Kayla wrote:does this include the slave trade and conquest of the americas which were frequently justified in religious terms as bringing christianity to the savages - or in case of the slave trade, bringing savages to Christianity
Wow. I guess that answers my question about fair-mindedness. You've bought into every prejudicial old-wives' tale you could possibly have encountered.
paganism and animism are not distinct religions nor is pantheism
There is no important distinction to be made on that point. They're broad categories into which we have collected similar superstitions. I could have said the specific "Yoruba myths" or I could have said the "Thuggee cult," but I did not bother to parse the fine details. There's no harm in not bothering, in this case.
have buddhists and hindus ever engaged in anything like the crusades? does it make sense lump buddhists and christians in the way you have
Yes, they have. Buddhists -- go look at Myanmar. Hindus -- go look at the caste system, sati, the Untouchables, Hindu-Muslim riots...and so on. But the Crusades are first and foremost, a Muslim phenomenon. They sacked their way from Saudi Arabia to Spain, and occupied those territories for centuries. The famous counter-crusades of the Catholic church were a response to that. But what the Catholics do they will have to explain, since I and nobody like me was involved in all that.
I can see you really need to do some history. This is all public record, common-knowledge, European history I'm reciting here.
from the get go, your numbers seem iffy
They're derived from an excellent, scholarly, well-documented, comprehensive and fully secular source. Perhaps they look iffy because you have no idea what the truth is on that matter. Go do the numbers yourself, and you'll see.
Just to make it easy for you, which of the wars of the 20th Century could you call "religiously motivated"?
But the wars of the 20th Century killed more human beings than were killed in all wars previously, combined. By even that metric, "religion" is not a major cause of killing.
does your book provide a more detailed breakdown of non-islamic religious deaths - an if not, why not?
It does. It lists them all by country, categories and death toll. And it lists the Islamic ones too. But go look it up, and you'll find out.