In an effort to hide the fact that no arguments exist in favor of atheism, atheists resort to fib telling about religion in order to court favor with the ignorant. To be fair, most atheists are not meaning to be dishonest, they are just spouting the nonsence they have read in atheist books and web sites. The one we will dispose of in this thread is the notion that religion causes war. This whopper promoted by Hitchens in his book "God is not Great" was recently regurgitated by Bill Maher in an interview with Mike Huckabee. Here are the facts.
The Encyclopedia of Wars lists a total of 123 wars which were fought for religious reasons. (Phillips, Charles and Alan Axelrod. Encyclopedia of Wars. New York: Facts on File, 2005.) Yet the list of wars fought totals 1,763. This means that only 6% of all wars have been fought for religous reasons. The other interesting thing to note is that over 1/2 of these "religous" wars were waged by Islamic nations. So by removing that single religion from the equation we have only 3 percent of the wars waged by all other religions combined! And even some of these are questionable as to whether the motive was really religous or secular. In the U.S. a country dominated by Christians, only 1% of all wars have been fought for religious reasons. So by what stretch of logic can we call religious wars "frequent"? Certainly, in light of the facts of history, religion can be held accountable for very few wars by percentage. In addition, religion is responsible for very few deaths when considered as a percentage.
