Monotheism & Violence

Monotheism existed in ancient Greek and Hindu thought. Nothing wrong with it. But the manner in which it used to create the polarities (Angelic/Satanic), stereotyping ("idolators") in order to perpetuate their cults of hate is phenomenal.

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Monotheism & Violence
Updated 21 April 2007

Perceived Rates of Violence Associated with Religion

If Humanity does not change, it will destroy itself.
H G Wells

* Core Instigators: Sociopathic religious and secular extremists. Such people are quite able to hijack any hierarchical organization, such as a religion, business, or national government.
* Core Issues: On the causation side: Who's god is God? Who will rule the world? On the curative side: How can human population levels be limited to what the biosphere can safely sustain on both the local and world levels?
* Nature's Contribution: Will one society dictate to and subjugate all other societies in its fight for survival? This may be the way nature would have it, but is it right? (Our latest thinking here is that it is largely the Sociopath Next Door hijacking or co-opting hierarchical organizations and societies comprised predominently of Authoritarian Personalities at individual, community, state and world levels. For the American body politic, this involves an evolution from Manifest Destiny to American Interests -- a switch that is easy enough.)
* Core Solutions: These are manifold toward a goal where sufficient equality reigns within and among societies where both alienation and humiliation are relegated to the dust bin of history. The present world hegemon can play a vital role in getting this process started. Is it? Hardly; history will tell.


Terror in the Name of God by Jessica Stern is a must-read by anyone who cares about the future of humanity. Any scholar of terrorism will find new information in Ms. Stern's readable and engaging book. She obtained most of her data directly from the terrorists themselves. Ms. Stern provides deep insights into why Judaism, Christianity and Islam spawn so much violence. Ms Stern is not an armchair pundit; she traveled extensively to interview terrorists herself. By her own admission, she became a new person from the experience. Her findings are at once sobering, persuasive of the problem and encouraging -- with understanding of a problem can come control. Some excerpts follow:

"Writing this book has helped me to understand that religion is a kind of technology. It is terribly seductive in its ability to soothe and explain, but it is also dangerous. Convents such as the one I visited as a child may make good people better, but they don't necessarily make bad people good. They may even make bad people worse."

In discussing Elaine Pagels' "The Origins of Satan," Stern goes on:

"Pagels tells us that the evolving image of Satan [in the Hebrew Bible] served "to confirm for Christians their own identification with God and to demonize their opponents -- first other Jews, then pagans, and later dissident Christians called heretics." [And today the Christian Right often demonizes people who are gay for genetic reasons as well as Islam.] "The use of Satan to represent one's enemies lends to conflict a specific kind of moral and religious interpretation," she [Pagels] argues, "in which 'we' are God's people and 'they' are God's enemies, and ours as well.... Such moral interpretation of conflict has proven extraordinarily effective throughout Western history in consolidating the identity of Christian groups; the same history also shows that it can justify hatred, even mass slaughter,' she observes. [Referencing Martha Nussbaum, "Making Philosophy Matter to Politics."] This is the way religious terrorists view the world. ..."

Islam also suffers the Judeo-Christian disease. This is how religious extremists behave. Stern again:

"What is so deeply painful about terrorism is that our enemies, whom we see as evil, view themselves as saints and martyrs. As such, religious terrorism is more than a threat to national security. It is psychological and spiritual warfare, requiring a psychologically and spiritually informed response..."

"Participants in the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the kamikaze suicide-bombing raids all understood the appeal of purifying the world through murder.... This powerful yearning for bliss cannot be denied if we are to fight 'terror in the name of God,' the gravest danger we face today in a world of nuclear weaponry."

Stern could not be more right. We are sure that the Administration would agree -- publicly. Their actions, however, fully affirm they would rather "bring on" the danger than try to fix the fundamentals. In fact they have said as much on national media. Their political instincts are simply animalistic and authoritarian. Their goal is plutocratic dominance of the world through a new imperialism -- as indicated by their actions.

As long as followers believe, a leader can get away with anything, anything at all!

If we are serious about doing something about the roots of terror, there is plenty of fodder for further study on this website and resource references. Social conditions conducive to peace are well outlined by Varshney in his book, "Ethnic Conflict & Civil Life." It is a must-read for the statesperson, scholar, and citizen alike who are concerned with terror in our times. What Varshney has found is a way society can live with its Authoritarian self. His findings seem to explain the differences in violence between Washington DC and Honolulu. Tokyo, the world's largest metro area, is likewise very peaceful as large cities go. There, we think other factors are operating--population homogeneity and religious tolerance, and of course these features support Varhsney's thesis in that integration, because of Tokyo's homogeniety, is even more complete than in the Indian cities. Many, maybe most, Japanese are also tolerant; they believe in two or more religions! And it works. See Peaceful Cities for more discussion.

