[Doctor Doom]

The flaw in your argument is that it was not a lack of belief in god(s) that caused the Soviets and other communists to commit their acts - it was their collectivist, statist policies that held men to be expendable tools of the state.

Further, comparing body counts in the 20th Century to the body counts of previous, religion-inspired body counts is flawed because the 20th Century had the "benefit" of industrial killing methods (machine guns, gas chambers, etc.)

This argument is fundamentally flawed. No pun intended.

[Brian Kopp DPM]

"What ifs" don't count in body counts. "What if" religions had gas chambers and gulags is a moot point. They did not. If they desired them over the last 100 years, they could have obtained them. They did not. States animated by an atheistic hatred of innocents killed hundreds of millions. Religions, be they Judeo-Christian, muslim, or other, have never done such.

Atheism as an animating philosophy of the state always kills, eventually, every time the experiment has been tried, without a single exception.

[steve-b]

Further, comparing body counts in the 20th Century to the body counts of previous, religion-inspired body counts is flawed because the 20th Century had the "benefit" of industrial killing methods (machine guns, gas chambers, etc.)

Also, there were simply more people alive to begin with in the 20th century (which is, of course, another result of modern technology). Using the proper comparison (percentage of population), the carnage of the Thirty Years' War holds its own nicely.