Are religious people more violent than nonreligious people?

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Some believe that religion is a major cause of violence worldwide.

Based on UN data, there’s a small positive linear correlation between homicide rates and religion by country: r = 0.25:

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(It was easier for me to find “irreligion” data than try to look for data on all religions. The coefficient was actually -0.25 for irreligion, I just removed the double negative. Venezuela is cut off at 56 homicides per 100,000 citizens and 15% irreligious.) List of countries by irreligion - Wikipedia, List of countries by intentional homicide rate - Wikipedia

But I think arguing that religion causes this is too big of a jump. Here’s my case: poverty correlates strongly with both religion and violence. So if religion causes violence, you would expect that religion would correlate even more strongly with violence than poverty, considering religious people are already poor. But the opposite happens: the correlation between poverty and violence weakens as religion increases. Religious poor people are less violent than secular poor people. To me this is a good indication that the 0.25 correlation is just related to poverty, not religion itself.

In the same way, although there’s a positive correlation between drowning deaths and ice cream sales by time of year, the two are unrelated: the correlation is a result of the strong relationship both drowning and ice cream have with hot seasons.

There are other kind of evils than homicide—I used homicide both because it’s the most serious violent act and because the correlation between religion and crime in general is negative: Statistical correlations of criminal behaviour - Wikipedia. Filtering for homicides puts religion in a worse light; this way I can’t be accused of choosing a crime that fits my narrative.

What do you guys think–if you agree, should I make this argument differently? If you disagree or you’re skeptical please share!
 
Thanks–I agree! But playing devil’s advocate: I think some atheists would argue that that violence was politically motivated; it wasn’t caused by lack of religion. Whereas certain areas of the world are plagued by explicitly religious violence.
 
Cantankersaurus said:
Thanks–I agree! But playing devil’s advocate: I think some atheists would argue that that violence was politically motivated; it wasn’t caused by lack of religion. Whereas certain areas of the world are plagued by explicitly religious violence.
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I’d say trying to have control over other people engenders violence. Some use religion, some think religion gets in the way.
 
“…pretty violent.” You’re too charitable.

Don’t forget the Axis Powers who caused millions to die too.

And today is 34 years since the Chernobyl disaster.

Vichnaya pamyat.
 
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TBH that chart isn’t worth anything. If someone wants to find a causative effect of religion on violence then they have to look at each violent circumstance.

Obvious examples would be ISIS terrorism, and Protestant-Catholic clashes in UK. Just throwing up a chart is completely meaningless.

As for “politically” motivated mass killings from communist regimes…atheism is part and parcel of every communist regime that exterminated massive amounts of people for “the greater good”. To deny this would be to deny reality. One could just as easily argue that ISIS, or the Nazi party, killed for political reasons. It’s just a way to avoid the reality.
 
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Well I think it should be positioned differently.
I don’t think that religious people are more violent than non religious. That is too take off. Everyone can be terrifyingly violent if they release their brakes…

But I think that there have always been more violence over religious questions than over non-religious.
In whole human history there was many wars and violence over religion questions.
In couple last centuries look at killings catholics by protestants in time of reformation in England (for example st. Thomas More and st. John Fisher) and vice versa, look at war in Ireland and Northern Ireland in last century (again protestants vs catholics, left wing vs neo-fascists vs billion other streams), look at communism and totalitarian regimes.
Also look at Hindu agression and murders of christians in India, genocide in Srebrenica over muslims, look at islamism.
List is endless. Motives of those murders are mostly hate, greed, pride and arrogance and that is not only religious thing.

Among other things in basically every religion there are people who have disordered religious views and even in that case I wouldn’t say that religious people are more violent but that there is many those who enter religious movement because of their disorders (who are oriented in that way) and then kill others.

By the way fact is that many things go under radar, like abortions which are counted in millions every year and noone takes that as some argument in number of deaths in world and their causes, especially not UN.
Abortions are leading cause of death (murders) in world now.

In the end I take UN reports with big grain of salt in everything, anything by them and connected to them.
I don’t think they are truthful.
 
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I also want to point out, even if a good chunk of them aren’t practicing, the majority of the world’s population still profess to hold a belief in some sort of religion. It could be there just happen to be more religious people than non-religious people.
 
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adamhovey1988 said:
I also want to point out, even if a good chunk of them aren’t practicing, the majority of the world’s population still profess to hold a belief in some sort of religion. It could be there just happen to be more religious people than non-religious people.
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Well, and let’s admit it: governmental philosophies that have tried to make stamping out religion into a selling point have become not just more violent but extremely brutal. Power that operates on the presumption that there is no Supreme Being eventually finds human beings trying to put themselves into that position. Whether with religion or without it, when people try to pretend they can be supreme beings, that they are gods or what they think is what God thinks and what God thinks is that those people need to force others to do their will or else, that is when the real brutality and oppression follows.

It is all about people thinking it is their place to force others given free will to cede their wills not to God but to the people who want to be totally in charge. Telling people what God has revealed is one thing. Threatening to kill them if they don’t conform to the interpretation of the powerful is another thing.
 
