Skip to main content
  1. Life
  2. Religion & Spirituality
  3. General Religion

Religious wars vs. Atheist wars

See also

Within various formats—from statistics to Atheist vs. Christian debates and much more in between—the issue of wars, and specifically religious wars, is considered.

To begin with you can read up as to how the fact is that the argument from religious violence is not cogent.

At the conclusion of this article, we will provide a list of all of the wars which the authors of the Encyclopedia of Wars (New York: Facts on File, 2005 AD) label as religious wars.

The authors are nine history professors who specifically conducted research for the text for a decade in order to chronicle 1,763 wars. The survey of wars covers a time span from 8000 BC to 2003 AD. From over 10,000 years of war 123 wars, which is 6.98 percent, are considered to have been religious wars. Moreover, half of those involved Islam.

Now, what of “Atheist Wars”? While, for various reasons, this would be difficult to categorize, one thing certain; the 20th century was, both, the most secular and the bloodiest in human history. Moreover, it was the bloodiest because it was the most secular.

Some claim that the historical fact of the correlation of secularism and body counts in the hundreds of millions is merely a coincidence based on that which actually allowed such high body counts which, they claim, was technological advancements. They claim that such advancement made committing such atrocities more efficient. However, this is clearly false as most of those hundreds of millions were not murdered by anything more technologically advanced than one bullet to the head (or, a machine gun at most), many others were simply starved to death which requires no technology whatsoever.

The fact is that it was the secular worldview(s) which caused people to be seen as nothing but expendable bio-organisms. The hundreds of millions were not killed whilst engaged in war with other nations but were, rather, murdered by their very own regimes. They were not soldiers but civilians and they were not facing an enemy from without but from within; from their own leaders.

Author, researcher, and Socratic gadfly, Vox Day notes (within the book The Irrational Atheist: Dissecting the Unholy Trinity of Dawkins, Harris, And Hitchens):

“Apparently it was just an amazing coincidence that every Communist of historical note publicly declared his atheism….there have been twenty-eight countries in world history that can be confirmed to have been ruled by regimes with avowed atheists at the helm…These twenty-eight historical regimes have been ruled by eighty-nine atheists, of whom more than half have engaged in democidal [a “term coined to describe government-instigated mass murder of its own citizens”] acts of the sort committed by Stalin and Mao….





And this is the point, this has been about “atheist leader[s]” who “murder a noticeable percentage of the population over which he rules” and they do so because of their worldview(s) which has them view other humans as either beneficial to their ends or useless/worthless eaters depleting resources in the struggle for life—mein kampf / my struggle.

Conversely, let us note that removing one single religion from the stats on all “religious wars,” removing Islam’s contribution, “means that all of the other religious faiths combined only account for 3.35 percent of humanity’s wars. The historical evidence is conclusive. Religion is not a primary cause of war”—indeed, it is not even anywhere near the realm of being close.

Before getting to the list of “religious wars” note the following resources:

Atheism and Communism

Atheist and Darwinist Communists

Adolf Hitler, Nazism and Communism - it does not seem that Hitler was an Atheist (see Was Hitler a Christian or an Atheist?) but he did play off of Darwinism, which brings us to the next resource.

Hitler's and Nazism's Darwinism and Use, Abuse and Misuse of Darwin

Curtis Gate notes, “Hitler often visited the Nietzsche museum in Weimar and published his veneration for the philosopher by posing for photographs of himself staring in rapture at the bust of the great man” (Friedrich Nietzsche, 2002 AD ed., p. 576) which brings us to the next resource.

The Faulty Conclusion and The Deicidal and Misanthropic Prophecies (specifically, the Deicidal and Misanthropic Prophecies section) - Friedrich Nietzsche predicted that those who live after what he proclaimed to be the death of God “will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto.”

For more on Nietzsche’s death of God statement, see The Mad Pagan Skeptic.

As per below, note a footnote by Vox Day:

“Ironically, the Seventh War of Religion was not a religious war. The Encyclopedia of Wars has this to say: ‘The Seventh War of Religion in 1580, also known as the ‘Lovers’ War’ had little to do with hostilities between the Catholics and Protestants. Instead fighting was instigated by the actions of Margaret, the promiscuous wife of Henry IV of Navarre.”

This is reminiscent of Richard Dawkins asking us to imagine, with John Lennon, no religion, etc. Well, even his fellow Atheist Michael Shermer took him to task in noting that governments often use religion as a façade to wage war over resources, etc. – for detail on this, see Imagine Utopia.

Ultimately, we do not have to “imagine no religion”; all we have to do is read the past century’s history and see what no religion is all about.