While Varshney provides a road map for reducing social strife in bimodal societies, Stern delves further into the religious (primarily monotheistic) causes of social strife.

Unless we understand terrorism at its most basic levels, we shall never control it.

For the statesman, what not to do is well illustrated in Barbara Tuchman's book "March of Folly" and by the current Bush trajectory of repeating Tuchman's historical theme. If there is a clear distinction between statesmanship and politics, it is in this very area.

Statesmen rise above the emotionally driven fray.

Politicians look upon every fray as Armageddon.

On Line Research

What immediately follows is the result of a couple of hours surfing the Internet for the purpose of finding what, if any, differences there are among "religions" in their association with violence, whether instigating or receiving. Either way a report of violence on a web site is considered a unit of violence for this study. We addressed the associations by employing three search engines using standard phrases. We hope our illustrations and discussion of the details will encourage others to do likewise in order to find answers for themselves.

We compared eight "religions" with one another, using three of the most efficient search engines on the Internet. Our protocol employed the word violence and five other related words in the format: "religion and word," for example: "Buddhism and terror." Each website [URL] returned was counted as an event. The assumption is that the frequency of these word associations relates to the violence a religion is actually involved in. The latter is newsworthy and written about. Our survey was done in November 2003.

The number of events per million per religion was calculated with the following ranking.

Table 1
Religions Ranked By Propensity toward Violence

Religion Events Adherents Millions Events / Million
Judaism 255 14 18.2
Islam 16653 1300 12.8
Christianity 2044 2000 1.02
Buddhism 319 360 0.89
Sikhism 10 23 0.43
Atheism 135 850 0.16
Hinduism 55 900 0.061
Confucianism 12 225 0.053

The above table becomes more meaningful when normalized to multiples of atheism violence as shown below.

Table 2
Religious Violence Ranking Normalized to Atheism.

Religion Multiples of Atheism
Judaism 113.8
Islam 80.0
Christianity 6.38
Buddhism 5.56
Sikhism 2.69
Atheism 1.00
Hinduism 0.381
Confucianism 0.331

That Christianity seems to get off lightly here is an artifact of our times. There is plenty in Christian history to be concerned about, the Crusades, the many European wars, the Inquisition, Witch Hunters, and in our most recent time, Bosnia, North Ireland, and Zionism--behind the scenes. Christians seem to have a short memory; their history is especially bloody and depraved. See Witch Hunts for a jolt to the memory.

The Buddhists are not violent but they can be violated. Buddhists are also peace activists and often get in harm's way. Atheism would have scored much higher in Stalin's time. Nevertheless, the history of organized terror has largely been the history of monotheism. It is certainly significant that reports of violence involving Jews were some 340 times those for Confucianism. The religious group that first and formally practiced terror as it is practiced today is Judaism, nearly two millennia ago.

How can anyone account for a religion allowing witch hunting, nay engage in it, for half a millennium?
What were lay societies doing about the extremists of their times?

Table 3
Monotheism Compared With Eastern Religions

Belief System Events Adherents-Millions Events / Million
Monotheism 18952 3314 5.70
Eastern Religions 396 1508 0.26
Atheism 135 850 0.16

Normalizing the rank order to Atheism = 1, shows monotheism to be some 35 or so multiples more violent than atheism.

Table 4
Religion and Atheism Relative Rank For Violence

Belief System Events / Million
Monotheism 35.6
Eastern Religions 1.6
Atheism 1.0

This ranking is a most disturbing result for the monotheists. Each monotheism is more interested in dominating the others than in doing something about the violence their extremist members initiate under one religious guise or another. Yet most monotheism adherents deeply believe theirs is a peaceful religion. Monotheism simply does not assure a peaceful society. Like democratization of totalitarian societies, reforms in the montheisms can only come from within. These are two sides of the same coin and change will not come quickly.

Why the disconnect? Could it be that Monotheism itself is an expression of the Authoritarian Personality? Could it be that most of us are in denial, ignorant of the facts, or both? If we could answer these questions, we would have an improved understanding of violence, terror and war and view of possible ways forward.

