Religious moderates enable religious extremists

[Ryantology]

If you're psychotic then religion can offer you a good outlet for it I guess. There are secular ways of doing it like supporting a political ideology or extremist movement of some kind. There were atheistic psychotic tyrants of course. I can bust out Pol Pot on you, a bit of Stalin, Chairman Mao. *Bill O'Reilly voice* They all had one thing in common, they didn't believe in God.

I'd name the Christian examples, but there are far too many.

Though of course that doesn't prove atheism creates psychopaths anymore than you can prove that religion does. People start out with that tendency then find an outlet for it within an ideology. They won't find it in the teachings of Jesus anyway. Or the teachings of Buddha or whoever.

Great sections of the Old Testament are an instruction manual teaching who to kill and why. If you want to disown that, disown the OT. If you wish to keep it as part of your dogma, own it. But, don't try to pretend that 2000 years of Christian violence occurred in spite of it.

The thing about claiming that there isn't a God or a heaven and what have you is a that some people may attempt to create a heaven or utopia here on Earth. In the case of Communism it became more of a hell on Earth.

That's what happens sometimes when imperfect people try to do big things.

There were Christian Nazi's as well, your point?

My point is that your examples of 'atheist tyrants' such as Hitler and Stalin would have been nobodies pissing in the wind if they didn't have millions of Christians ready and willing to do the killing they wanted done.

[img]Safe to say say that religious belief didn't exactly thrive under Soviet Communism, it was in effect a state religion in itself.[/quote]

I wouldn't say it thrived, but I also wouldn't say that most Russians gave up their old beliefs, even if they pretended to at gunpoint.

Secular regimes you can associate with atheism killed far more people in history if you really want to go there?

Not a single one of these regimes killed for the purpose of promoting atheism, so go there if you want, it's irrelevant.