Larry Little asserts, “Religion has caused more suffering and harm than all the world’s diseases combined” in his July 25 letter, “Religion has caused suffering, harm.” He provides four examples of purported religious-instituted harm but no diseases for comparison.
Historian Harold Lamb, author of “The Crusades: The Flame of Islam,” estimates “in the Crusades a waste of hundreds of thousands of lives.” Fox’s Book of Martyrs estimates the Inquisition cost around 32,000 lives. Little sets the “deaths in the thousands” in an Iraq conflict that NBC News reported originated with the battle for Mohammed’s rightful successor: “the fighting now boils down to a struggle for power, not theological doctrines.” Opposition to Israel isn’t strictly theological but is rooted in anti-Semitic calls for its annihilation, causing 65,000 deaths since 1948.
In contrast, PBS reports that influenza (1918) killed 21 million. BBC estimates the 14th century saw the bubonic plague kill 200 million. In fact, a Discovery Channel program states “infectious diseases have … claimed higher casualties than wars.”
Little ignores whether those who committed evils in religion’s name were actually following that religion’s teaching. Human beings define morality in Little’s world view. Yet he hypocritically reaches across time and cultures imposing his man-made morality upon others, condemning the moral standard they had defined for themselves.