Like terror in the world, and Violence in American Cities, there is a wide range in the degrees by which "religions" are associated with violent activities in the Internet-accessible literature. Events reported for Judaism are over 340 times as frequent as for Confucianism. Atheism is below the middle of the pack, and this provides evidence that Atheists as a group are less violent than are monotheists. Monotheisms, as a group of religions, reported 5.7 events per million adherents while the four Eastern religions/philosophies averaged about 0.26 reported events per million. Monotheisms are some 22 fold more violent than the Eastern Religions and about 36 times more violent than atheism. Eighteen times as many web sites pair violent words with Judaism as with Christianity.

These results can hardly be all accidental. They reflect bad guys in the extremist wings. In this respect, monotheism is a lot like politics and business--a few extremists give the rest a bad name. A tiny fraction highjack the reins of power and cause havoc far beyond their numbers.

Basically, monotheists cannot agree on whose God is God and that issue is worth fighting over. Monotheism, in practice, is all about power in this world, not salvation in the next.

Organized secular violence also occurs; historically it is much more rare. Fundamentally, secular violence has the same roots as religious violence. Stalin's Communism was, in a practical sense, a religion, as was Hitler's Nazism. Ordinary people bought into each with all their hearts and souls.

These numbers find support and plausible explanation from several of our web pages on this site. See in particular:

Authoritarian personality -- This personality is encouraged by monotheism, which fits the high numbers above.

Global Issues -- deals with the Iraq crisis in an psycho-historic context, with Authoritarianism at the core.

Solutions -- Ashutosh Varshney found a marvelous insight into the causes of social violence between Hindus and Muslims. Social integration at all levels in society substantially reduces the incidence of violent social unrest. The Eastern Religions benefit from being more accepting than the monotheisms.

Zionism -- A movement that led to the confrontation in Palestine that is still going on. Zionists and Palestinians are both frequent terror perpetrators and victims; hence the high numbers observed for Judaism and Islam should be no surprise.

We think the Authoritarian Personality, when extreme, has much to do with both religion and violence. This is as much a social issue as it is psychological. The potential for terrorism is genetic and intrinsic. Any radicalizing social or psychological event brings an individual's potential for terrorism into reality. From there, terror becomes a simple matter of wherewithal.

Search Results

Date: 5 Nov 2003

Search Format Used: ["religion and 'term'"]

Search Example Used: "Buddhism and terror"

Events = Number Sites returning data.

Religious Adherents Resource: www.adherents.com

* Survey details of three leading search engines.
* Paired search-words appear in the headings and left column.
* Incidences appear in the intersections.


Table 5
Incidence of Violence by Religion

ALTAVISTA Buddhism Christianity Islam Judaism
Terror 1 1 176 2
Terrorism 2 17 2112 0
Violence 29 125 413 13
War
24
277 470 10
Murder
0
2 3 0
Genocide 0 8 2 8
Sub Tot 56 430 3176 33
GOOGLE Buddhism Christianity Islam Judaism
Terror 1 1 616 1
Terrorism 2 32 5620 3
Violence 78 288 979 27
War 99 624 1160 16
Murder 0 5 9 2
Genocide 0 20 7 30
Sub Tot 180 970 8391 79
TEOMA Buddhism Christianity Islam Judaism
Terror 2 1 249 1
Terrorism 0 28 3350 10
Violence 37 162 679 24
War 44 420 798 77
Murder 0 5 7 3
Genocide 0 28 3 28
Sub Tot 83 644 5086 143
Total Events 319 2044 16653 255
Adherents-millions 360 2000 1300 14
Events / million 0.89 1.02 12.81 18.21

Table 6
Incidence of Violence by Religion

ALTAVISTA Hinduism Atheism Confucianism Sikhism
Terror 2 0 0 0
Terrorism 0 6 0 2
Violence 6 4 0 0
War 6 10 3 0
Murder 0 2 0 0
Genocide 0 2 0 0
Sub Tot 14 24 3 2
GOOGLE Hinduism Atheism Confucianism Sikhism
Terror 3 1 0 0
Terrorism 3 9 0 4
Violence 11 10 0 0
War 12 38 6 1
Murder 0 8 0 0
Genocide 0 2 0 0
Sub Tot 29 68 6 5
TEOMA Hinduism Atheism Confucianism Sikhism
Terror 1 0 0 0
Terrorism 1 8 0 3
Violence 10 10 0 0
War 9 19 3 0
Murder 0 6 0 0
Genocide 0 0 0 0
Sub Tot 12