Subject: Christians, Atheists and Body Counts From: chrispi@lgcy.com (Chris Piantes) Date: 1997/12/17 Message-ID: <882337886.1386545154@dejanews.com> Newsgroups: alt.atheism
I'm sure you've heard fundies berate you for being an atheist, and liking you to Josef Stalin or Mao Tse Tung, who as we all know are evil atheists who are going to hell and all that. But the deaths caused *in the name of Christianity* are by far more numerous.
Case One: Justinian "The Great." This Byzantine arse is directly responsible for the Dark Ages! He alone set history back a full millenium by completely destroying Greek humanism. And Belasarius' quelling the Nika Riot (by killing fifty thousand rioters who were watching the horse races at the Hippodrome) was just the tip of the iceberg. In true Byzantine fashion he invited the Huns into the Empire to ostensibly run off the Goths, but the Huns turned against the Romans instead, killing hundreds of thousands or even millions--with the aid and comfort of Belisarius. This also is just the beginning of the damage. After Justinian had to fight the Huns, who attacked the Imperial City of Constantinople, he turned to his monumental work, Corpus Juris Civilis, which levied penalties against pagans, Jews, Goths, atheists, homosexuals, astrologers and anyone else who did not fit into the strict Greek Orthodoxy. And enforce it he did--he practically destroyed Egypt and its nearly ten million people, and certainly did not spare Italy, the Balkans or Anatolia (now Turkey.) His purges against the Monophysites, Arians (not Aryans,) and other "heretics" would make even Mao and Stalin bleach white, and not until Hitler would the Jews lose so many of their members. Procopius could not count the massive carnage of this orthodoxy by the sword but approximated it between fifty and a hundred million--probably half of all Europeans and northern Africans lost their lives, a death toll equalled only by the Black Plague. And what was left of Greco-Roman culture after the burning of the Library at Alexandria was soon nearly forgotten entirely in Christendom.
Case Two: Francisco Pizarro. The Spanish conquistador was responsible for destroying the high empire of the Inca. When Columbus discovered the New World, it touched off a controversy in the Catholic Church: Were the New Worlders demons? angels? naifs? Did they have souls? Could they be converted? Gold was incidental, if Spain seized the Inca gold, the Church could tithe it (and gain more through indulgences.) There was no controversy in this regard: God created the world, and His followers could take it for the asking. And so Seņor Pizarro, benighted with conquering the New World and converting its inhabitants to Christ, destroyed an entire civlization by the sword, blunderbuss and smallpox. Not even Stalin or Mao can claim that. Ironically, the Inca did not have a writing system; they kept track of important information with quipus, intricate knotted rope necklaces. Pizarro, of course, believed them to be demonic, and ordered them destroyed. Not since the Library of Alexandria has this much information been burned.
And that's not all. I would present the case of the Chinese missionary who incited the Boxer Revolution (which killed more Chinese than the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution btw) but I don't know the name, and I'm not well versed in Chinese history. (It's not Chiang Kai Shek) Anybody got more info?
In any case, I don't know of any atheist who has destroyed an entire civilization.
Chris Piantes