Confused / Achilles12604 debate : "The End of Faith&quo

[achilles12604]

Confused and I have decided to debate Sam Harris's book, "The End of Faith". I believe that we will be using a similar formate to the recent "The God Delusion" debate. As this is a one on one debate, no one else may post in this particular thread. However, I am creating a "comments" thread in general chat.

As I require some time to read this book, and I am going out of town for 5 days at the beginning of August, I would suggest that this particular debate begin on August 10th or later.

Is this acceptable Confused?

[Confused]

A) What are religious moderates?


Of course, to answer this question I would need to determine who's definition I was supposed to represent. Harris presents religious moderates as those who were likely born into religion, yet because of a deeper understanding of science and reality, have thrust off the totalitarian ideology of their fundamentalist counterparts and invented excuses which allow their ideas to fit both in the real world, and simultaneously in their fantasy world of religion.

Pt 14: People of faith tend to fall on a continuum. Some draw solace and inspiration from a specific tradition while remaining fully committed to tolerance and diversity (religious moderates) while others would burn the earth to cinders if it would put an end to heresy (religious extremists).

I will try to address the remainder of this post after my MD appointment. But I am unsure where your interpretation of "moderates" came from? I can't find anything even remotely related to it in the first chapter. What have I missed?

[Confused]

Granted to some extent. However I think this is mostly due to the fact that he doesn't present much information. He presents his opinions, not facts. Thus all I had to address was his opinions, or in essence himself.

I will address his reasoning later, but using one opinion to refute another is the same as saying "two wrongs make a right". But I will get to it. Give me some time. I told you I wanted to go slow so have patience with me. Each chapter provides concepts beyond the basic questions I posed initially.

Yes, I am aware you give stats in the next post, however, that doesn't prove there is no credence to the argument Harris makes.

[Confused]

I agree. We are going to need to go really slow. In my first reply I was just trying to briefly cover the topics you brought up. However, I believe that this might be a mistake. I am going to start over and go in much greater detail.My apologies.


I will start from page 12 and move on from there. Real quick I will respond to your over all impression of my first analysis. Then I will explain (going very slowly) why I responded in the first post like I did.

This I the impression I wanted to address real quick.

Realize, I am not countering your post here. I will do that later this evening. However, one concept keeps screaming out of your analysis. Your are analyzing Harris, not his information.

Granted to some extent. However I think this is mostly due to the fact that he doesn't present much information. He presents his opinions, not facts. Thus all I had to address was his opinions, or in essence himself.

Take the first few pages for example. He opens with an emotional plucking of the heartstrings. He then proceeds to express his opinion that beliefs lead people to murder each other.

These are mere words - until you believe them. Once believed they become part of the very apparatus of your mind, determining your desires, fears, expectations and subsequent behavior. [b:380f82d15d]There seems, however, to be a problem with some of our most cherished beliefs about the world: they are leading us, inexorably, to kill one another.[/b:380f82d15d] A glance at history, or at pages of any newspaper, reveals that ideas which divide one group of humans from another, [b:380f82d15d]only to unite them in slaughter,[/b:380f82d15d] generally have their roots in religion. - page 12

This is of course an opinion. He doesn't cite facts.

Here are some facts concerning wars and acts of violence in the 20th century (and a few before the 20th century). As you and I agree that FACTS are important, and he didn't offer any to back up this claim, I will do so now. I wish to examine Harris' claim that violent conflicts "generally have their roots in religion."

My next post will be an in depth examination of this first claim of Sam Harris. I will include evidence.

As this will take some time, I will post it as soon as possible, tonight I hope. In the meantime I look forward to your evaluation of my first post. I recognize that it was brief and did not address specifics, however, I think this is due mostly to Harris citing opinions. Thus I responded with opinions.


I am truly excited to engage in this debate with you. I am going to enjoy going step by step for a change. My apologies for failing to do this my first go-round. Let me backtrack and we can indeed go step by step.

