[split] Big Announcement and Invitation

[downbeatplumb]

While the killing of even one heretic is too many, the total numbers killed was insignificant compared to the numbers murdered by the monsters of the 20th century - by which time, we humans should have been far more enlightened by freedom from the shackles of religion.

So how did that happen?

Your flippancy concerning the greatest loss of human life of all time speaks volumes about your moral compass.
It is an uncomfortable truth that we often need bad things to happen, in order to galvanise ourselves into ensuring they never happen again. In case you didn't notice, there hasn't been another World War for 70 years, thanks to the tireless peacekeeping efforts of millions of people across the world and the formation of organisations such as NATO, the UN and the EU. It has not stopped all wars, but it's stemmed the flow of bloodshed dramatically.
And please, do not suggest for a moment that the theocrats wouldn't have slaughtered heretics by the millions if they'd had access to 20th century weaponry. Save yourself a shred of dignity.

In fact we know they would.
The Ustase of Serbia were catholic death dealers killing their orthodox rivals in ways that the Nazis found a bit too vicious.

A Gestapo report to Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler, dated 17 February 1942, stated:

Increased activity of the bands [of rebels] is chiefly due to atrocities carried out by Ustaše units in Croatia against the Orthodox population. The Ustaše committed their deeds in a bestial manner not only against males of conscript age, but especially against helpless old people, women and children. The number of the Orthodox that the Croats have massacred and sadistically tortured to death is about three hundred thousand.[49]

The Ustaše policies against Eastern Orthodoxy are incorrectly associated with "Uniatism" in some Eastern Orthodox circles. This term has not been used by the Roman Catholic Church except for Vatican condemnation of the idea in 1990.[67] The Ustaše represented an extreme example of "Uniatism" rather based on nationalism than on religion. They supported violent aggression or force in order to convert Serbo-Croatian speaking Orthodox believers to Catholicism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usta%C5%A1e