The crusades are often portrayed as violent Christians invading Muslim lands, which forgets that the Muslims violently took those lands from Christians in the first place.
On the other hand, no one complains that the battle of Normandy consisted of violent democracies attacking the lands of the Third Reich.
We could debate the reasoning that led the Western and Northern Europeans to militarily support the Byzantines until the heat death of the universe—but it’s not a particularly interesting discussion.
But the Crusades did spark a lot of in-group / out-group violence in Europe itself. De-tangling the Crusaders related pogroms from the base rate of pogroms in Europe is very difficult—but it is at least plausible that the increased religious fervor was a partial cause of the Crusader pogroms.
edit: To put it another way, I’d argue the conquest of traditionally Christian territories under the Rashidun and Ummayad Caliphs was due to religion in the same way the Spanish conquests in the Americas were—enabled and justified by religion, but motivated primarily by the desire for wealth and fame. I can go into further detail if anyone wants, though I doubt that is the case.
The crusades are often portrayed as violent Christians invading Muslim lands, which forgets that the Muslims violently took those lands from Christians in the first place.
Fair enough.
What about what the Conquistadores did in the Americas, or what the Inquisition did to heretics? Were they good things too?
The Conquisadores destroyed the human-sacrificing Aztecs. A better example for religion causing people to do bad things would be the Aztecs themselves.
The main suffering caused by the Spanish was through the unknowing introduction of European diseases, not because of their religion. I haven’t studied the issue of the invasion of the Inca but I haven’t heard it religiously motivated either.
My point remains that the actions of the Aztecs are a far better example of religion causing people to bad thing.
The conquest of the Inca was probably a mixed religious / imperialist motive on the part of the Spanish—as was basically all activity by the Spanish throughout the New World. But the occupation throughout Latin America also had a substantial religious component—including religious justification of the plantation system and harsh conversion practices.
In short, I am unsure how frequent the human sacrifice component of Aztec religion was performed. But it would need to be quite frequent to exceed the suffering caused by the Spanish governing practices in the New World—even excluding suffering caused by introduction of new disease.
Finally, I mostly agree with Eugine_Nier above that the brutally of warfare in that era cannot reasonably be counted as evidence of evil on par with the evil of human sacrifice or human slavery. For example, Medieval siege created massive suffering, but that’s just the cost of war in that era. Calling it evil is the same as calling war evil—a position I’m willing to consider, but acknowledge is quite extreme..
In short, I am unsure how frequent the human sacrifice component of Aztec religion was performed. But it would need to be quite frequent to exceed the suffering caused by the Spanish governing practices in the New World—even excluding suffering caused by introduction of new disease.
Unfortunately this is a controversial subject in academia—largely because it informs arguments like this one, but also because of sparse primary evidence. I’ve seen estimates as high as 250,000 sacrifices a year in Aztec-controlled territory, although more conservative figures put the number an order of magnitude lower; I’d probably be more inclined to accept the latter, given the relatively small population of the Aztec states of the time. Aztec use of prisoners of war as objects of sacrifice is pretty well documented (though there’s some controversy over the role of the so-called flower wars), but even with that input it seems to me that there’d be some basic sustainability concerns.
I’ve heard estimates even lower than that, but I’m not sure how credible they are.
The main suffering caused by the Spanish was through the unknowing introduction of European diseases, not because of their religion. I haven’t studied the issue of the invasion of the Inca but I haven’t heard it religiously motivated either.
From what I understand it would be more credible to blame said behavior on “capitalism” than “religion”. What with the invading to take the land and natural resources (gold, for example).
IIRC what little “statistics” and population estimates I’ve seen of native americans and aztecs in particular, a bunch of hotspots around the world today are doing much, much worse damage both per-capita and especially in terms of raw numbers.
Any number of them could reasonably be attributed to religion, but they could also be attributed to a bunch of other factors, which would be better described overall as “anti-epistemology” or just generalized stupidity.
Well, taking estimates from various of the top search engine hits and wikipedia, I arrive at an uppper 95%-confidence bound of 7% (rounded up) of the aztec population sacrificed systematically per year on average (during the peak of the empire, though, probably not sustained for more than a decade if even that), using the lower 300k total peak population and the (probably over-)estimated 20k number for annual human fatal sacrifices. The actual ratio was most likely much lower than this, but I wanted to challenge myself a bit.