Thus far, this is addressed in my previous post. It isn't sheer opinion but rational reasoning Harris is using. We aren't going to find the Dawkins scapegoats here. Instead, we will find a vast amount of abstract reasoning that will be tough. But we must break it down little by little. So my initial starting point is "belief". Would you agree with the assertion Harris makes?

[Confused]

Death tolls attributted to religious cause (not just due to God, but because of differences in religious doctrine and intolerance.
http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/The ... id/2071867

The exact number of people killed by the Nazi regime will never be known, but scholars, using a variety of methods of determining the death toll, have generally agreed upon common range of the number of victims. Recently declassified British and Soviet documents have indicated the total may be somewhat higher than previously believed[7]. However, the following estimates are considered to be highly reliable. The estimates: 5.1–6.0 million Jews, ...

http://www.truthbeknown.com/victims.htm

Ancient Pagans
As soon as Christianity was legal (315), more and more pagan temples were destroyed by Christian mob. Pagan priests were killed.
Between 315 and 6th century thousands of pagan believers were slain.
Examples of destroyed Temples: the Sanctuary of Aesculap in Aegaea, the Temple of Aphrodite in Golgatha, Aphaka in Lebanon, the Heliopolis.
Christian priests such as Mark of Arethusa or Cyrill of Heliopolis were famous as "temple destroyer." [DA468]
Pagan services became punishable by death in 356. [DA468]
Christian Emperor Theodosius (408-450) even had children executed, because they had been playing with remains of pagan statues. [DA469]
According to Christian chroniclers he "followed meticulously all Christian teachings..."
In 6th century pagans were declared void of all rights.
In the early fourth century the philosopher Sopatros was executed on demand of Christian authorities. [DA466]
The world famous female philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria was torn to pieces with glass fragments by a hysterical Christian mob led by a Christian minister named Peter, in a church, in 415

Since we cannot include specific number for this, the point was the impact.

From same site:

Mission
Emperor Karl (Charlemagne) in 782 had 4500 Saxons, unwilling to convert to Christianity, beheaded. [DO30]
Peasants of Steding (Germany) unwilling to pay suffocating church taxes: between 5,000 and 11,000 men, women and children slain 5/27/1234 near Altenesch/Germany. [WW223]
Battle of Belgrad 1456: 80,000 Turks slaughtered. [DO235]
15th century Poland: 1019 churches and 17987 villages plundered by Knights of the Order. Victims unknown. [DO30]
16th and 17th century Ireland. English troops "pacified and civilized" Ireland, where only Gaelic "wild Irish", "unreasonable beasts lived without any knowledge of God or good manners, in common of their goods, cattle, women, children and every other thing." One of the more successful soldiers, a certain Humphrey Gilbert, half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh, ordered that "the heddes of all those (of what sort soever thei were) which were killed in the daie, should be cutte off from their bodies... and should bee laied on the ground by eche side of the waie", which effort to civilize the Irish indeed caused "greate terrour to the people when thei sawe the heddes of their dedde fathers, brothers, children, kinsfolke, and freinds on the grounde".
Tens of thousands of Gaelic Irish fell victim to the carnage. [SH99, 225]

Now we get to down and dirty:

