By: Andrew Holt, Ph.D. – (Article)

This helps clear up common misconceptions surrounding an older but still occasionally repeated myth. Special thanks to Dr. Andrew Holt for clarifying the source and context of the statistical data, helping to resolve some of the confusion on his blog.

Over the last few years I have noticed a relatively common online tactic in refuting the argument that “religion is the cause of most wars or violence” is to cite Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod Encyclopedia of Wars, a monumental three volume encyclopedia of ancient, medieval, and modern wars published in 2005. Online, one will find memes like the one below, that shows only a relatively small number of the 1,763 wars cataloged by Phillips and Axelrod, 123 to be precise, were considered “religious wars.”

The information provided in the meme above, floating around online, offers a powerful rebuttal to those claiming that religion is the cause of most wars (e.g. Sam Harris, Charles Kimball, etc…). If such a small percentage of wars were “religious,” then what is the basis for the claim that religion, even more so than political or socio-economic issues, is the cause of most wars? Those who make such an argument, after all, never seem to offer any hard data to support their claims. On the other hand, those who reject the notion that religion is the cause of most wars can quite handily point to the Encyclopedia of Wars (assuming one accepts the categorization of scholars Phillips and Axelrod) as statistical evidence that such critics of religious warfare are wrong.

It seems unlikely that Phillips and Axelrod, or the other scholars involved in the production of their encyclopedia, intended for their work to be used in quite this way. They only list their categorization of “religious wars” in the index of the third volume on pages 1484-1485, where one can find 121 entries listed under the topic. The issue does not otherwise seem to be remarked upon elsewhere. Moreover, if one were only to read the introduction or look through the various entries, each with a helpful outline of key facts at the start of each entry, they would not find any effort to categorize wars as religious or otherwise, and so one might be confused by the claims found online that Phillips and Axelrod “categorize” 123 wars as religious when, unless you refer to the index, you will not find such an effort. This seems to have caught at least one academic blogger unaware, as they falsely claim in a “Fact Check” that “There is no section of the book where Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod explicitly “categorize” wars as religious or non-religious.” In this case, the “Fact Checker” is wrong, as one only needs to check the index for the category.

I provide (unfortunately blurry) photographic evidence from page 1484-85 below for any doubters.

I hope the reader will forgive my crude penciled-in numbering of the various wars. I did this only because when I counted the wars listed under “religious wars” in the index I came up with a total of only 121, rather than the more commonly repeated figure of 123 (see the meme provided above). As a result, I worried I was miscounting and wanted to be as precise as possible, but my efforts still resulted in only 121 entries listed under “religious wars.” Wondering about the discrepancy, I traced the 123 figure back to the science fiction author and social commentator Theodore Beale, more commonly known as Vox Day, who seems to have been the first to make this argument based on his analysis of the Encyclopedia of Wars (see page 105 of his 2008 book The Irrational Atheist). He later noted in a blog post that the actual count from the Encyclopedia of Wars was 121, but that he felt the editors “made some errors,” resulting in his slightly revised figure of 123. Several others appear to have seized on Vox Day’s figure, including a rabbi writing for the Huffington Post and Bruce Sheiman, the author of An Atheist Defends Religion (2009), as neither author cites their source, but both use Vox Day’s unique figure of 123 “religious wars” (rather than Phillips and Axelrod’s figure of 121) out of 1,763 total wars.

*I might add that of the 121 entries listed under “religious wars” in the Encyclopedia of Wars, one of the entries deals with two wars, so a revised figure would be 122 wars, or only 6.9% of the wars considered by Phillips and Axelrod. (Article)

The Myth of Religion as the Cause of Most Wars

A further break down by John D. Hosler‘s republished by Andrew Holt. (Article)

“What, then, did Phillips and Axelrod find? Interestingly, of 1,763 wars they list only 121 entries fall under the heading “religious wars.” In one case, two wars are considered in a single entry (“Sixth and Seventh Wars of Religion”), bringing their total to 122.^[19] Thus, only 6.9 percent of the wars they considered are classified as religious wars.^[20] One presumes they see the remaining 93.1 percent as primarily wars that took shape due to other factors, such as geopolitics, economic rivalry, and ethnic divisions. One may certainly quibble over the omission of some wars from Phillips and Axelrod’s list, but it would take a lot of quibbling to get to the point where religious wars represent the majority (882 out of 1,763) of the wars they count and consider. They also list other categories of warfare that have higher totals than religion. Under the heading of “colonial wars,” they list 161 wars.^[21] After cross-referencing both lists, one finds that Phillips and Axelrod only list two wars in both the “colonial” and “religious” categories, suggesting that they have made every effort to categorize these wars based on their primary causes, as they interpret them, rather than secondary ones.[22] Consequently, based on the total numbers presented by Phillips and Axelrod in each category, one could argue that imperialist ideologies, regardless of the latent religiosity that occasionally colors such endeavors, have historically and collectively been the primary inspiration of more wars than explicitly religious ideologies…