By comparison, the ongoing war(s) in Afghanistan are estimated at a total three million deaths (upper bound also). This is over 34 years however, and the population estimates at the start were of 15 million, with current estimates around 30 million (this is all according to wikipedia data, though). This brings us to an average 0.5% deaths from war, rather than systematized sacrifice, which is arguably different and not quite the same as “religion causing people to do bad things”.
Similar data from similar sources on the Darfur case give a 1.1% figure, though I only used the pre-war 6-million population for this and the ratio would be higher if I had excluded the massive amount of people who fled or were displaced soon after that whole nightmare began.
So I’m running short on time here and won’t go analyzing other examples I had in mind, but in retrospect it seems I don’t quite have such clear-cut numbers here, and while I find the 20k/year estimate for aztec sacrifices ridiculously unlikely compared to the estimates for Afghanistan or Darfur, it would be reasonable to take my previous statement on per-capita with a large dose of salt. However, the “raw scale” point is certainly valid—even the impressive 20k/year figure pales in comparison to the 66k/year of Darfur or the 88k/year of Afghanistan, or some other figures that could be found with some more digging, and I’m quite sure that if we had better timeline data the total sum of the aztec sacrifices throughout their entire history wouldn’t even come close to the World Wars, for obvious reasons of scale.
And of course, for the concentrated killing-as-many-people-as-quickly-as-possible-by-doing-stupid thing, I now feel somehow obligated to point at them evil nuclear bombs. Because, y’know, they certainly win at the (deaths/second)*stupid formula.
Mass murder, theft, and enslavement don’t become okay just because contemporaneous plagues have a higher death toll. And yes, the former tended to justified in religious terms, for whatever you think that’s worth.
The argument I was responding was “The Spanish occupation caused more suffering”, therefore it bloody well is relevant to figure out how much of that suffering was the result of religious motivations and how much of it wasn’t.
If the argument is supposed to be about “mass murder, theft and enslavement” instead about “suffering”, then the argument should have said “mass murder, theft and enslavement” rather than “suffering”.
And nowhere do I see any place where I say or imply that mass murder, theft and enslavement are “okay”—I’d appreciate it if you keep the Principle of Charity in mind when you’re responding to people.
You’re right, you didn’t “imply mass murder, theft, and enslavement are okay”, you neglected to mention them entirely, despite them being relevant to your claim that “the actions of the Aztecs are a far better example of religion causing people to bad thing”, unlike disease. You made no argument against the claim that the suffering inflicted by the Spanish directly exceeded that caused by the Aztecs (#3 in TimS’s post). Instead you simply noted that disease caused “the main suffering”, and restated your previous position. What would you accept as a charitable interpretation of that?
I could also play the game where I claim you implied human sacrifice is okay, but that would be falling to your level. Hence: end of discussion on my part.
Well, they achieved that by exterminating them (well, they didn’t even have to try that hard—infectious diseases did much of the work for them—but still...) rather than by converting them, so the cure was worse than the disease.
the battle of Normandy consisted of violent democracies attacking the lands of the Third Reich.
Um… technically that’s a geographical impossibility. Once the democracies liberated French territory (violently taken by the Third Reich from France in the first place) and launched offensives beyond the “lawful” borders of Germany as drawn under the Treaty of Versailles, it wasn’t called the “Battle of Normandy” anymore. Normandy is a mid-sized region on the northwestern French coast. (Wikipedia article)
You are being extremely uncharitable to Eugine’s point. D-Day or “Battle of Normandy” is a reasonable shorthand for the Allied liberation of France and followup invasion of Nazi Germany.
That depends where you draw the line. The Third Reich considered Vichy France a client state, dependent on but legally separate from itself. The north and west of France, including Normandy, fell under German military occupation after 1940 (as did the rest of the country after 1942), but that ostensibly represented wartime defense needs rather than a permanent territorial claim.
Germany did administer some French lands as part of itself during the war, all in France’s northeast along the German border. There’s some indication that territorial expansion would have proceeded further had the Nazis won, but most of the Third Reich’s annexations took place east of Germany’s prewar territory.
