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The question, in my opinion, is not very well formulated; nevertheless, let's try to figure out something like this. If we assume that all wars under religious slogans are equivalent to the phrase “religion killed people”, then indeed science also killed people and more than once or, in any case, slightly spoiled their lives.
In some of my previous answers, I have already cited Marxism, social Darwinism, and race theory as examples. They clearly demonstrate that a “scientific worldview” can become the foundation of ideologies no less bloody than religion. To be fair, of course, an ideology based on the slogans of science is not science, and a fundamentalist ideology based on the slogans of religion is not religion, so the comparison is quite correct in this case.
For those who do not remember about totalitarian political speeches, we can also remind you. Here, for example, from the collection of quotations from Mao Zedong (“Modern situation and our tasks”, December 25, 1947):
To be fair, of course, in the historical perspective, ideologies built on religious foundations are more common in history, because scientism, i.e., an ideology built on the idea of “scientific”, as well as atheism, are in principle relatively new phenomena and appeared only at the end of the XVIII century.
So, of course, the enlighteners of the XVIII century could afford to say that, they say, atheism and science, unlike religion, did not kill anyone. Of course, they were not killed, because they were never in power, and therefore there was no reason or resource for mass repression. And as soon as people with atheistic and scientific ideologies began to find themselves in power, it suddenly turned out that “big scientists” like Comrade Stalin were as bloodthirsty as some Torquemada.
In addition, the death of people is not always the result of wars or police actions. Experiments on humans that were justified for scientific purposes, including those that led to death, were conducted in a wide variety of countries:�
If I were not too lazy to continue this list, it could be made quite long, but perhaps the examples given are enough.
It is not clear exactly which” all these people ” (as was originally formulated by the author of the question) were killed by religion. And what kind of religion is meant.
But irrational faith (and any religion belongs to this category) it can lead to victims precisely because of its irrationality. At best, people will behave suboptimally (for example, kissing an icon in the midst of an epidemic – after a thousand other potential carriers of infection, or refusing blood transfusions for religious reasons), which will statistically significantly increase the death rate. At worst, you can kill others in the name of your faith, or sacrifice yourself for irrational reasons, such as the right to be baptized with two fingers instead of three.
As for science, it is just a method of understanding the world around us. In itself, ethically and ideologically neutral and certainly not killing or saving anyone. People are killed or saved, including some scientists, not “science”. And at the same time, they rely on their own moral and ideological criteria, and not on some “requirements” or “interests” of science. The method has no interests, it's just a tool. An individual scientist, or a group, or society as a whole has interests.
As for “destruction” (also a word from the original wording of the question) due to an oversight, or negligence, it is the scientific method that, if correctly applied, minimizes such losses. Because it was created for obtaining reliable knowledge. But it does not completely exclude losses even with absolutely correct application and does not claim to do so. Because any knowledge about the world is not absolute. (Science generally deals only with knowledge that can be verified and, therefore, has a chance to be refuted-at least in part.) If victims have appeared due to incorrect application of the method, as is usually the case, then claims should be addressed to specific perpetrators, and not to the method.
Somehow I don't remember a single case where people were killed under the slogans “in the name of integrals!” or something similar.
Here is “To the glory of the Lord” – it was. And I also remember” kill everyone, the Lord will figure out where his own people are and where others are”. And that it is in the name of science… Well, probably there were some scientists of the 3rd Reich who conducted experiments on prisoners (the name of the most famous of these bastards flew out of my head, I'm sorry), but whether they killed in the name of science, in the name of their nation, or simply because they were sadists, it's quite difficult to say here. Well, OK, let it be in the name of science.
Probably the number of their victims was quite large. Maybe 10 thousand, maybe more. Maybe less, though. Well, so as not to offend you, let it be 50 thousand, so that there is a margin.
As for religion, let's leave out those historical moments when even without religion, people would still be killed. All sorts of wars waged by religious monarchs for their own political reasons, for example. What do we have left? The actions of the Inquisition in Europe, the destruction of Old Believers in Russia, forced conversion to Christianity in other countries, forced conversion to Islam + all sorts of jihads.
If you believe this article, the Inquisition killed about 340 thousand people. Well, OK, even if some of them were actually killed for the purpose of robbery and not purely for religious reasons.
Let's reduce this number by 2 times in order not to miss in an unpleasant way for you. It turns out that only the Inquisition in the name of God killed more people than the fascist scientists.
And it follows that religion has killed more people than science.
If we recall the enthusiasm with which Muslims slaughtered infidels, I think that the final score (if it is ever counted by historians) between religion and science will be: “very much”:”relatively little”.
Religion won again 😉
Religion has been the cause and occasion of wars, pogroms, and persecutions of non-believers many times in history… I've never heard of people killing each other over scientific differences.