The Image Problem With Atheism in America

[Whateverist]

The logical fallacy is killing in the name of atheism when you try and apply the same to Christians. I don't even need to go further than that because you have already gotten yourself stuck in the mud on that fallacy alone. It's people like you who say stupid shit and then try and drag other atheists down with you.

Speaking of fallacies, the one you're committing is 'apples to oranges'. No one kills in the name of atheism. No one kills in the name of theism. Both are opinions on one topic and don't contain the ideological wherewithal to be used as motivation to kill or much of anything else. They aren't belief systems, they aren't worldviews. The most they can be is a feature of a belief system or worldview.

People have killed in the name of atheistic communism and theistic Christianity. That would be a valid comparison, but it doesn't get you the equivalency you want, because hardly any of us are communists, so you conflate the actions of bad people who are atheists with their atheism, so you can invidiously blame the crimes of totalitarian communist states on 'people like us'. It's the equivalent of us blaming 'people like you' for the crimes of Muslim extremists because you're a theist.

You can validly compare atheists and theists, you can validly compare communisists and Christians, but you can't validly compare atheists and Christians. You could validly compare humanists and Christians, but you won't.

Well said. One does not kill because one believes in gods (theism) or does not (atheism). One can be a believer or non-believer and kill people for reasons none of us would approve. In such cases the killing is incidental to what is believed regarding gods.

But there certainly has been killing by believers that was motivated specifically by what was believed in relation to gods. Jihad is a word for just that for Muslims. The crusades and the inquisition were past examples involving programmatic killing on the part of Christians in the name of what they believed regarding gods. I think the killing done by communists in China were motivated by what they believed about class differences; non-belief in gods was incidental.