesting, and sort of fun, in a boring college lecture sort of way...

It's a bit of a dry and theoretical exercise alright. I suspect we're really arguing about "religion as justification" versus "religion as motivation".

MagnumForce wrote:

Have you notices that most of the arguments and discussions are Christianity based, theres never much talk of other religions, except muslim and jewish. Maybe the other religions just dont cause any trouble.

Nah, we've just got more Christians to argue with.

MagnumForce wrote:

I wonder if we could count the lack of religion as a religion based killing, like deaths caused by communism in the USSR and China...i suppose we couldent due to the complications n all

Been raised by various Christian posters, and knocked down by various atheists, on the basis that those states simply substituted communism for religion, rather than actually being atheist.

cordially, if drily,
Scofflaw

robindch

> Just how many dictators and revolutionary governments thought up
> new markers, and got the people lined up behind them?

On reflection, you're quite right. The distinction that I should have been noting was that all of the recent tribal markers have been memetic, rather than physical. Society's made pretty good progress in the last fifty years in dealing with the latter, but at the expense of the frequent rise of the former. So, it's generally unacceptable these days to declare an irrational hatred of people with black skin, big noses, crippled legs or blue eyes. Instead, irrational hatreds now seem to be generally acceptable only for memetic reasons, some of which you list: people who hold liberal views, or religious views (etc) of one wrong kind or another. Which is not to say that memetic hatreds didn't exist before, but simply that they were diluted in a greater mass of unpleasantness.

I wonder why physical-based irrational hatreds seem to be less successful propagators these days? Curious.

> "incorrect thinking"

Where did you get the "incorrect thinking" one? I recall coming across it in some soviet stuff a while back -- it's an unpleasantly Orwellian idea which, unsurprisingly, I've also seen expressed in Irish catholicism.

Scofflaw

robindch wrote:

I wonder why physical-based irrational hatreds seem to be less successful propagators these days? Curious.

Some of that was Victorian "physiognomy" and "craniology" - based in turn on an older (and still extant) paradigm that the ugliness of the body reflects the ugliness of the soul. The idea that certain physical features are indicators of lesser or greater "development" lingered longest in America, which was not directly exposed to Nazi methods of determining Jewish ancestry with calipers and measuring tapes.

robindch wrote:

> "incorrect thinking"

Where did you get the "incorrect thinking" one? I recall coming across it in some soviet stuff a while back -- it's an unpleasantly Orwellian idea which, unsurprisingly, I've also seen expressed in Irish catholicism.

Incorrect thought, as opposed to "Mao thought" - Chinese Communist Party sloganeering. There was "incorrect thought" and "incorrect action", often confessed during self-criticism or struggle sessions. The similarities to Catholic confession are many, but actually show the Catholic Church in a good light, in that they used confession primarily as a release mechanism leading to nearly automatic forgiveness, rather than as a weapon of self-oppression leading to a re-education camp.

cordially,
Scofflaw

robindch

> based in turn on an older (and still extant) paradigm that the ugliness of
> the body reflects the ugliness of the soul.

Yep, I'll buy that -- the idea that a out-of-order soul leads to an out-of-order body. A bit like an upside down version of 'mens sana in corpore sano', perhaps.

However, you've not suggested any reason why physical-based irrational hatreds are fewer these days than they used to be, with the derelict hatred-space being ably taken up by memetic-based irrational hatreds instead. Any ideas as to why this change? Is it somehow a result of the long-term washing into society of generalized Rights of Man, and the idea that people are born equal, but only assume non-physical differences with time. Hence, one must accord people the right of physical similarity, but need not accord them ideological respect?

Not sure that I've phrase this well, but beer and the late hour is not helping

hairyheretic

Scofflaw wrote:

No, witches/sorcerors get killed in all cultures.

I'd disagree with that. Look how many cultures around the world have some form of shamanism. Generally speaking the shaman was an important part of the community.

Magic, like any other kind of power, is not inherently good or evil. That label can be used depending on what is done with the power.

Scofflaw

hairyheretic wrote:

I'd disagree with that. Look how many cultures around the world have some form of shamanism. Generally speaking the shaman was an important part of the community.

Magic, like any other kind of power, is not inherently good or evil. That label can be used depending on what is done with the power.