Crusades (1095-1291)
First Crusade: 1095 on command of pope Urban II. [WW11-41]
Semlin/Hungary 6/24/96 thousands slain. Wieselburg/Hungary 6/12/96 thousands. [WW23]
9/9/96-9/26/96 Nikaia, Xerigordon (then turkish), thousands respectively. [WW25-27]
Until Jan 1098 a total of 40 capital cities and 200 castles conquered (number of slain unknown) [WW30]
after 6/3/98 Antiochia (then turkish) conquered, between 10,000 and 60,000 slain. 6/28/98 100,000 Turks (incl. women & children) killed. [WW32-35]
Here the Christians "did no other harm to the women found in [the enemy's] tents - save that they ran their lances through their bellies," according to Christian chronicler Fulcher of Chartres. [EC60]
Marra (Maraat an-numan) 12/11/98 thousands killed. Because of the subsequent famine "the already stinking corpses of the enemies were eaten by the Christians" said chronicler Albert Aquensis. [WW36]
Jerusalem conquered 7/15/1099 more than 60,000 victims (jewish, muslim, men, women, children). [WW37-40]
(In the words of one witness: "there [in front of Solomon's temple] was such a carnage that our people were wading ankle-deep in the blood of our foes", and after that "happily and crying for joy our people marched to our Saviour's tomb, to honour it and to pay off our debt of gratitude")
The Archbishop of Tyre, eye-witness, wrote: "It was impossible to look upon the vast numbers of the slain without horror; everywhere lay fragments of human bodies, and the very ground was covered with the blood of the slain. It was not alone the spectacle of headless bodies and mutilated limbs strewn in all directions that roused the horror of all who looked upon them. Still more dreadful was it to gaze upon the victors themselves, dripping with blood from head to foot, an ominous sight which brought terror to all who met them. It is reported that within the Temple enclosure alone about ten thousand infidels perished." [TG79]
Christian chronicler Eckehard of Aura noted that "even the following summer in all of palestine the air was polluted by the stench of decomposition". One million victims of the first crusade alone. [WW41]
Battle of Askalon, 8/12/1099. 200,000 heathens slaughtered "in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ". [WW45]
Fourth crusade: 4/12/1204 Constantinople sacked, number of victims unknown, numerous thousands, many of them Christian. [WW141-148]
Rest of Crusades in less detail: until the fall of Akkon 1291 probably 20 million victims (in the Holy land and Arab/Turkish areas alone). [WW224]

Heretics
Already in 385 C.E. the first Christians, the Spanish Priscillianus and six followers, were beheaded for heresy in Trier/Germany [DO26]
Manichaean heresy: a crypto-Christian sect decent enough to practice birth control (and thus not as irresponsible as faithful Catholics) was exterminated in huge campaigns all over the Roman empire between 372 C.E. and 444 C.E. Numerous thousands of victims. [NC]
Albigensians: the first Crusade intended to slay other Christians. [DO29]
The Albigensians (cathars = Christians allegedly that have all rarely sucked) viewed themselves as good Christians, but would not accept roman Catholic rule, and taxes, and prohibition of birth control. [NC]
Begin of violence: on command of pope Innocent III (greatest single pre-nazi mass murderer) in 1209. Bezirs (today France) 7/22/1209 destroyed, all the inhabitants were slaughtered. Victims (including Catholics refusing to turn over their heretic neighbours and friends) 20,000-70,000. [WW179-181]
Carcassonne 8/15/1209, thousands slain. Other cities followed. [WW181]
subsequent 20 years of war until nearly all Cathars (probably half the population of the Languedoc, today southern France) were exterminated. [WW183]
After the war ended (1229) the Inquisition was founded 1232 to search and destroy surviving/hiding heretics. Last Cathars burned at the stake 1324. [WW183]
Estimated one million victims (cathar heresy alone), [WW183]
Other heresies: Waldensians, Paulikians, Runcarians, Josephites, and many others. Most of these sects exterminated, (I believe some Waldensians live today, yet they had to endure 600 years of persecution) I estimate at least hundred thousand victims (including the Spanish inquisition but excluding victims in the New World).
Spanish Inquisitor Torquemada alone allegedly responsible for 10,220 burnings. [DO28]
John Huss, a critic of papal infallibility and indulgences, was burned at the stake in 1415. [LI475-522]
University professor B.Hubmaier burned at the stake 1538 in Vienna. [DO59]
Giordano Bruno, Dominican monk, after having been incarcerated for seven years, was burned at the stake for heresy on the Campo dei Fiori (Rome) on 2/17/1600.