The crusades are often portrayed as violent Christians invading Muslim lands, which forgets that the Muslims violently took those lands from Christians in the first place.
On the other hand, no one complains that the battle of Normandy consisted of violent democracies attacking the lands of the Third Reich.
There probably would be people complaining if D-Day had occurred four centuries after the fall of France.
We could debate the reasoning that led the Western and Northern Europeans to militarily support the Byzantines until the heat death of the universe—but it’s not a particularly interesting discussion.
But the Crusades did spark a lot of in-group / out-group violence in Europe itself. De-tangling the Crusaders related pogroms from the base rate of pogroms in Europe is very difficult—but it is at least plausible that the increased religious fervor was a partial cause of the Crusader pogroms.
If it’s a question of whether religion has a history of motivating violence, it’s worth considering why the Muslims took those lands to begin with.
I agree that’s a better example. One thing to notice is that the propensity of a religion to cause violence varies by religion.
Plunder and glory?
edit: To put it another way, I’d argue the conquest of traditionally Christian territories under the Rashidun and Ummayad Caliphs was due to religion in the same way the Spanish conquests in the Americas were—enabled and justified by religion, but motivated primarily by the desire for wealth and fame. I can go into further detail if anyone wants, though I doubt that is the case.
Fair enough.
What about what the Conquistadores did in the Americas, or what the Inquisition did to heretics? Were they good things too?
The Conquisadores destroyed the human-sacrificing Aztecs. A better example for religion causing people to do bad things would be the Aztecs themselves.
1) There no rule that says the Spanish and the Aztecs can’t both be wrong.
2) That doesn’t resolve the invasion of the Inca in South America
3) The Spanish occupation over the next few centuries probably caused more suffering than the Aztec (or possibly even the Crusades).
The main suffering caused by the Spanish was through the unknowing introduction of European diseases, not because of their religion. I haven’t studied the issue of the invasion of the Inca but I haven’t heard it religiously motivated either.
My point remains that the actions of the Aztecs are a far better example of religion causing people to bad thing.
The conquest of the Inca was probably a mixed religious / imperialist motive on the part of the Spanish—as was basically all activity by the Spanish throughout the New World. But the occupation throughout Latin America also had a substantial religious component—including religious justification of the plantation system and harsh conversion practices.
In short, I am unsure how frequent the human sacrifice component of Aztec religion was performed. But it would need to be quite frequent to exceed the suffering caused by the Spanish governing practices in the New World—even excluding suffering caused by introduction of new disease.
Finally, I mostly agree with Eugine_Nier above that the brutally of warfare in that era cannot reasonably be counted as evidence of evil on par with the evil of human sacrifice or human slavery. For example, Medieval siege created massive suffering, but that’s just the cost of war in that era. Calling it evil is the same as calling war evil—a position I’m willing to consider, but acknowledge is quite extreme..
Unfortunately this is a controversial subject in academia—largely because it informs arguments like this one, but also because of sparse primary evidence. I’ve seen estimates as high as 250,000 sacrifices a year in Aztec-controlled territory, although more conservative figures put the number an order of magnitude lower; I’d probably be more inclined to accept the latter, given the relatively small population of the Aztec states of the time. Aztec use of prisoners of war as objects of sacrifice is pretty well documented (though there’s some controversy over the role of the so-called flower wars), but even with that input it seems to me that there’d be some basic sustainability concerns.
I’ve heard estimates even lower than that, but I’m not sure how credible they are.
From what I understand it would be more credible to blame said behavior on “capitalism” than “religion”. What with the invading to take the land and natural resources (gold, for example).
IIRC what little “statistics” and population estimates I’ve seen of native americans and aztecs in particular, a bunch of hotspots around the world today are doing much, much worse damage both per-capita and especially in terms of raw numbers.
Any number of them could reasonably be attributed to religion, but they could also be attributed to a bunch of other factors, which would be better described overall as “anti-epistemology” or just generalized stupidity.
Any examples?
Well, taking estimates from various of the top search engine hits and wikipedia, I arrive at an uppper 95%-confidence bound of 7% (rounded up) of the aztec population sacrificed systematically per year on average (during the peak of the empire, though, probably not sustained for more than a decade if even that), using the lower 300k total peak population and the (probably over-)estimated 20k number for annual human fatal sacrifices. The actual ratio was most likely much lower than this, but I wanted to challenge myself a bit.
