Stalin didn't kill people because of atheism, he killed them because he was an absolute dictator who killed anyone who he thought opposed him. Hitler didn't kill people because they were atheists, or because they weren't. He did kill them because they were Jews, but not because he himself was an atheist. Otherwise he was in the same league as Stalin and Mao.
It's comparing apples and wrenches.
--R.
Hitler, Stalin, the Muslim hordes, and the sort of 'bioethicists' approved of by Dawkins and his ilk all have no compunction about writing human beings out of the human race as untermenschen, counterrevolutionaries or kulaks, infidels, and unwanted pregnancies or useless eaters, respectively, because they all deny the high, theistic anthropology summed up in "come let Us make Man in Our image and likeness," the pagan intuition of the human soul as a spark of divinity, the kinship of all beings taught by the Buddha, and all analogous notions found in other traditional religions.
There have been numerous absolute rulers throughout history who were restrained by the notion of Christian kingship, or of karma, . . . and did not slaughter either their citizenry nor even their enemies in such wanton fashion--even allowing for differences in population and technology. Atheistic dictators feel no transcendent restraint on their power, and unleash unrestrained horrors.