Witches
from the beginning of Christianity to 1484 probably more than several thousand.
in the era of witch hunting (1484-1750) according to modern scholars several hundred thousand (about 80% female) burned at the stake or hanged. [WV]
incomplete list of documented cases:
The Burning of Witches - A Chronicle of the Burning Times

Religious Wars
15th century: Crusades against Hussites, thousands slain. [DO30]
1538 pope Paul III declared Crusade against apostate England and all English as slaves of Church (fortunately had not power to go into action). [DO31]
1568 Spanish Inquisition Tribunal ordered extermination of 3 million rebels in (then Spanish) Netherlands. Thousands were actually slain. [DO31]
1572 In France about 20,000 Huguenots were killed on command of pope Pius V. Until 17th century 200,000 flee. [DO31]
17th century: Catholics slay Gaspard de Coligny, a Protestant leader. After murdering him, the Catholic mob mutilated his body, "cutting off his head, his hands, and his genitals... and then dumped him into the river [...but] then, deciding that it was not worthy of being food for the fish, they hauled it out again [... and] dragged what was left ... to the gallows of Montfaulcon, 'to be meat and carrion for maggots and crows'." [SH191]
17th century: Catholics sack the city of Magdeburg/Germany: roughly 30,000 Protestants were slain. "In a single church fifty women were found beheaded," reported poet Friedrich Schiller, "and infants still sucking the breasts of their lifeless mothers." [SH191]
17th century 30 years' war (Catholic vs. Protestant): at least 40% of population decimated, mostly in Germany. [DO31-32]

Jews
Already in the 4th and 5th centuries synagogues were burned by Christians. Number of Jews slain unknown.
In the middle of the fourth century the first synagogue was destroyed on command of bishop Innocentius of Dertona in Northern Italy. The first synagogue known to have been burned down was near the river Euphrat, on command of the bishop of Kallinikon in the year 388. [DA450]
17. Council of Toledo 694: Jews were enslaved, their property confiscated, and their children forcibly baptized. [DA454]
The Bishop of Limoges (France) in 1010 had the cities' Jews, who would not convert to Christianity, expelled or killed. [DA453]
First Crusade: Thousands of Jews slaughtered 1096, maybe 12.000 total. Places: Worms 5/18/1096, Mainz 5/27/1096 (1100 persons), Cologne, Neuss, Altenahr, Wevelinghoven, Xanten, Moers, Dortmund, Kerpen, Trier, Metz, Regensburg, Prag and others (All locations Germany except Metz/France, Prag/Czech) [EJ]
Second Crusade: 1147. Several hundred Jews were slain in Ham, Sully, Carentan, and Rameru (all locations in France). [WW57]
Third Crusade: English Jewish communities sacked 1189/90. [DO40]
Fulda/Germany 1235: 34 Jewish men and women slain. [DO41]
1257, 1267: Jewish communities of London, Canterbury, Northampton, Lincoln, Cambridge, and others exterminated. [DO41]
1290 in Bohemian (Poland) allegedly 10,000 Jews killed. [DO41]
1337 Starting in Deggendorf/Germany a Jew-killing craze reaches 51 towns in Bavaria, Austria, Poland. [DO41]
1348 All Jews of Basel/Switzerland and Strasbourg/France (two thousand) burned. [DO41]
1349 In more than 350 towns in Germany all Jews murdered, mostly burned alive (in this one year more Jews were killed than Christians in 200 years of ancient Roman persecution of Christians). [DO42]
1389 In Prag 3,000 Jews were slaughtered. [DO42]
1391 Seville's Jews killed (Archbishop Martinez leading). 4,000 were slain, 25,000 sold as slaves. [DA454] Their identification was made easy by the brightly colored "badges of shame" that all jews above the age of ten had been forced to wear.
1492: In the year Columbus set sail to conquer a New World, more than 150,000 Jews were expelled from Spain, many died on their way: 6/30/1492. [MM470-476]
1648 Chmielnitzki massacres: In Poland about 200,000 Jews were slain. [DO43]
(I feel sick ...) this goes on and on, century after century, right into the kilns of Auschwitz.

