Atheistic bloodthirstiness (by D. D'Souza)

[Rev. Rye]

But even so, they are minuscule compared with the death tolls produced by the atheist despotisms of the 20th century. In the name of creating their version of a religion-free utopia, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong produced the kind of mass slaughter that no Inquisitor could possibly match. Collectively these atheist tyrants murdered more than 100 million people."

Problem: None of these three dictators did their deeds solely in the name of atheism. Hell, Hitler may not have even been an atheist. And, in these three cases, killing people for religious affiliation was only a small piece of the puzzle. They all persecuted anyone who could potentially be a threat to the state. Even an atheist could suffer at their hands; hell, I recently finished a unit on East Germany in my German History class and it turned out that, there, anything could be perceived a threat, even someone being too patriotic.

Afterwards, he refutes some claims that are made in End of Faith (by Sam Harris) and The God Delusion (by Richard Dawkins) in order to show that they are holding Christianity responsible for the crimes committed in its name, while exonerating secularism and atheism for the greater crimes committed in their name.

Special pleading. If I didn't even read Sam Harris and know he actually gave some good reasons for his positions, I'd say it comes from both sides.

all the religions of the world put together have in 2,000 years not managed to kill as many people as have been killed in the name of atheism in the past few decades.

Even if there were as many people now as they did 2000 years ago, the technology enabling mass murder on such a scale just didn't exist until a few decades ago.

It's time to abandon the mindlessly repeated mantra that religious belief has been the greatest source of human conflict and violence.

Okay, even Dawkins knows that that's a vast oversimplification. It's not the greatest. It's only one of the greatest.