Bigger travesty: Slavery vs. Holocaust
 

Discuss.

I think this is an interesting issue, since slavery happened in the US over a long period of time, whereas the Holocaust was short-lived and overseas. Yet, there are several Holocaust museums but no Slavery museums. Blacks are told to "get over" slavery often, but the same isn't the case with the Holocaust.

I'm black and think the Holocaust was far worse. Still, I feel there can be some debate about it, and about the ways the two events are viewed by mainstream America.

There are actually a lot of slavery museums if you count Civil Rights museums.

By a strict measure of sheer bodycount, the worldwide history of slavery wipes the floor with anything else you might care to name.

Religion?

Alright, Arainach. How many people have been killed by religion?

Well, there were the Crusades. And the centuries of being subjected to unending, unchallenged dictatorial rule by the Church.

But then, isn't this question a little... facetious? How do we base these acts - off of "sheer body count"?

I'd say religion, in terms of time, has created a lot of hardship for people. I'm hesitant to say that it should be regarded as evil as slavery or the Holocaust, however. If we say one is worse, the other can be thrown up there, as well.

Is this just because we need a few slavery museums, Sinspawn?

Religion is an idea, it is not an event in itself. It has no bodycount per se.

Also, loving your sheer pettiness here. "Dudes, enslaving your fellow man is pretty bad and has been going on forever :(" "STILL NOT AS BAD AS JESUS THOUGH!!!!!"

War.

Disease.

Poverty.

Being an insufferable prick.

terrorism!

All those people killed by God's floods, locusts, and...um...extra oil for their lanterns. :psyduck:

You could be a romantic and say God, because he kills people everyday.

IT'S GOD'S WILL THAT PEOPLE DIE =( What a prick...

Well, isn't it?

Or are these people dying even though God doesn't want them to?

I mean, either God wants us to die or there wouldn't be cancer.

Just devil-advocating, here.

Touché, RR. Touché.

Fine, Christianity. Between the Inquisition, the Crusades, the various Witch Trials, the colonization and forceful conversion of North and South America, they're doing rather well on that count. If you REALLY want to be specific, you could make note of things like the fact that the Vatican objected to Hitler's euthanasia policies but not the holocaust and that one of the main justifications of the holocaust in Germany was Christian superiority and attribute the holocaust there too.

Man, there weren't that many people killed in witch trials.

I mean, if you're trying to make a point about numbers killed by Christianity, citing the witch trials is like citing spilled milk. I don't even know if "Christianity" cuts it, as it's a rather BROAD, VAGUE thing.

I'm going to go with the black plague myself. Shit WIPED PEOPLE OUT. (75 million, was it?)

I don't know that you can really attribute the black plague to deliberate human intent, sir.

Welllllll, I mean, we all know it's not true, but at the tiiiiime, The Vatican said it was all the Jews' fault. Those dirty Jews.

But I was talking about sheer numbers dead. And I mean, yea, you can argue that people were unclean, therefore bringing it upon themselves, but thats a fucking stretch, so.

That's not actually religion killing people, so much as religion turning a blind eye to the killing of people.

The World Wars weren't started by religion, the Cold War and all of its proxy wars weren't started by religion, Roman conquest and Barbarian resistance was not started by religion, Communism wasn't a product of religion, Fascism wasn't a product of religion, nor was the slave trade.

Attila the Hun did not ransack Europe because of religion. Ghenghis Khan did not slaughter half of the Khwarezmid Empire because of religion.

The list goes on and on and on and on and on. Cruelties upon cruelties, all of which involving behaviors which predate religion, but that is of no concern to people like you who are so zealous in the destruction of religion that you would paint it as the worst thing to ever befall humanity with lies and half-truths, when it has only begun to hold us back.

Maybe the Jews snuck said diseased rats on to the trade vessels, leading to the eventual spread of the plague?

Evil money-counters.

Where in the bible does it say that thou shalt kill all thine jews? I want numbers here.

still, I say war claimed more lives than your piddling religion.

Come off your high horse. It's been used as an excuse throughout time that since the Jews "killed Jesus", they're inferior and need to be punished. Christianity has never, ever been about what the Bible says as much as it is about using the Bible to justify whatever the people in power want.