20th Century Church Atrocities
Catholic extermination camps
Surpisingly few know that Nazi extermination camps in World War II were by no means the only ones in Europe at the time. In the years 1942-1943 also in Croatia existed numerous extermination camps, run by Catholic Ustasha under their dictator Ante Paveli, a practising Catholic and regular visitor to the then pope. There were even concentration camps exclusively for children!
In these camps - the most notorious was Jasenovac, headed by a Franciscan friar - orthodox-Christian serbians (and a substantial number of Jews) were murdered. Like the Nazis the Catholic Ustasha burned their victims in kilns, alive (the Nazis were decent enough to have their victims gassed first). But most of the victims were simply stabbed, slain or shot to death, the number of them being estimated between 300,000 and 600,000, in a rather tiny country. Many of the killers were Franciscan friars. The atrocities were appalling enough to induce bystanders of the Nazi "Sicherheitsdient der SS", watching, to complain about them to Hitler (who did not listen). The pope knew about these events and did nothing to prevent them. [MV]
Catholic terror in Vietnam
In 1954 Vietnamese freedom fighters - the Viet Minh - had finally defeated the French colonial government in North Vietnam, which by then had been supported by U.S. funds amounting to more than $2 billion. Although the victorious assured religious freedom to all (most non-buddhist Vietnamese were Catholics), due to huge anticommunist propaganda campaigns many Catholics fled to the South. With the help of Catholic lobbies in Washington and Cardinal Spellman, the Vatican's spokesman in U.S. politics, who later on would call the U.S. forces in Vietnam "Soldiers of Christ", a scheme was concocted to prevent democratic elections which could have brought the communist Viet Minh to power in the South as well, and the fanatic Catholic Ngo Dinh Diem was made president of South Vietnam. [MW16ff]
Diem saw to it that U.S. aid, food, technical and general assistance was given to Catholics alone, Buddhist individuals and villages were ignored or had to pay for the food aids which were given to Catholics for free. The only religious denomination to be supported was Roman Catholicism.
The Vietnamese McCarthyism turned even more vicious than its American counterpart. By 1956 Diem promulgated a presidential order which read:
"Individuals considered dangerous to the national defense and common security may be confined by executive order, to a concentration camp."
Supposedly to fight communism, thousands of buddhist protesters and monks were imprisoned in "detention camps." Out of protest dozens of buddhist teachers - male and female - and monks poured gasoline over themselves and burned themselves. (Note that Buddhists burned themselves: in comparison Christians tend to burn others). Meanwhile some of the prison camps, which in the meantime were filled with Protestant and even Catholic protesters as well, had turned into no-nonsense death camps. It is estimated that during this period of terror (1955-1960) at least 24,000 were wounded - mostly in street riots - 80,000 people were executed, 275,000 had been detained or tortured, and about 500,000 were sent to concentration or detention camps. [MW76-89].
To support this kind of government in the next decade thousands of American GI's lost their life.

