Loco you keep trying to put a positive spin on this stuff. Wish you would post up some stats of your claims... because the fact is that up until very recently most people living in the christian world used the word of God in every facet of their lives. Forget about all the wars fought in the name of God. Much suffering has been handed down through the centuries due to the mis-interpretations, both willful and not, of his word. Education is a thing of recent years. Good thing you weren't an illegitimate child born in the 1600's, or an orphan living in the 1800s. Or a village woman stuck with her physically abusive husband. Or God forbid, suffered from a mysterious illness, were born with a deformity, etc... because you would have been shunned or far worse being as how you'd be the living manifestation of your family's "sins."
WWI(1914 - 1918): 19,772,701http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties#ReferencesWWII(1930s – 1945): 62,000,000- World War II: Combatants and Casualties (1937 — 1945). Retrieved on 2007-04-20.
- Source List and Detailed Death Tolls for the Twentieth Century Hemoclysm. Retrieved on 2007-04-20.
- World War II Fatalities. Retrieved on 2007-04-20.
Great Leap Forward(1958 - 1960): 43,000,000- Peng Xizhe (彭希哲), "Demographic Consequences of the Great Leap Forward in China's Provinces," Population and Development Review 13, no. 4 (1987), 639-70.
Great Purge(1937 -1938): 1,200,000- Soviet Repression Statistics: Some Comments by Historian Michael Ellman, 2002
Pol Pot's agrarian collectivization (1975 -1979): 1,700,000- Sophal Ear (May 1995). The Khmer Rouge Canon 1975-1979: The Standard Total Academic View on Cambodia. Retrieved on 2007-11-02.In Chapter 1: Introduction
- The Cambodian Genocide Program. Retrieved on 2007-11-02.
That's what? 127,672,701 casualties for just these few, that's not counting the emotional, cultural, economic trauma, etc. Keep in mind that the above did not happen in ancient times. It was done by "modern civilized people", moved by secular ideologies.
Deedee,
You are missing the point for me bringing this up. OzmO pointed out that there is harm in believing that the OT is the word of God because that makes us "more" vulnerable to manipulations from politicians. He said that there is "more potential" for believers in the OT to be manipulated into killing.
But as you can see, anybody whether secular or religious has as much potential to be manipulated or is just as vulnerable to be manipulated into killing. People can be manipulated by ideals, whether they believe in the OT or not, whether those ideals are secular or religious. To say that if nobody today believed in the OT is going to make people less vulnerable to such manipulations is naive.
There is no harm in Christians believing that the OT is the word of God.