The Bible has been used to justify hatred and oppression of Jews, Muslims, Pagans, Blacks, Women, Native Americans, and pretty much any other group that isn't "White Christian Men" throughout the course of time. This shouldn't be news to anyone.

It's really greed that kills the most.

Whether it is power struggles, warfare, civil strife, profiteering, revolutions, or land grabs, a whole lot more people are killed in the zeal of greed, and this encompasses many acts that would otherwise be put into categories such as religion or genocide.

Disease, being a natural agent, has no such emotions, so it doesn't figure in what is the worse evil.

If you think the Bible enabled people to portray the Jews as the "Other" you've got another thing coming.

The Bible wasn't needed to portray the Irish as sub-humans, for instance.

You're saying that religion is culpable for being the weapon, and not the people that wield it.

As they say "guns don't kill people . . . "

If we're going to be blaming things like religion, we might as well make the final leap to the source of all evil - testosterone. Every attrocity since the evolution of the first mammal can be directly attributed to those two spheres swinging between (half of) our legs. Someday mankind will eradicate this vile substance, and we'll live in a peaceful (and possibly catty) utopia.

Because Women never commit violent crimes.

We commit them far less than men do, anyways. =/

That's not to say I endorse SS's facetious statement. ^_^

Considering everything, the percentage of violent crimes commited by women is less than the percentage commited by non-Christians.

Slavery. It still exists today in many countries and its variants are as wide and the human imagination.

With holocust, the people are dead, no longer to be tortured & abused. Should the act be carried on long enough the victims are exhausted or the source of the acts is snuffed out by those who fear its spread.

Slavery on the other hand is tolerated & met with apathy because people profit from it. Its many forms are difficult to bring under one idea and thus is hard to pin down unlike straight up death.

Then one wonders why you aren't laying blame at the feet of the people who perpetuate atrocities under the guise of Christianity. The armies and the kings and the countries who go to war.

I can only assume you don't lay the blame where it belongs because you're too busy with all the cocks that need to be sucked.

I think you're talking about the Catholic church more then Christianity and religion in general.

Just sayin'

PS. Why are all non-religious people so anti-religion? It can't just be "oh they believe in god, whatever" Its, "Why are people so stupid religion causes war, cancer, and erectile disfunction~"
Its like they are terrified of the though of someone thinking differently then them. I'm not saying Arainach is doing that, but I see it all the time elsewhere.

You forget how it's also been used as an argument against other White Christian Men since saying Christianity is a singular force is like saying Americans have the same political viewpoint.

On the original topic, I personally don't think there is a point in comparing between the significance of different atrocities, in some sense it is rather a relative issue depending on your views. However, whatever your political objective or social issue is that you care about, its important for you to bring attention to those issues or injustices. Though I don't think it brings the issue into proper perspective if you can only see an issue in the light of other atrocities.

Simple: I leave them be as long as they leave me be. They're perfectly fine until they start legislating their morality on me. And given that today's churches are nothing but disguised PACs, I despise all organized religions.

Some religious people are great individuals. But without exception I haven't found a religion (except Quakerism and Buddhism) that isn't an intrusive crock of shit.

I'm going to have to go with slavery. It's true that victims of both travesties were dehumanized, but I would wager that more people were killed as part of the Holocaust than as part of slavery. For one, the slaveowners would have no benefit from killing their source of labor. Likewise, isn't death a release from the physical torture? Morbid and macabre as that may sound, I would much rather die than be unable to exercise free will. =/

I'm sure little Ester Evangalist was giving you a ton of lip before you gave us the enlightening factoid that religion has kiled a whole lot of people.

What do you mean "unchallenged dictatorial rule"? Secular rulers challenged the authority of the Church all the time. You should read about the time the King of France had the Pope kidnapped and beaten half to death.

On the subject of religion: while I don't believe that it has killed a vast number of people on its own, I DO agree with the idea that it has been used to justify the actions of those in power at the time said violence occurred.

For example, religious truth was the moral pillar that turned the Crusades from mere warmongering to a noble endeavor. The Roman Catholic Church pretty much ruled the world long ago, and their inherent position as a religious organization allowed others to turn a blind eye to any atrocities being committed under their noses.

Unchallenged was the wrong word, then. ...hrm...

Oh, hell, just drop "unchallenged", then. It just sounds more evil with it in there, that's all.

