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An interesting argument. The ultimate answer is I don't know, but I'll give you my guesses.

Do you really believe Stalin would have been a good person (or at least neutral) rather than an evil SOB if he hadn't been exposed to the theory of evolution?

I guess he would have been restrained by a fear of Hell, from doing the evil he ended up doing. I think a person can be led to Hel; that one can take a young person, expose him to all sorts of vile ideas and succeed in corrupting him entirely.

Could he have ended up as a good person?

Maybe.

Reverend Jim Jones make you suspicious of the ideas of Christianity or organized religion?

No. Jones can be shown to have perverted Christ's teachings by comparing his deeds with what Christ commanded. Stalin cannot be shown to have perverted Darwin's teachings -- at least in moral sense. Note, that I'm not claiming Darwin would advocate Stalin's actions.

Or do you agree with me that evil SOBs will adopt/pervert any convenient argument to serve their evil purposes?

Yes. But is everybody who does evil born without the capability to do good?.

And if so, do you concede that it's possible Stalin declined to follow Christ's teachings because it would have cramped his evil SOB style, rather than because Darwin convinced him to do so?

It's possible. Do think it is possible that he would not have done the evil he did, if he had never been exposed to Darwin?

Jones can be shown to have perverted Christ's teachings by comparing his deeds with what Christ commanded. Stalin cannot be shown to have perverted Darwin's teachings -- at least in moral sense. Note, that I'm not claiming Darwin would advocate Stalin's actions.

I'm not aware that Darwin made any moral teachings. The study of science (or geometry, or music, or dentistry) is not the study of morality. So of course Stalin didn't pervert Darwin's moral teachings, because he couldn't pervert that which doesn't exist.

As for the study of evolution being the cause of Stalin's loss of faith (if he ever had any), this means very little. Many people fall away from their faith. Sometimes it's because they suffer a loss they can't accept, or because the preacher turns out to be a scoundrel, or they experience a plain old "crisis of faith." These things happen. Such people don't automatically go on to be mass murderers. Reading Darwin (as millions of people have done with no ill effects) obviously doesn't turn someone into a monster like Stalin. If it did, we'd have millions of Stalins running around.

We at least agree that the only correct answer to most of these questions is "I don't know". :)

But I don't think you're being evenhanded in your treatment of the ToE as opposed to other ideas. Remember, we started out discussing your statement that we should beware of ideas that lead to evil. I can see Stalin accomplishing his evil without the aid of Darwinism (in fact, I think he did so), but I can't see Jim Jones committing his evil deeds without the aid of organized religion (perverted though his version was).

Assuming that the book portrayal is accurate (rather than just a PR ploy to demonstrate that Stalin was a good lil communist back before communism was cool), at most it has shown that Stalin used Darwin to justify his atheism; it hasn't shown that Darwin caused (or led to, or whatever) that atheism, much less his evil SOB behavior. So you still have that chicken-or-the-egg problem.

FWIW, I agree it's at least theoretically possible that Stalin could have been a good person had he not been exposed to Darwin. I regard it as extremely unlikely, mind you, but possible. I don't think that everyone who does evil is without the capacity to do good.

But if the positive exposure to Christianity of Jim Jones (who surely had to be exposed to it so as to pervert it) didn't turn him into a good person, how can you reasonably assume that the absence of exposure to Darwin (who makes no moral pronouncements at all) could have resulted in a good Stalin?