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Tough question...
Can anyone tell me exactly how many people have been killed in the name of religion, or at least a rough number? Yes, I know this number will be huge.
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Maybe give some free advice about: Random Weirdos?
imagine a 1 with a lot of zeros behind it.
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It would be beyond difficult, I wouldn't even want to hazard a guess. A lot of the problem would come down to where you would want to draw the line as to what qualified. That and whether or not you stick close to "have been killed in the name of religion" or if you include those "who have been killed because of their religious beliefs". That could mean the difference between counting the millions and millions of Jews that were believed to have been killed in Western Europe and Russia, or not counting them. The Third Reich didn't kill in the name of religion, and neither did the Soviet Union though religion was an important factor. They really weren't killed "in the name of religion" exactly, but they were killed because of their religion and ethnicity.
A lot of history is guesstimation anyways; for example with the different happenings in Russia/Soviet Union, we may never even come close to guessing a accurate total as govt's usually aren't all that willing to divulge past activities. That like asking the United States exactly how many Native Americans it killed, admission of killing is about all you are going to get, the rest is either historical guesswork or reading between the lines.
Could be as low as a 100,000 or as high as 20 million, depending on how inclusive you want to be, how strict with the wording, and how accepting of different reports and histories you are. We'll never really know for sure though, even if we were to examine this on a case-by-case basis. Especially once you get to disagreements on historical accounts.
No one will ever know though, that is my guess. Far too many is another answer.
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