The danger of religion. .

[Polaris]

Actually, strictly speaking without adding any meaning to the word beyond what it actually means, atheists have killed and continue to kill the most people depending on the year (sometimes religious conflict* is responsible for more deaths in a certain year, sometimes secular strife in another year).

*The US and foreign intervention is responsible for the majority of the high-casualty religious wars though. Sure the Middle East was already a powder-keg full with pent-up tension and frustration, but the US is partially responsible (the USSR was the other instigator) for igniting the fuse.

Let's make a careful distinction here. Religion is an ideology. People get killed (and kill) in the name of such ideologies.

Atheism is not an ideology; it's a stance on the existence of God or gods. One cannot kill in the name of atheism. If by some fucking happenstance the case is such that the most killers in the world have been atheists, that detail is irrelevant to and beside the point. People are motivated to kill by ideologies. If there are atheists who were motivated to kill by other ideologies, that has no connection to atheism. Atheism is simply a stance on the existence of gods, nothing more.

In short, religion has the capacity to motivate; atheism has no such capacity.

An atheist merely does not believe in God or gods. The whole killing in the name of atheism is a tired logical fallacy.

@Annik. The figures were posted yesterday about how many died in the 20th century (110 million which is a understatement because I don't include several Post-war secular wars in that figure...not counting Nazism since that had religious undertones) due to conflict on issues relating to secular desires.