Christianity kills the cat
On July 1, 1976, Anneliese Michel, a 23-year-old student of a teachers college in Germany, died: she starved herself to death. For months she had been haunted by demonic visions and apparitions, and for months two Catholic priests - with explicit approval of the Catholic bishop of Wrzburg - additionally pestered and tormented the wretched girl with their exorcist rituals. After her death in Klingenberg hospital - her body was littered with wounds - her parents, both of them fanatical Catholics, were sentenced to six months for not having called for medical help. None of the priests was punished: on the contrary, Miss Michel's grave today is a place of pilgrimage and worship for a number of similarly faithful Catholics (in the seventeenth century Wrzburg was notorious for it's extensive witch burnings).
This case is only the tip of an iceberg of such evil superstition and has become known only because of its lethal outcome. [SP80]
Rwanda Massacres
In 1994 in the small african country of Rwanda in just a few months several hundred thousand civilians were butchered, apparently a conflict of the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups.
For quite some time I heard only rumours about Catholic clergy actively involved in the 1994 Rwanda massacres. Odd denials of involvement were printed in Catholic church journals, before even anybody had openly accused members of the church.
Then, 10/10/96, in the newscast of S2 Aktuell, Germany - a station not at all critical to Christianity - the following was stated:
"Anglican as well as Catholic priests and nuns are suspect of having actively participated in murders. Especially the conduct of a certain Catholic priest has been occupying the public mind in Rwanda's capital Kigali for months. He was minister of the church of the Holy Family and allegedly murdered Tutsis in the most brutal manner. He is reported to have accompanied marauding Hutu militia with a gun in his cowl. In fact there has been a bloody slaughter of Tutsis seeking shelter in his parish. Even two years after the massacres many Catholics refuse to set foot on the threshold of their church, because to them the participation of a certain part of the clergy in the slaughter is well established. There is almost no church in Rwanda that has not seen refugees - women, children, old - being brutally butchered facing the crucifix.
According to eyewitnesses clergymen gave away hiding Tutsis and turned them over to the machetes of the Hutu militia.
In connection with these events again and again two Benedictine nuns are mentioned, both of whom have fled into a Belgian monastery in the meantime to avoid prosecution. According to survivors one of them called the Hutu killers and led them to several thousand people who had sought shelter in her monastery. By force the doomed were driven out of the churchyard and were murdered in the presence of the nun right in front of the gate. The other one is also reported to have directly cooperated with the murderers of the Hutu militia. In her case again witnesses report that she watched the slaughtering of people in cold blood and without showing response. She is even accused of having procured some petrol used by the killers to set on fire and burn their victims alive..." [S2]

My point here wasn't to show who killed more people. It was to show the religion in general was the cause of these deaths.

[achilles12604]

Take no offense here, but I am going ot have to review your statistics. We both know they are usally 2 sided. So give me some time today to research this.

Absolutely. I have included my sources for inspection.

[achilles12604]

Ok, you are way ahead in the analysis for me. I want to start at point A.

First, Harris makes a comparison between belief and a lever that once pulled, moves almost everything in a persons life. Would you agree with this?

Yes I would agree. I have said in other places that the main reason why theists and non-theists will never agree is because we approach the same evidence with different preconceptions of what "truth" is. Therefore, we will rarely reach the same conclusion.

Harris states a similar result of preconceptions or beliefs. Basically a person will almost never act upon some stimulant without taking his prior experiences and beliefs into account. If I believe that I'm going to die tomorrow, my actions for today will be much different than if I expect to live for 80 more years.

Yes I would agree with Harris on this point.

He states your beliefs define your vision of this world. Being a racist, liberal, etc... are merely species of belief in action. Goes further to say that belief determines your vision of the world, they dictate your behavior and your emotional responses. Harris makes his point that things are mere words until you believe them. (all from page 12)

Would you disagree with his assertion here?

As stated above, I do not disagree with this statement. Occasionally a person may act against his or her beliefs, however in general this is not so. An example would be someone who truly believes that if they buy a lottery ticket, they will not win. But they buy it anyway.

There are not to many examples of actions going against beliefs however.

He furthers his reasoning in page 13 when he says people tend to organize themselves into factions according to which claims they believe rather than the color of their skin, language, etc..

But he hits it all on the head of the nail with this

Once a person believe, really believes, that certain ideas can lead to eternal happiness, he cannot tolerate the possibility that others might lead their loved ones astray.

Here is quite the message.

I'm not sure I would agree here. This is an example of Harris inserting an opinion, which my experience has negated.

My sister is Buddhist. She has rejected Jesus and Christianity in general. According to my beliefs she is headed for eternal destruction.

