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ValleyTarotAstrology

The [estimate](https://www.prb.org/articles/how-many-people-have-ever-lived-on-earth/) is that around 117 billion people have lived on earth. Todays population is about 7% of all humans who have ever lived. Estimations show around 1 bllion people to 1.5 billion people have died in wars. People underestimate the size of a billion. 100 people a day would need to die in war for 27397.26 years to get to one billion people. The point here is wars have factored a blip on the map and wars for religion directly have resulted in minimal actual death compared to say ww2 or modern conflicts which have not been religious in nature. During most the religious wars and those being around the middle ages the worlds population was very small. Estimates for the worlds population are half a billion or even much less at this time. A very small % of that population were killed by the actual religious war in the overall scheme of things.


Kseniya_ns

If it wasn't about religion people would have war for other reasons. And the vast majority of "religous war" had other probably more important reasons anyway.


Zealousideal-Bet7373

As an atheist, I couldn’t agree more. This is a major talking point in the atheist communities and it is just so deeply misinformed. Religion is better viewed as a kind of language (imo); conflict is expressed through the semiotics available (often rel.), which ‘skews’ or misrepresents the substance - which tend to be socio-economic and spatial and thus existential. This is why a majority of the atheist “activist” community is so tiring. Pure reaction - zero analytical tools for interpreting and reading history and culture. Oxymoronically holier than thou.


LiteralLuciferian

They would. That’s an obvious fact, my apologies if my question made the assumption that I believe religion is the only cause of war. That is not the case. Resources, territory, society and etc can be obvious triggers of war. I was merely asking what our world would look like if we took religious extremism out of our society as a hypothetical


nadivofgoshen

I think that in most religious wars, religion was not the cause of their outbreak, but always was the **incentive** that moved the parties to take action.


LiteralLuciferian

True, the same could be said about territory. Hey man, you pissed me off, here’s my fist, and yeah I’ll take that. Like it


Taninsam_Ama

Id imagine it would be similar to what it already is. Humans are great at killing each other en masse


LiteralLuciferian

So you think the religious fervor would be replaced outright by something else or a combination of things? Like more of a testament to humans as a whole?


Taninsam_Ama

If its not religion it’ll be something else. Religion is just one of the justifications people use. You could remove all the current justifications people use and people will find new ones.


dont_trust_typedword

It would be like the times of Noah, so however many were alive then


LiteralLuciferian

How so? Humans breeding wouldn’t plateau to the point where we’d have the same population 10,000 years later


dont_trust_typedword

It’s because people would kill each other at such a high rate that the death rate would bypass the birth rate. You’re right, breeding wouldn’t plateau, it would be a landslide downward since no children would survive. There’s a reason why God had to save the only righteous person during the time of Noah. If He didn’t, all of humanity would have just killed each other to extinction 


LiteralLuciferian

How so? Humans breeding wouldn’t plateau to the point where we’d have the same population 10,000 years lter


mysticoscrown

How were those times though?


ShiningRaion

If it wasn't for religion we would have found some kind of substitute, much as people have done in the past. Cults of personality and such.


LiteralLuciferian

There is a lot of defense put up in response. I’m not trying to be accusatory, religion brings so much to our culture and upbringing as a creation of one or more gods, my curiosity stems more from the aggressive tactics


ShiningRaion

That's a question for universal religions, those who are spread by and justified through force


distillenger

Didn't the Buddhists and Shintos kill each other in Japan?


ShiningRaion

It's a bit complicated, but the short answer is "yes" in any case, Buddhism is a universal religion that has been spread by force. Shinto generally isn't. It was briefly used as a political manipulation tool between the Meiji era and the end of the Pacific War in China and Korea, but outside of that and the Haibutsu Kishaku movement, it was almost entirely devoid of religious violence.


BayonetTrenchFighter

Probably about the same


Practical_Cheek_3102

Learn about carrying capacity. We can only have so many people on the earth at industrial tech levels before nature is affected. Also learn about overshoot.


distillenger

Billions? That sounds astronomically high. World War II was the deadliest war in all of history, and only 80 million people died.


mysticoscrown

But there are many wars (or conflicts ) between different groups from the start of humanity . Some claim that there might have been dozens (or even hundreds) of thousands of wars. Based on estimates there have been killed between 150 million to one billion people in wars.