That point is that the very fact that Hitler at least paid lip service to supporting religious beliefs supports my view that it wasn't their secularism that defined the Nazi's philosophy. They were socialists who were hungry for the power to rule all of Europe and the issue of whether or not they were Christians or not just isn't very important in their grand scheme of things.
So once again, Nazism and Communism are not the opposite of religion. Neither really had anything to do with religion except to see it as a competitor for peoples allegiance.
And I do mean to include Communism.
Marx's view of religion (recall his "opium of the people" comment) was that people flock to religious institutions when the Capitalist system forced them into poverty. He believed that his system, by providing for the common man, would relieve the people of the need for religion. I'm sure you will agree that this was naive beyond belief. Certainly his system didn't work and even I don't believe that he had identified the source of religious beliefs in the human species.
But in any case, it was Marx, Lenin and Stalin's belief in the common ownership of property and the value of state planning and not their religious beliefs that defined their conduct and cost millions of people their lives. Once again, defining this as "secular" is just overlooking the real facts of history.
Secular isn’t the opposite of religion either.
Nazi Germany and Communist Russia were both secular societies. This isn’t exactly a complex issue. In fact, I haven’t seen anything that you’ve posted that comes close to refuting that simple point.
And the original article pointed out quite accurately that the greatest horrors the world has ever seen stemmed from secular nations. This fact hasn’t been challenged either.
You would be better off arguing that the next great horror will likely stem from a religious nation in the form of Islamic terror, that would be a MUCH better counter argument than trying to say Nazi Germany and Communist Russia were not secular nations.