...No? What of the wholesale mass murder carried out by the National Socialists and Communists during the Twentieth Century? I don't count Nazi worship of Hitler and his religion as a religion at all. It was a sham, and worshiping false idols. Empty.
Oh, and by the way, I agree with this. Religion in general has historically provided fertile ground for charlatans and criminals, and this fact cannot be ignored or facilely dismissed.
Well, it appears that that mankind as a whole needed redemption, through the blood of the Lord.
When you take His rule book (The Bible of course) and throw it out the window, you are going to stray from the path. It's inevitable.
Lastly, I seem to have lost Boxen in post 98.
I'm sure I could be wrong, but I'm wondering if he/ she isn't one of the types in my post #98. Just a thought.
At any rate, I won't be addressing him/ her in posts to you after this.
You'll recall that this was a discussion about contemporary criminality. Thus my ancillary point related to contemporary criminality (and indeed, historical criminality was specifically ruled off limits by the claim that the crusades, for example, cannot be referenced).
But if you really wish to argue about the nazis, then you need to consider that antisemitic nazi propaganda manipulated people by playing on caricatures of Jews that had their source in the predominant religious and cultural mythologies of the day. Examples abound. Hitler blamed Jews for “two great wounds upon humanity: Circumcision of the Body and Conscience of the Soul.” Der Stürmer spread the blood libel, telling Germans that Jews kidnapped small children before Passover because they needed the blood of a Christian child to mix with Matzah. Etc. As the dissident Catholic priest Hans Küng noted: "Nazi anti-Judaism was the work of godless, anti-Christian criminals. But it would not have been possible without the almost two thousand years' pre-history of 'Christian' anti-Judaism..."
And regarding communist atrocities, the more meaninful comparisons are between communist regimes and capitalist democracies (atheism being titularly offical in one and common in the other), and between communist regimes and theocracies.
The nazis and the commies just aren't particularly clear reference points on the issue of whether discrete criminality is disproportionately rare amongst Christians when compared to atheists.