- Science has shown that there is no god.
No. Just, no. Read the diary on the limits of science.
Science also cannot show that there is a god, for the same reasons.
- (All/almost all/the overwhelming majority of) Scientists are atheists.
No. Pew's data show that
According to the poll, just over half of scientists (51%) believe in some form of deity or higher power; specifically, 33% of scientists say they believe in God, while 18% believe in a universal spirit or higher power.
This number has been fairly stable for a century:
The first of these was conducted in 1914 by Swiss-American psychologist James Leuba, who surveyed about 1,000 scientists in the United States to ask them about their views on God. Leuba found the scientific community equally divided, with 42% saying that they believed in a personal God and the same number saying they did not.
- Religion has caused (all/most/the worst) wars.
No. Looking at this table, it is clear that between 15% to 20% of wars have religion as the prime or a major cause. The top twenty are annotated for causes below the orange Cheeto.
- Religion is the (sole/major) cause of genocide.
No. Again, from this compilation genocide has many causes.
- Religion is the cause of most harms in society.
Religion has competition from alcohol, corporations, guns, tobacco, just to name a few.
Why should I care? Well, for one thing, having taught for over forty years, I find that reading factual errors hurts me like chewing on aluminum foil. For another, factual errors that are so easily debunked makes Daily Kos look foolish, and lessens our effectiveness.
Check below the orange Cheeto for some further updates.
2. Some commenters objected to the sample from AAAS. Other surveys have found substantial fractions of the scientists who are not atheists, such as this one, or this one, or Larson's recreation of the 1914 study:
More than 80 years later, Edward Larson, a historian of science then teaching at the University of Georgia, recreated Leuba’s survey, asking the same number of scientists the exact same questions. To the surprise of many, Larson’s 1996 poll came up with similar results, finding that 40% of scientists believed in a personal God, while 45% said they did not. Other surveys of scientists have yielded roughly similar results.
The exact number of scientists who are not atheists will depend on the definition of "scientist," of "atheist," and on the population chosen for study. But the variety of studies have similar enough results to be sufficient to reject the claim "(All/almost all/the overwhelming majority of) Scientists are atheists," a claim I have seen here at Daily Kos often and as some sort of support for the atheist position.
All of these studies are of American scientists. If you know of studies in other parts of the world I am happy to add them.
3. A different source for wars by mortality is available here (hat tip to raincrow). As gerrilea has pointed out, democide, the killing of citizens by unconstrained governments, has killed more people than war and reveals the lethal potential of power.
Since some commenters feel that supplying a list without commentary is not sufficient, I am annotating the top wars on the first linked list as to causes, and showing in italic those that had religious motivations in whole or significant part.
60,000,000–85,000,000 – World War II - territorial recovery and expansion, racial domination
40,000,000–70,000,000 – Mongol conquests (1206–1324) - territorial expansion
36,000,000–40,000,000 – Three Kingdoms War (184–280)[ - imperial consolidation
30,000,000 – Eastern Front (1941–1945), (refer to Eastern Front (World War II) casualties)
25,000,000 – Qing dynasty conquest of Ming Dynasty (1616–1662) - imperial control
20,000,000 – Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864) – religious, economic
20,000,000 – Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) - Part of World War II
17,000,000 – World War I/Great War (1914–1918) - complex, multifactorial: includes the system of alliances, militarism, nationalism, the eastern question of the Balkans and domestic political factors
13,000,000 - An Lushan Rebellion (755–763) – imperial control
7,500,000 – Chinese Civil War (1927–1949) - civil war between Kuo Min Tang and Communists
7,000,000–20,000,000 – Conquests of Tamerlane (1370–1405) - territorial expansion
5,000,000–9,000,000 – Russian Civil War and Foreign Intervention (1917–1922) - civil war between the Bolsheviks and various anti-Bolshevik factions
8,000,000-10,000,000 - Dungan revolt (1862–77) - ethnic and economic conflict
3,500,000–6,000,000 – Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) - territorial expansion
3,000,000–11,500,000 – Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) - initially religious, developing into political conflicts (visible in shifting alliances)
2,500,000–5,400,000 – Second Congo War/Great War of Africa (1998–2003] - civil war for control with ethnic dimensions
2,000,000–4,000,000 – French Wars of Religion (Huguenot Wars) (1562–1598) - religious
2,000,000 – Shaka's conquests (1816–1828) - territorial expansion
1,200,000[22] – Korean War (1950–1953) - civil war, invasion by North Korea
873,000[23] – Conquests of Mehmed II 'the Conqueror' (1451-1481) – territorial expansion with religious motivation