Ask A Genius 746: Voltaire Quote
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2022/05/12
[Recording Start]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: “Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd, and bloody religion that has ever infected the world.” – Voltaire
Rick Rosner: Well, Christianity, I don’t know how you figure, like we’re in the middle of a Covid pandemic and people argue about whether people have died with Covid or from Covid. People who argue that are Covid denying assholes. But there has been a little work done trying to figure out when somebody dies of Covid, is that what they really died of and it’s usually “Yeah, they died of Covid, if they didn’t get Covid, yeah they might have other conditions but they’d still be alive” So that’s a fake issue but a real issue would be how many people has Christianity killed and is it more than Christianity is saved.
There are good things and bad things about Christianity and lots of wars have been fought around Christianity but the biggest bloodiest ones I’d say were like a thousand years ago, 800 years ago, and 600 years ago. The Crusades; there weren’t nearly as many people in the world, less than half a billion people, so the number of people who were available to be killed in these giant wars weren’t more than 16 times as many people on earth now as during the Crusades. So yeah, they were fucking bloody but the overall numerical death toll don’t compare to World War I and II.
But then you look at other shit that Christianity’s done, that there are people who died from illegal abortions and shit like that and people made miserable, I don’t know what else. How many Catholics are there?
Jacobsen: 1.34 billion.
Rosner: And so there are like 1.8 billion Muslims, I think.
Jacobsen: It depends on whether Sunni or Shia.
Rosner: Well, I’ll throw them all into the hopper there.
Jacobsen: Then over two billion Christians and probably a little over two billion Muslims.
Rosner: All right, so in terms of sheer numbers, I’m not sure Voltaire is correct. Muslims get involved in some bloody shit too. Bloody shit in the last 200 years might kill more people than bloody shit a thousand years ago. I don’t think you can argue that World War One and World War II were religious wars or that Stalin’s purge of killing 40 billion of his people didn’t have anything to do… Stalin killed a bunch of Christians I’m sure but it wasn’t Christians killing people. And then Mao killing 50 billion of his people, that wasn’t Christians or Muslims killing people.
There have been bloody things happening in the past 150 years that haven’t been primarily Muslim or Christians killing people. I think somebody needs to do a numerical analysis on the Voltaire quote. Certainly, there’s a decent death toll for associated with Christians imposing Christianity but I’d say other people imposing other shit has killed more people than Christianity.
Addendum, I mean the thing that’s killed everybody is biology/evolution because of the way we evolved, we’re all expendable and nobody gets to not die and that’s a death toll of close to 110 billion humans along with all animals except for some weird animals like some amoebas which are effectively immortal but who cares… amoebas don’t have brains. So, I mean if you want to get mad at something, get mad at our natural biological history.
[Recording End]
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