The Holocaust lead to more malicious torture and pain, I think, as a lot of what was done to the Jews was done just because the German's didn't like them, and a lot of what was done to the slaves was to keep them in line. There was also not as much deliberate killing proportionally, because slaves had a purpose and Jews were apparently just a problem.

That said, in both situations an entire people were deemed as "sub human" and treated worse than men usually treat their animals. There's really no way to compare, they both sucked.

Also, wow some people are really anti Christian. I'm personally agnostic and don't care either way, and I don't know that much about Christianity's history, but I can say that there's been a hell of a lot of killing in Asia that had pretty much nothing to do with religion. In fact, by sheer number of deaths alone, the Holocaust pales to the Great Leap Forward and then the Cultural Revolution in China when the CCP came to power, and religion practically didn't exist any more at that time. Hell Japan has attacked Korea out of sheer boredom before. Disagreements over religion has caused a great deal of death, but there are parts of the world where the fighting between religious factions wasn't nearly as bad, and we didn't need any of that to kill people. I personally think religion just serves as a mask for some people's greed; if they weren't religious they'd probably be assholes anyway, but since they are it provides a handy excuse for them to not feel like assholes.

In a way the Holocaust, religion and slavery all interlink for one simple reason, they all involved man having intolerance to views that didn't mirror their own. So for that reason they regarded all other opinions as false and/or worthless without even really learning about them, queue slavery for the less well off people, brainwashing and of course the biggest lol stupid excuse to kill ever 'holy wars'.

I'm not saying religion is bad but it's like anything else made by man easily corrupted. Getting back to the question though the Holocaust wins for being the biggest single event in history, but slavery gets the longest track run award because that shit will probably never stop.

To be fair, the guy was a total dick.

It's hard to compare the Holocaust and Slavery. The holocaust was genocide.

I think if we are to talk about major travesty, we should also include in this discussion the communist revolution in China. In particular the "Great Leap Forward" under Mao Zedong. This cultural and economic upheaval led to the deaths of an estimated 70,000,000 people. One of the most memorable images of this time is families trading their children to be eaten by other families, to be spared eating their own children.

It's crazy when you imagine that kind of death. While you can probably imagine a field of 100 dead, nobody can comprehend 1 million, much less 70 million. At that point they go from individuals to a statistic.

(advocating a more severe view of the one I hold, for conversational purposes)

What good came of any ethnic cleansing, though? Even if slavery wasn't "worth it," didn't it do some (or even much) good?

If you want to go this direction, you can easily find benefits to the Holocaust, as well. Human experimentation by Nazi physicians and scientists produced some scientifically valid results, most notably work done in the study of hypothermia.

Which is worse? I am inclined to believe that the holocaust was much grander and terrible, though slavery is not to be taken lightly. For now, and since the holocaust is in the past and seems unlikely to be repeated, it seems that slavery should probably hold more concern for us in modern times.

That being said, each is born of ignorance and each is horrible in its own way.

Eerie. This reminds me a bit of what I've heard about Stalinist Russia. Cannibalism of family members due to starvation, poor living conditions and tragic compensation for farmers and peasants, etc. It is estimated that 20 million Russians died during Stalin's rule.

I believe that you are misappraising Arainach's statement. While it seems easy to place blame on the Church, thats because it is. Perhaps Arainach is alluding to the idea that organized religion has promoted behavior which discourages idealogical and religious competition. For instance, think of how many people 'died' (and I think you'd be troubled to call it anything other than murder) during the crusades as Christianity marched from one part of the world to the other, converting/killing everything in its path...not to mention encouraging outdated modes of thought which bypassed logic and caused people to act irrationally towards not only the world, but the people in it. Think of all of the heretics who were burned alive, skinned, quartered for trying to dispute the church's claim that the earth is the center of the universe...

...Not to mention the vatican's role (or lack of concern) in regards to the Holocaust. There was no visible opposition from the Catholic Church in saying 'This is wrong'. Meanwhile, millions of jews were being killed. The point is that the church had the power to do something positive, and decided not to. I think the reasoning into this is quite clear. This may not be 'direct' killing, but this is merely semantics. The church IS responsible for a great number of deaths.

I agree that the Church seems to have had rather bloody hands throughout its history, all for the name of expansion.