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Cantankersaurus said:
Thanks–I agree! But playing devil’s advocate: I think some atheists would argue that that violence was politically motivated; it wasn’t caused by lack of religion. Whereas certain areas of the world are plagued by explicitly religious violence.
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Cantankersaurus said:
Thanks–I agree! But playing devil’s advocate: I think some atheists would argue that that violence was politically motivated; it wasn’t caused by lack of religion. Whereas certain areas of the world are plagued by explicitly religious violence.
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  1. “Religious violence” is always political when you look closer. Tyrants always find excuses for their violence. Whether it is religion, race, ethnicity, nationality, class, etc. Tyrants always use an “us vs them” argument.
  2. I don’t think religion causes homicides. I think what religion (eps Christian) religion does in modern times is that modern, religious people are more merciful to criminals. Nations like China and other Communist nations have less crime because the punishments are worse. Also, tyrants don’t think twice about punishing a criminals’ loved ones too.
  • For example: In India (a Hindu nation) if a suicide bomber blows something up, the family is arrested & sometimes killed. They do that eliminate the “martyr” suicide bomber who does it to give his family money. A Christian nation is not going to do that.
So I would argue that religion doesn’t cause homicide rates to rise. But it does (in the modern world) cause criminal punishments to be more merciful, which eliminates SOME of the fear of being caught.
 
My opinion - trying to be objective as possible and as somebody who once believed that religion was harmful:

I’m a devout Catholic but religion is indeed partially driven by fear and a desire to be comforted. This means people in poorer and harsher countries are prone to be more religious than people in safer and more comfortable environments. Poor and more harsh environments also means the kind of environment that drives more violent behavior and where more people resort to violent behavior, therefore countries that are more religious will also probably be more violent.

As far as religion itself making people violent: there was a fade in early 20th century psychology where this was widely believed. Not so much out of any solid data but more out of ideological zealotry against religion. In modern psychology, including those who are completely secular, this view has largely sputtered out because nowadays it’s harder to deny that religion/spirituality is very powerful for getting people out of low points.

I have a harder time reconciling myself with Islam although most Muslims aren’t orthodox when it comes to following their original teachings. Unfortunately I do believe countries where Islam is the predominate religion are more prone to war or civil war.
 
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First, we must define “religion” and secondly, we must examine the root causes of regional or systemic violence.

The 20th century was, by far, the bloodiest in human history. The European arena was violated and destroyed by two different but similar systems - both of which rejected either God, or service to Him, and which placed leader and secular state as supreme. In a way they were religious: the religion of self or of oligarchy.

Which describes also the origins of violence in heaven and the subsequent violence on earth during and after the fall.

Yet, it remains a broad-brushing of the almost indefinable category of religion, placing blame so as to obviate the need for a personal religion.
 
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The whole argument is on shaky grounds. In countries where there is separation of Church and state (the West), the cause of violence cannot be attributed to religion.
 
Jesus said to love our enemy and do good to those who hate us.
He needed to bring the Gospel because in our broken humanity we do the opposite. When people follow the gospel, orphans and widows are taken care of, hospitals are built for the sick, schools are built to educate the young. Looking at creation, we see order and complexity and beauty.

The Cardinal virtues…
Four virtues play a pivotal role and accordingly are called “cardinal”; all the others are grouped around them. They are: prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. "If anyone loves righteousness, [Wisdom’s] labors are virtues; for she teaches temperance and prudence, justice, and courage."64 These virtues are praised under other names in many passages of Scripture.
https://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s1c1a7.htm
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The 7 deadly sins…
Originating in Christian theology, the seven deadly sins are pride, envy, gluttony, greed, lust, sloth, and wrath. Pride is sometimes referred to as vanity or vainglory , greed as avarice or covetousness , and wrath as anger . Gluttony covers self-indulgent excess more generally, including drunkenness.
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No one asks the question of people being more violet because of the 7 deadly sins. Rather they ask the question under this vague word of religion which triggers an image in our brain from what we see on tv in news coverage around the world.

The sisters who came to my city when it was a wilderness and built a hospital, with a very modest cross at the top of it is hardly anything to broadcast over the country.
 
Abortion has killed 1.5 billion and counting completely innocent souls. Are religions teaching people to do it?
 
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I would say at least that amount (1.5) has died at the hands of religious people over the history of man thinking they were doing Gods will or that God wanted it.
 
Deus vult! ☠️

Religion gives us additional reasons to be violent but I think the threat comes from radical, unquestioning devotion to any ideology - religious or secular.
 
When we looks at homicide rates, the circunstances to look at is not only the strenght of religion in the country. Many more things are to consider, such as poverty rates, unemployment police, corruption, traffic, gangs, strenght of families…

There are less developped countries that are both more religious and more violent than some, but we cannot conclude that religion = violence.

But poverty and the conscience that we are vulnerable to death can be linked to an increase of religious feeling. Not the reverse.
 
Do you have a citation or is that just a feeling? But let’s assume you’re right. That’s all of human history vs. <100 yrs. Non-religion for the win?
 
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