Fair point. However, the position is a precarious one - if there's sickness or misfortune, it's quite likely to get laid at your door, precisely because magic can be used for good or evil. The witch in Medieval Europe may have been considered a goodwife until someone took against her, and that's the same in nearly every culture, whatever the religion. Hence my disagreement with labelling the cause of death as "religion".

cordially,
Scofflaw

Scofflaw

robindch wrote:

However, you've not suggested any reason why physical-based irrational hatreds are fewer these days than they used to be, with the derelict hatred-space being ably taken up by memetic-based irrational hatreds instead. Any ideas as to why this change? Is it somehow a result of the long-term washing into society of generalized Rights of Man, and the idea that people are born equal, but only assume non-physical differences with time. Hence, one must accord people the right of physical similarity, but need not accord them ideological respect?

Partly, I think, because most of Europe was actually on the receiving end of the logical development of this idea. The Nazis actually measured facial features to determine "Jewishness" or criminality, and the result of a bad measurement was the concentration camp.

Partly because this idea now has no scientific credibility, and, no matter how unscientific your views are, it spins better if it's "scientifically backed" - as we know from another, longer thread!

No-one has abandoned this view, really - one of the best indicators of promotion is height, and the good-looking have a noticeably higher acquittal rate in court.

cordially,
Scofflaw

CiDeRmAn

Opposition seems to be hardwired into our psyche, we seem to only unite as a people when faced with a greater outside threat, so as history rolled on villages unite to form towns, towns to form city states, city states to form regional power blocs, these into nations, then on to international governmental structures, this is reflected in the history of human culture from Ur to the UN, as we became larger we found new outsiders to be fearful of, in Britain I guess you hand the Angles, Saxons and Celts, then as that nation consolidated the French and the Spanish, then Germany, then consolidating power within NATO you had the eastern equivalent power structure, the Warsaw Pact eastern bloc group. Now we have a nation to our east without a clear enemy who require an evil threat to maintain this consolidation of its people, to prevent the fracturing of its nation, to preserve its militaristic structure and so we have a War On Terror, a suitably vague mission statement, with no clear enemy, certainly one that can never be defeated in a real sense.
Here we are so, a history of the powerful using the fear of those different from their citizens to create a form of order based on paranoia, easiest way to discern between natural citizens and an immigrant or foreign community is to look for those features that set us apart, those features that can only come about due to isolation from the so called normal joe public, religion is an excellent tool here, and you can appeal to peoples fear of an unknown value hierarchy to create the needed fear, that "they" don't love their children or value life as much as "we" do.
Hence history is full of the powerful using religion to reinforce their grip on the society beneath them, to maintain a standing reason to commit acts of barbarism on its own people by creating a "sub-culture" within that state, by using the population to police and commit these acts themselves against their better natures through the use of mortal fear that the "sub-culture" will do it to them if they don't.

So religion responsible for war, hardship?
No human greed is enough for that.

hairyheretic

Scofflaw wrote:

Fair point. However, the position is a precarious one - if there's sickness or misfortune, it's quite likely to get laid at your door, precisely because magic can be used for good or evil.

Thats possible, yes.

Scofflaw wrote:

The witch in Medieval Europe may have been considered a goodwife until someone took against her, and that's the same in nearly every culture, whatever the religion. Hence my disagreement with labelling the cause of death as "religion".

The "witch" in Medievil Europe could equally well have been the little old woman living alone with no family. Fear, superstition, and the all too human need to seek a scapegoat could be applied as easily as religion.

Though I suppose in medievil times, fear and superstition were parts of religion

CiDeRmAn

Witches were often women in isolated european villages who rose to positions of importance via local social rules, as midwives and herbalists they became important and therefore a threat to male dominated living as espoused by the prevalent christian ethic, they were therefore to be removed, murdered or get the locals to do by dehumanising the women as "witches".
Other good reasons to dispose of women at the time would be due to land ownership, if land was to fall to a womans control it would be very easy to concoct a charge against her and have the land then fall to another family member who covets the property.
Similar situations prevailed here in the early to mid 20th century as women were committed to Mental institutions for various trumped up charges like "Wanton Behaviour" for the remainder of the families comfort, in situations like incest and other abuse it was preferable to have the woman locked away, in medieval times its possible to imagine the stake being a viable alternative in such situations.

MrB

"Suffer not a Witch to live"
I believe this is written in some holy book.