However, I am able to "tolerate that she was led away." In fact I am able to not only tolerate, but even like the guy who changed her beliefs. (Her longterm boyfriend). I like Bill (her BF). I am not angry at him for showing her something new which she chose to accept.

I think that this sort of "anger" would only apply to individuals who haven't really thought things through. Christian doctrine teaches that God adhere's to the ideas of "free will". Most people I know (and the producers of Bruce Almighty), agree that free will is God allowing people to reject him and refuse to follow and love him, taking instead a path of their own choosing.

Now if you really think about it, why should I try and control an aspect of my sister, which God himself has chosen not to control?

No I'm afraid that I am forced to disagree with Harris' assertion here, both because of my own experience, and on a logical level as described above.

[achilles12604]

A) What are religious moderates?


Of course, to answer this question I would need to determine who's definition I was supposed to represent. Harris presents religious moderates as those who were likely born into religion, yet because of a deeper understanding of science and reality, have thrust off the totalitarian ideology of their fundamentalist counterparts and invented excuses which allow their ideas to fit both in the real world, and simultaneously in their fantasy world of religion.

Pt 14: People of faith tend to fall on a continuum. Some draw solace and inspiration from a specific tradition while remaining fully committed to tolerance and diversity (religious moderates) while others would burn the earth to cinders if it would put an end to heresy (religious extremists).

Harris doesn't define moderates as such. He uses the line of continuum for moderates and extremists. Where did you get this idea from? i am seraching through the first chapter and can't find anything that would classify one simply born into religion as a moderate.

Ok, enough fror now so you have time to respond before we move on to the role of moderates and the danger of them. However. I will post stats still.

Harris presents religious moderates as those who were likely born into religion, yet because of a deeper understanding of science and reality, have thrust off the totalitarian ideology of their fundamentalist counterparts and invented excuses which allow their ideas to fit both in the real world, and simultaneously in their fantasy world of religion.

Ok, remove the phrase "likely born into" and replace it with "either born into, or accepted personally as truth". My point was that I read his definition of a "moderate" as someone who believes all the dogma of faith at one time, but rejects it later due to science.

[achilles12604]

Death tolls attributted to religious cause (not just due t God, but becasue of differences in religious doctrine and intolerance.

http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/The ... id/2071867

The exact number of people killed by the Nazi regime will never be known, but scholars, using a variety of methods of determining the death toll, have generally agreed upon common range of the number of victims. Recently declassified British and Soviet documents have indicated the total may be somewhat higher than previously believed[7]. However, the following estimates are considered to be highly reliable. The estimates: 5.1–6.0 million Jews, ...

I haven\'t included the holocaust in my figures yet simply because I haven\'t gotten there yet. Have no fear I will include this along with every revolution, conquest and other political war so we can get a fair, even analysis of Harris\' assertion.

http://www.truthbeknown.com/victims.htm

Are you sure you want to use Achayara S as your source for information?

[achilles12604]

Incidentally, I have completed my research regarding Sam Harris assertion that most violence and wars are grounded or based on religion.

http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... php?t=6339


The results were 3.3 to 1 that wars were caused by politics over religion. We should replace all the politicians with clergy. I did try to use very liberal numbers slanted to Harris' side so as to avoid bias on my part so the ratio may be more like 3.5 or more to 1, but I'm still satisfied with the results.

[Confused]

Incidentally, I have completed my research regarding Sam Harris assertion that most violence and wars are grounded or based on religion.

http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... php?t=6339


The results were 3.3 to 1 that wars were caused by politics over religion. We should replace all the politicians with clergy. I did try to use very liberal numbers slanted to Harris' side so as to avoid bias on my part so the ratio may be more like 3.5 or more to 1, but I'm still satisfied with the results.

I think we are seeing this the same, yet different. In regards to Harris, death tolls attributed even to "ethnic cleansing" such as Rwanda, etc... are still ultimately a result of religion. However, he goes further with this in future chapters, so for now, I will keep note on your stats and mine.