By comparison, the ongoing war(s) in Afghanistan are estimated at a total three million deaths (upper bound also). This is over 34 years however, and the population estimates at the start were of 15 million, with current estimates around 30 million (this is all according to wikipedia data, though). This brings us to an average 0.5% deaths from war, rather than systematized sacrifice, which is arguably different and not quite the same as “religion causing people to do bad things”.
Similar data from similar sources on the Darfur case give a 1.1% figure, though I only used the pre-war 6-million population for this and the ratio would be higher if I had excluded the massive amount of people who fled or were displaced soon after that whole nightmare began.
So I’m running short on time here and won’t go analyzing other examples I had in mind, but in retrospect it seems I don’t quite have such clear-cut numbers here, and while I find the 20k/year estimate for aztec sacrifices ridiculously unlikely compared to the estimates for Afghanistan or Darfur, it would be reasonable to take my previous statement on per-capita with a large dose of salt. However, the “raw scale” point is certainly valid—even the impressive 20k/year figure pales in comparison to the 66k/year of Darfur or the 88k/year of Afghanistan, or some other figures that could be found with some more digging, and I’m quite sure that if we had better timeline data the total sum of the aztec sacrifices throughout their entire history wouldn’t even come close to the World Wars, for obvious reasons of scale.
And of course, for the concentrated killing-as-many-people-as-quickly-as-possible-by-doing-stupid thing, I now feel somehow obligated to point at them evil nuclear bombs. Because, y’know, they certainly win at the (deaths/second)*stupid formula.
Mass murder, theft, and enslavement don’t become okay just because contemporaneous plagues have a higher death toll. And yes, the former tended to justified in religious terms, for whatever you think that’s worth.
The argument I was responding was “The Spanish occupation caused more suffering”, therefore it bloody well is relevant to figure out how much of that suffering was the result of religious motivations and how much of it wasn’t.
If the argument is supposed to be about “mass murder, theft and enslavement” instead about “suffering”, then the argument should have said “mass murder, theft and enslavement” rather than “suffering”.
And nowhere do I see any place where I say or imply that mass murder, theft and enslavement are “okay”—I’d appreciate it if you keep the Principle of Charity in mind when you’re responding to people.
You’re right, you didn’t “imply mass murder, theft, and enslavement are okay”, you neglected to mention them entirely, despite them being relevant to your claim that “the actions of the Aztecs are a far better example of religion causing people to bad thing”, unlike disease. You made no argument against the claim that the suffering inflicted by the Spanish directly exceeded that caused by the Aztecs (#3 in TimS’s post). Instead you simply noted that disease caused “the main suffering”, and restated your previous position. What would you accept as a charitable interpretation of that?
I could also play the game where I claim you implied human sacrifice is okay, but that would be falling to your level. Hence: end of discussion on my part.
Well, they achieved that by exterminating them (well, they didn’t even have to try that hard—infectious diseases did much of the work for them—but still...) rather than by converting them, so the cure was worse than the disease.
Um… technically that’s a geographical impossibility. Once the democracies liberated French territory (violently taken by the Third Reich from France in the first place) and launched offensives beyond the “lawful” borders of Germany as drawn under the Treaty of Versailles, it wasn’t called the “Battle of Normandy” anymore. Normandy is a mid-sized region on the northwestern French coast. (Wikipedia article)
You are being extremely uncharitable to Eugine’s point. D-Day or “Battle of Normandy” is a reasonable shorthand for the Allied liberation of France and followup invasion of Nazi Germany.
I know, I know. It’s just that I’m a pretty hardcore (read: obsessive) World War 2 geek :).
The Third Reich considered northern France a part of itself.
That depends where you draw the line. The Third Reich considered Vichy France a client state, dependent on but legally separate from itself. The north and west of France, including Normandy, fell under German military occupation after 1940 (as did the rest of the country after 1942), but that ostensibly represented wartime defense needs rather than a permanent territorial claim.
Germany did administer some French lands as part of itself during the war, all in France’s northeast along the German border. There’s some indication that territorial expansion would have proceeded further had the Nazis won, but most of the Third Reich’s annexations took place east of Germany’s prewar territory.