In his
letter, Larry Little asserts, “Religion has caused more suffering and harm than
all the world's diseases combined”[i].
While he provides four examples of purported religious-instituted harm,
only one has any statistics and he provides no disease examples for comparison.
In doing so,
he leaves his claim orphaned from any supporting evidence. So let me supply the facts to see how well the
Larry Little Hypothesis holds merit.
Religious-instituted Harm
Mr. Little
lists the “Crusades “, “Iraq”, “Israel vs. Palestinian/Hamas/Iran/Syria/Boko
Haram” and the “Catholic Inquisition” as his four religious-instituted harms.
Historian
Harold Lamb, author of “The Crusades: The
Flame”, estimates “in the Crusades a waste of hundreds of thousands of
lives.[ii]
Fox’s Book
of Martyrs estimates the “Catholic Inquisition” cost around 32,000 lives.[iii]
In the book, “The Spanish inquisition”,
Simon Lemieux writes, “It is false to make a distinction between the political
and religious roles of the Inquisition; for Spanish monarchs, as indeed for
most other rulers, political and religious unity went in tandem.”[iv] While this unity does not absolve the fact
that evil occurred in religion’s name, it also means that was not the only
factor as Mr. Little implies.
Mr. Little, himself,
sets the number of “violent deaths in the thousands” in an Iraq conflict that
NBC News says originated with Mohammed’s death and the struggle for his rightful
successor.[v] NBC states the “fighting now boils down
to a struggle for power, not theological doctrines”.[vi]
Gareth Stansfield, former United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq senior political adviser concurred. Stanfield stated: “The struggle was over the
successor to the prophet Muhammad, whether succession would go through the line
of the family of the prophet, through the sons of Ali—he was Muhammad's
son-in-law who was married to Fatima, his daughter—or whether it would rest
with the political successors to Muhammad, the caliphs.”[vii]
Opposition to Israel is, not strictly
theological but is, rooted in anti-Semitic calls for its annihilation. While these opponents of Israel all
hold to various interpretations of Islam, Article 28 of the Hamas charter explicitly
states, “Israel, by virtue of its being Jewish and of having a Jewish
population, defies Islam and the Muslims”.[viii]
The estimated death toll from conflicts with Israel is 65,000 since
1948.[ix]
Disease-instituted Harm
In contrast, PBS reports Influenza (1918)
killed 21 million.[x] BBC estimates the 14th century saw
Bubonic Plague kill 200 million.[xi]
ABC Science reports the death toll of “75 million” in just four years.[xii]
Mr. Little’s examples amount to
hundreds of thousands of deaths compared to221 million from just two
diseases. Clearly, even if his examples
were purely religious-instituted evil, the claim that religion causes more harm
than disease is clearly false! In fact, Discovery states: “infectious
diseases have … claimed higher casualties than wars”.[xiii]
Moreover, Mr. Little ignores whether those
who committed evils in religion’s name were following the religion’s
teaching. Greg Koukl provides this
analogy:
‘Imagine yourself a builder who sent out crews with detailed, written instructions
for their work. Instead of building,
though they destroyed. Would you be
responsible? That would depend on one
thing: the written instructions.”[xiv]
Nor does Mr. Little acknowledge the good
done in the name of religion. For example, Christianity originated modern
education as a way to place the Bible into the hands of the common man. All the Ivy League schools had Christian
origins. Missionaries in China, Africa,
and throughout the world taught people how to read and created written language
where none before existed.
Mother Teresa and others dedicate their lives
to helping the poorest. David Livingston
exposed the Arab slave trade. William
Wilberforce worked tireless to end the British slave trade. Abolitionists worked to end slavery in
America. The Red Cross and The Salvation
Army are a few organizations started upon a Christian foundation. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,
leader of the 1960s civil rights movement, said:
“"There must be
a recognition of the sacredness of human personality. Deeply rooted in
our political and religious heritage is the conviction that every man is an
heir to a legacy of dignity and worth. Our Hebraic-Christian tradition
refers to this inherent dignity of man in the Biblical term the image of God.”
“"This idea of the dignity and worth of human
personality is expressed eloquently and unequivocally in the Declaration of Independence. “All men,” it says, “are created equal.” They are endowed by their Creator with
certain inalienable rights, among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness.” Never has a sociopolitical
document proclaimed more profoundly and eloquently the sacredness of human
personality.”[xv]
Arbitrary vs. Non-Arbitrary Moral Standards
Beyond the factual errors and omission of
evidence that compromises his narrative, Mr. Little makes a fundamental error
in clear thinking. Human beings, not a supreme being, define morality in Mr.
Little’s worldview. As such, no standards can exist that apply to ALL men, at
ALL times, in ALL places regardless of whether they choose to follow the
standard or even acknowledge it. That
would require a non-arbitrary standard outside of man. That requires a Moral
Lawgiver that is outside man.