With these rules in mind, White lists eleven atrocities from the one hundred that he classifies as “Religious Conflicts”: Taiping Rebellion, Thirty Years’ War, Mahdi’s Revolt, Crusades,[33] French Wars of Religion War in the Sudan Albigensian Crusade, Panthay Rebellion, Hui Rebellion, Partition of India, and Cromwell’s Invasion of Ireland. [34] Thus, according to White’s study, only 11 percent of the one hundred worst atrocities in history can be attributed, in some major part, to religion, with 89 percent primarily attributable to some other cause. Yet there are other atrocities in White’s book that seem to deserve to be grouped under a more general heading of religiously inspired atrocities, even if they do not meet his definition of “conflict.” These include the Roman gladiatorial games and Aztec human sacrifice, both of which White categorized separately under “Human Sacrifice.”^[35] If we add these two atrocities to the eleven listed under religious conflict, this would bring the total of the one hundred greatest atrocities, based on White’s death estimates, attributed primarily to religious motivations (a broader category than just “conflicts”) up to thirteen, or only 13 percent.

A final breakdown, depending on how one evaluates White’s work, is therefore as follows: 11/100 (or 11 percent) of the worst atrocities in history can be ascribed to “Religious Conflict,” and 13/100 (or 13 percent) of the worst atrocities in history can be ascribed to “Religious Conflict” or “Human Sacrifice.” Although these percentages are higher than Phillips and Axelrod’s more comprehensive findings (6.9 percent), none supports the claim that religion has been and remains the cause of most wars. Indeed, “Hegemonial War,” a category that White defines as similar countries fighting “over who’s number 1,” and “Failed State” conflicts, involving the collapse of a central government and the division of lands among warlords that results from the civil war that follows, individually account for more of the “worst atrocities” on his list than “Religious Conflict.”^[36]

The numbers, therefore, as provided by our three major studies to enumerate history’s most violent wars and conflicts, break down as follows: 6.9 percent of Phillips and Axelrod’s 1,763 historical wars were religious conflicts; 13 percent of White’s 100 worst atrocities in history can be ascribed to “Religious Conflict” or “Human Sacrifice”; and 14.2 percent of Pinker’s 21 worst atrocities in history were religiously inspired. Thus, our only existing quantitative analyses suggest that religious motivations inspire only a relatively small percentage of all conflicts. Moreover, there seem to be other causes or motivations that have inspired more wars or atrocities than religion. (Article)

Summary of Andrew Holt’s Point

• People often cite the Encyclopedia of Wars to argue that religion causes only a small percentage of wars.
• Holt confirms the data is legitimate but clarifies the actual count and its source.
• The encyclopedia lists 121 religious-war entries, not 123; the number 123 came from Vox Day’s adjustment.
• One entry covers two wars, making the corrected total 122 religious wars out of 1,763.
• Holt stresses that even with corrections, the conclusion is unchanged: religion is not the primary cause of most wars.
• Independent historians (Hosler, White, Pinker) reach the same conclusion using different data sets.
• Other causes geopolitics, imperialism, ethnicity, economics, and failed states far outweigh religion in causing wars.

Percentages From Each Study

1. Phillips & Axelrod – Encyclopedia of Wars

• Religious wars: 122
• Total wars: 1,763
• Percentage: 6.9%

2. Matthew White – The Great Big Book of Horrible Things

• Religious conflicts: 11/100 → 11%
• Religious conflicts + human sacrifice: 13/100 → 13%

3. Steven Pinker – The Better Angels of Our Nature

• Religiously inspired atrocities: 3/21
• Percentage: 14.2%

Overall Conclusion

• Across all major quantitative studies, religion accounts for between 6.9% and 14% of wars or atrocities.
• Therefore, 85-93% of human conflicts were driven by non-religious causes.

Source

Day, Vox. The Irrational Atheist: Dissecting the Unholy Trinity of Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens. BenBella Books, 2008, pp. 119–121.