I don't "have to", I am just being exact here. Saying more people innocent people died indirectly or directly from leaders who were Christian vs atheists is probably true. Saying athiest leaders killed more people directly or indirectly than any Christian leader is probably true. Or maybe not. Don't know about the pope who ordered the crusades and how many innocent heathens died as a result. And the issues get real muddled. How do you define leaders? Are we talking about a town priest who tortured and killed in the name of god in the 1400,s. what about the Salem which trials? Where they considered Christians? and then one might argu that the popes weren't Christian. It can go on and on.
It's very simple. Mao Zedong's alone murdered around 43,000,000 innocent people, maybe even more. He was the leader of his country, a modern, educated, atheist leader. No need for a "definition" of what is a "leader". Name one religious leader in history with a murder count anywhere near that.
Funny that you bring up the Crusades, the Inquisition and the Witch Trials, none of which can be attributed to anyone particular individual. The Crusades were a war between Christians and Muslims, hardly comparable to what Mao, Stalin and Pol Pot did. Historians put the Crusades casualties at many thousands at the most, the Inquisition at hundreds at the most, and the Witch Trials probably less than one hundred. There is no comparison.
"It is a law of nature that scientists must bring up the Crusades within five minutes of mention of religion. In any case, the argument goes, atheists are as ethical as any believer, and religion needn’t be kept about for purely moral reasons. But Gould again argues that this claim misses the historical fact that the Church was a secular and not merely religious institution. When the Church was a powerful state, it, not surprisingly, acted like a powerful state. It is also worth noting that when avowedly atheist governments called the shots their ethical track record was less than awe-inspiring. Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot are not, so far as I know, in line for sainthood. The point isn’t that godless commies are bad. The point is that it is dishonest to pretend that the Crusades count against theism but that Stalin doesn’t count against atheism." -
H. Allen Orr is University Professor and Shirley Cox Kearns Professor of Biology at the University of Rochester.http://bostonreview.net/BR24.5/orr.htmlAtheists on this board as well as Christians, unless they are murderers them selves can and should point their fingers. Christians should be ashamed as we'll as atheists. Murder is murder.
No. Murder is murder, and atheists must stop pointing fingers at religion when murder takes place. Atheists' track record is less than impressive.