Though there is little way of supporting a claim that religion (more importantly, the followers of the religion) has killed more people than anything else, I am inclined to see a bit of truth in such statements regardless. If any religious zealots would like to get technical, what about the flood? (lol) God killed almost the entire human population on earth, not to mention entire cities (such as Sodom and Gomorroh), so I consider the ideal of death and religion going hand in hand, to be rather appropriate.

"benefits"? No. The research that you refer to cannot be deemed ethically permissable to use in modern medicine. There is nothing beneficial about it. It COULD'VE been beneficial but that would humanize the killing of 7 million people. The ends doesn't justify the means. Any counter argument implies that murder is acceptable.

I was quoting a guy who was saying slavery was beneficial to the economy. Did you even read my post? Or his, for that matter?

And it was eleven million people. By most rough estimates.

I only glanced over the blood and guts of your comments, without context. My mistake, let me read it again...

These tests were endured by Jews to allow german scientists to study how to better suit nazi soldiers to adapt to the bitter coldness of Russia. It was only beneficial to the process of nazi warfare and did little to better mankind as a whole. I think you are giving to much credit to the 'validity' of german research which came at a rather high price. I simply don't believe that the ends justified the means.

I never asserted that "the ends justified the means". Again, if you had read the thread (all of it, mind), you would have seen I was responding to someone who was extolling the virtues of slavery with an equally ludicrous statement.

I didn't notice the slavery comment, so I'd like to address it now:

There aren't really any benefits from slavery, since slavery isn't as efficient as free labor. It's never been a good system, and the only reason it exists is so that those with power can claim ownership over other human beings.

Any institutions or societies built on the back of slaves were created unnecessarily at the cost of human lives, and if those people had done that work as free men the world would be a much better place.

You missed the slavery comment because it wasn't actually made. GhaleonQ asked if slavery did "some good", but didn't specify what kind of good, when asking what good came from ethnic cleansing.

You're arguing from a purely economic standpoint in slavery wasn't beneficial, and in that perspective, you're right, and the results of the Civil War prove as much. That isn't to say that there weren't other ways that slavery could have been beneficial. Booker T. Washington provides one argument for that position in Up From Slavery:

If you want to look for good that has resulted from slavery, that would probably be the best case.

Yeah, and all the blacks would still be in Africa.

I'm not sure how great a good it is that slavery freed some people from a Dark Continent that is still steeped in slavery and various other forms of forced labor.

The assumption that Washington makes is that Africa would still be an ignorant global backwater without the slave trade. This likely would not be the case if people did not institutionalize forced labor, anywhere.

On what do you base this assumption, exactly? The geography and climate of subsaharan Africa in many ways precluded the development of industrial society.

For instance, part of the reason Europe was able to industrialize was its river systems, which allowed cities, large population, infrastructure and commerce to develop. Africa has a similar river system, but its rivers had the problem of breeding mosquitoes, which in turn carried malaria. As a result, Africans avoided their bodies of water as much as they could, and the societies that developed were perfectly adapted for surviving in the environment, but were ill-equipped to develop to the level that those in Europe and Asia did. (At the same time, this served to effectively bar European settlement until they could effectively combat malaria.)

I'd actually say science has killed more people than anything else.

I mean, how effectively could we wage war without anything more complex than sticks and our bare fists?

I am glad to see that. Pardon me. I considered it unlikely that we'd ever agree on something.

Thanks for that, though this perspective is not exactly common. I'd like not to be cynical towards the church but it usually doesn't end well. Its difficult to say which perspective is falsified and which isn't. Even so, this looks promising.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but not much more.

We could always capture wild cheetahs and train them to attack our enemies. If they get out of line we show them who's boss by beating them with our sticks.


And as for the topic, I think slavery IS worse because you have to endure a lifetime of pain and suffering, there was the same type of family separation that the holocaust had, and the worst part, it's still prevalent in many of todays societies. Some slave owners were worse than others, but one that rings a bell is Ancient Egypt...they were treated like absolute shit. They barely god fed, what they were fed was just enough to live, they got whipped and beaten, and had no free will. During the holocaust, a lot of them believed (or wanted to believe) they would survive and this was all temporary, only to find out at the end that it wasn't. I would have rather been gassed.