If that Moral Lawgiver does not exist then
Mr. Little correctly recognizes that men or cultures (aka groups of men) decide. However, if men or cultures decide, then on
what basis does one man or culture say their standard is more morally righteous
than the standard of another man or culture?
Yet, Mr. Little does exactly that. He hypocritically reaches across time and
cultures to impose his man-made standard upon others, condemning the moral
standard those cultures had defined for themselves.
In the end, Mr. Little betrays his own
view. He knows that men have done
egregious evils but he denies the very Supreme Being that must exist for his
condemnation to make sense.
All he has left is his dislike of
another’s actions.
[i]
Little, Larry, “Religion has caused suffering, harm”, The Columbian, July 25,
2014, http://www.columbian.com/news/2014/jul/25/letter-religion-has-caused-suffering-harm/.
Last accessed 7/28/2014. Mr. Little writes, “Religion has caused more suffering
and harm than all the world's diseases combined. Think Crusades — that is still
going on today. Think Iraq and several differing views leading to violent
deaths in the thousands. Think Israel vs. Palestinian/Hamas/Iran/Syria/Boko
Haram and their victims. The Catholic Inquisition led to burning witches at the
stake, led to the birth of Protestantism, led to the United States, which led
to "In God We Trust" on our money, which led to Hobby Lobby, which
now uses less of it.”
[ii]
Lamb, Harold, “The Crusades: The Flame of Islam”, Garden City Publishing Co.,
Inc., Garden City, NY, 1931, p. 465.
[iii]
Foxe, John, “Fox’s Book of Martyrs, The Project Gutenberg EBook, 2007,
p.88-109.
[iv]
Lemieux, Simon. “The Spanish Inquisition”. History Review [serial online]
December 2002;(44):44. Available from: History Reference Center, Ipswich, MA.
Last Accessed: 8/18/2014.
[v]
Elizabeth Chuck, “Conflict in Iraq Follows Centuries of Shiite-Sunni Mistrust,
NBC News, http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/iraq-turmoil/conflict-iraq-follows-centuries-shiite-sunni-mistrust-n130461.
Last accessed 7/28/2014.
According to Robin Wright, a joint fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Woodrow Wilson Center, “The original schism between Islam's two largest sect was not over religious doctrine. It was over political leadership.”
According to Robin Wright, a joint fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Woodrow Wilson Center, “The original schism between Islam's two largest sect was not over religious doctrine. It was over political leadership.”
[vi]
Ibid.
[vii] Conant, Eve, “Iraq Crisis: "Ancient
Hatreds Turning Into Modern Realities”, National Geographic, June 18,
2014. In addition to being and a former senior political adviser for the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), Gareth Stansfield is also
professor of Middle East politics at the U.K.'s University of Exeter.
Last Accessed: 8/17/2014.
[viii] Israel vs. Palestinian/Hamas/Iran/Syria/Boko Haram.
http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/www.thejerusalemfund.org/carryover/documents/charter.html?chocaid=397. Last accessed 8/17/2014.
[ix] Twentieth Century Atlas – Death Tolls." RCN D.C.
Metro. December 2005. http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat4.htm. Last accessed: 8/19/2014.
[x] “Worldwide
flu pandemic strikes 1918 - 1919”. A Science Odyssey: People and Discoveries.
“The influenza commonly called ‘Spanish flu’ killed more people than the guns
of World War I. Estimates put the worldwide death toll at 21,642,274. Some one
billion people were affected by the disease -- half of the total human
population. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/dm18fl.html
. Last accessed: 8/17/2018.
[xi] “Decoding the Black Death”. BBC News. Oct
3, 2001. Reporting from research published in the journal Nature. “The plague,
otherwise known as the Black Death, ravaged Europe and Asia between the 14th
and 17th Centuries. In the 14th Century alone it is estimated to have killed
200 million people.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/1576875.stm. Last Accessed: 8/17/2014.
[xii]
Dunham, Will. “Black death
'discriminated' between victims”. ABC/Reuters. Jan 29, 2008. “The plague of 1347 to 1351 was one
of the deadliest epidemics in human history, killing about 75 million people,
according to some estimates, including up to 50% of the European populations
affected.”
Last Accessed: 8/17/2014.
[xiii]
Lamb, Robert. “10 Worst Epidemics”. Discovery. Culture and History. “infectious
diseases have inflicted a great deal of damage throughout the centuries.
They've decimated whole populations, ended blood lines, claimed
higher casualties than wars and played pivotal roles in charting
the course of history.”
http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/curiosity/topics/10-worst-epidemics.htm
. Last accessed: 8/17/2014.
[xiv]
Koukl, Greg. “Christianity’s Real Record”. Clear Thinking Journal. Vol. 4 No.3.
Winter 1999. p. 9
[xv]
King, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The Ethical Demands of Integration. Dec
27, 1962.
No comments:
Post a Comment