Wrong. Wars for power are by far the most popular type, and always have been. And "you're sure" of something that's utterly untrue. Way to form opinions based on prejudice and bigotry rather than fact. I'm disappointed in you.
As it happens, in the list of the top twenty human-created atrocities (ranked by death toll), only one is religious in nature, and that wasn't any of the major religions we know today. It was an ugly little murder cult that existed in India until the 19th century. And even they were probably in it more for the loot than for the religion.
are you serious?....outside of those little skirmishes called the Crusades....between 1560 and 1715...there were dozens of wars and general strife....because of Religion....wars have historically been fought over religion, resources, and land......dont take my word for it Cecile....do what i did.....look it up.....those 3 were the most popular answers.....some Dictator wanting Power wasnt there.....but one of those 3 ( religion, resources, and land.).....were no doubt given as a reason he wants to go to war....
How many people do you think died in the Crusades, genius? Try approximately 3 million TOTAL. That is, 3 million people in all of the Crusades COMBINED. That's a big number, I know, but in the history of anthropogenic disasters and atrocities, it's not enough to put the combined Crusades in the top twenty, and it's even less impressive when you consider that that's spead out over, as you said, almost two hundred years. Hell, the United States alone performs more abortions a year than the annual Crusade death toll.
Dozens of wars and general strife, sure. But again, power is a lot more popular reason for that than religion, although admittedly power struggles have often liked to cloak themselves as a holy war in order to gain some sort of legitimacy.
I note that wherever you "looked it up", you didn't bother to name the source OR link it. I'm going to guess Wikipedia, that great source of serious, high-level scholarship.
Try this source instead. It references actual historians.
Twentieth Century Atlas - Historical Body Count
Let me break it down for you and anyone else around here who's dumb enough to believe you.
World War II - 63 million
Mao Tse Tung's Cultural Revolution - 40 million
Genghis Khan - 40 million
British Occupation of India - 27 million
Fall of the Ming Dynasty - 25 million
Taiping Rebellion - 20 million
Joseph Stalin - 20 million
Mideast Slave Trade - 19 million
Timur Lenk (otherwise known as Tamerlane or Timur the Lame) - 17 million
(all numbers are approximate)
I could go on, but I can assure you, there's no religion listed there. The Thirty Years War, which claims an approximate death toll of 7.5 million (over the entire thirty years), is viewed as partially religious in nature, because the factions were Catholic on one side and Protestant on the other, but it was primarily a civil war, with both sides looking for power and control.
Wars in more primitive times, for all that they acquired ferocious historical reputations, didn't actually involve a lot of people by modern standards, nor did they involve weapons with enormous destructive power (again, by modern standards). A goodly portion of their death tolls were actually made up by the famines that they caused and the rampant spread of disease they managed to engender.
