Many well educated apologists of religion recognize that it is useless to deny the terrible things that creeds have done through the centuries. Being history so categorical on this matter, they thus conclude that the best policy to adopt is to point the finger at those who have done worse.

That is obviously a lame argument because religions, which are supposedly the representatives of God, are supposed to be good and cause no harm. Therefore, an argument which claims that other systems of belief have done worse things is one without a platform. Nevertheless, it is worth analyzing such a position to see if it can at least hold the line on some aspects.

These apologists argue that the twentieth century was a period of secular regimes and those regimes were terribly murderous. That period was indeed characterized by the ascent of not just secular but even atheist systems, such as Communism and Nazism, and those regimes ended up being extremely brutal. Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and Pol Pot were effectively responsible for an inordinate number of deaths. The lawyers of religion thus sustain that those secularists killed more people than the Inquisition, the Crusades, and the inter-confessional conflicts of Europe.

That argument is at first glance a strong one because it points at the vast amount of people that were slaughtered by secular regimes, putting the figure at more than 200 million while the religious wars of the past were not so costly in human lives.

The problem with that argument is that it has a biased Western scope and thus focuses just on the crimes committed by the Christian religion. The amount of people that were murdered by Mohammed and his armies as he forcefully imposed his new religion on the Arabian Peninsula in the seventh century and the many more that his followers slaughtered in the coming centuries, is huge. The same goes with the other large religions. War was regularly undertaken to convert people into Hinduism, Buddhism, and other creeds. One must not leave aside the thousands of religions that existed prior to the apparition of the large ones of today, for those were just as murderous in their efforts to convert those who did not believe in their ideas.

When all those figures get added up, it is certain that the number is larger and probably exponentially larger than the deaths caused by the secular regimes of the twentieth century. According to demographers, the amount of people that have lived on this world since the apparition of the human specie has been of about eighty billion. An objective analysis thus, takes into account all of those people and all of that time. It therefore considers the 100,000 years of human history and not just the last two thousand years.

However, even if it could still be argued that the wars of the twentieth century brought more harm to humanity than religious wars, there is still another problem.

Nominal figures have the capacity to impress, for large numbers are always eye-catching. However, they have no scientific worthiness unless they are measured in a proportionate scale. The fact is that the size of the world population has grown massively in the past two centuries. When Jesus Christ dwelled the world for example, the total world population was of just 200 million, but by the year 2000 it was of more than six billion. That last is a figure thirty times larger than the first.

Therefore, the only thing worth comparing is the share of the population that was killed by the two types of wars. It must be emphasized that such an approach is standard policy in all scientific disciplines and not just in demographics.

If for example, the level of wealth between nations wants to be compared, no economist will liken the gross domestic product of the U.S. with that of Luxembourg because the first country has more than 300 million people and the second only half a million. Analyzed like that, it seems as if the U.S. is massively richer. In order to make sensible comparisons, what must be analyzed is gross domestic product in per capita terms. Under those terms, what gets measured is the average personal wealth of each American and each Luxembourger, and under those circumstances the wealthier ones are the citizens of Luxembourg.

When one looks at the percentages of those slaughtered by religious wars and by secular wars, it becomes evident that the most murderous were the first. During the sixteenth and seventeenth century for example, there were more than a dozen inter-confessional wars between Catholics and Protestants. Although all were terrible bloody, the Thirty Years War in Germany was the most atrocious. From 1618 to 1648, it is estimated that about 36% of the population of that country perished as a direct or indirect result of that conflict. The Second World War on the other hand, was only responsible for killing 8% of Germany's population and the First World War just killed 5%.

The Thirty Years War was just one among thousands of religious wars that have taken place throughout the whole of history and just that single one easily outstripped the two worst secular wars of the twentieth century. So do the math and conclude which has caused the most harm to humanity.

However, the above is not the best argument to demonstrate the evilness of religions. There is a better one.