Here is the list of “religious wars”:

Albigensian Crusade

Almohad Conquest of Muslim Spain

Anglo-Scottish War (1559–1560)

Arab Conquest of Carthage

Aragonese-Castilian War

Aragonese-French War (1209–1213)

First Bearnese Revolt

Second Bearnese Revolt

Third Bearnese Revolt

First Bishop’s War

Second Bishop’s War

Raids of the Black Hundreds

Bohemian Civil War (1465–1471)

Bohemian Palatine War

War in Bosnia

Brabant Revolution

Byzantine-Muslim War (633–642)

Byzantine-Muslim War (645–656)

Byzantine-Muslim War (688–679)

Byzantine-Muslim War (698–718)

Byzantine-Muslim War (739)

Byzantine-Muslim War (741-752)

Byzantine-Muslim War (778-783)

Byzantine-Muslim War (797- 798)

Byzantine-Muslim War (803-809)

Byzantine-Muslim War (830-841)

Byzantine-Muslim War (851–863)

Byzantine-Muslim War (871–885)

Byzantine-Muslim War (960–976)

Byzantine-Muslim War (995–999)

Camisards’ Rebellion

Castilian Conquest of Toledo

Charlemagne’s Invasion of Northern Spain

Charlemagne’s War against the Saxons

Count’s War, Covenanters’ Rebellion (1666)

Covenanters’ Rebellion (1679)

Covenanters’ Rebellion (1685)

Crimean War

First Crusade

Second Crusade

Third Crusade

Fourth Crusade [Footnote reads “Just being generous here. See Chapter XII”]

Fifth Crusade

Sixth Crusade

Seventh Crusade

Eighth Crusade

Ninth Crusade

Crusader-Turkish Wars (1100–1146)

Crusader-Turkish Wars (1272–1291)

Danish-Estonian War

German Civil War (1077–1106)

Ghost Dance Uprising

Siege of Granada

First Iconoclastic War

Second Iconoclastic War

India-Pakistan Partition War

Irish Tithe War

Javanese invasion of Malacca

Great Java War

Kappel Wars

Khurramite’s Revolt

Lebanese Civil War

Wars of the Lombard League

Luccan-Florentine War

Holy Wars of the Mad Mullah

Maryland’s Religious War

Mecca-Medina War

Mexican Insurrections

War of the Monks

Mountain Meadows Massacre

Revolt of Muqanna

Crusade of Nicopolis

Padri War

Paulician War

Persian Civil War (1500–1503)

Portuguese-Moroccan War (1458–1471)

Portuguese-Moroccan War (1578)

Portuguese-Omani Wars in East Africa

Rajput Rebellion against Aurangzeb

Revolt in Ravenna

First War of Religion

Second War of Religion

Third War of Religion

Fourth War of Religion

Fifth War of Religion

Fifth War of Religion

Sixth War of Religion

Eighth War of Religion

Ninth War of Religion

Roman-Persian War (421–422)

Roman- Persian War (441)

Russo Turkish War (1877–1878)

First Sacred War

Second Sacred War

Third Sacred War

Saladin’s Holy War

Schmalkaldic War

Scottish Uprising against Mary of Guise

Serbo- Turkish War

Shimabara Revolt

War of the Sonderbund

Spanish Christian-Muslim War (912–928)

Spanish Christian-Muslim War (977–997)

Spanish Christian-Muslim War (1001–1031)

Spanish Christian-Muslim War (1172–1212)

Spanish Christian-Muslim War (1230–1248)

Spanish Christian- Muslim War (1481–1492)

Spanish Conquests in North Africa

Swedish War

Thirty Years War

Transylvania-Hapsburg War

Tukulor-French War

Turko-Persian Wars

United States War on Terror

Vellore Mutiny

Vjayanagar Wars

First Villmergen War

Second Villmergen War

Visigothic-Frankish War


Footnote [1]:



Vox Day’s book The Irrational Atheist: Dissecting the Unholy Trinity of Dawkins, Harris, And Hitchens is great on dealing with Atheists’ arguments, great on history, logic and statistics but poor on what is supposed to be Christian theology.



Find us on:

Main (repository) homepage






  • Tom Petty
    Today's Buzz
  • Gaylord Pickens
    Discover Gaylord-Pickens Oklahoma Heritage Museum dollar days
    6 Photos
  • Yoga poses
    Learn how to strengthen your core muscles with these yoga poses
    5 Photos
  • Baby boomer STD rates
    Sexually transmitted diseases: Baby boomers booming STD rates
    7 Photos
  • Open relationships
    5 Photos
  • Medical symptoms
    6 Photos