{"id":409,"date":"2010-08-28T15:47:56","date_gmt":"2010-08-28T05:47:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=409"},"modified":"2010-08-29T09:55:02","modified_gmt":"2010-08-28T23:55:02","slug":"christian-atrocities-vs-atheist-atrocities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=409","title":{"rendered":"Christian Atrocities vs Atheist Atrocities"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Question from Brian:<\/strong><br \/>\nI&#8217;ve debated many christians in the past few weeks, and they all seem to think atheism creates evil. Can you name a few christians that have committed atrocities? (Besides Hitler, we all know that one)<br \/>\n<br \/>\n<strong>Answer:<\/strong><br \/>\nMy go-to guy is Sir Thomas More, pious 15th-to-16th-century Catholic who put people to death for the crime of owning Bibles in the English language.  Incidentally, he was English.  <a href=\"http:\/\/notachristian.org\/christianatrocities.html\">Here<\/a> are some more.  And a whole pile of awfulness went on during the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Thirty_Years%27_War\">Thirty Years&#8217; War<\/a> between Protestants and Catholics.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nThing is, you&#8217;re not going to get far in an argument by comparing kill counts between Christians and atheists (though you might surprise some people when you have something to contribute).  What&#8217;s more important is whether the atrocities were committed <em>because<\/em> of Christianity\/atheism, either in an effort to specifically spread Christianity\/atheism or because some tenet of Christianity\/atheism commanded it.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nAtheism comes out of such comparisons rather well, because<br \/>\n1. it was the Communists who forcibly spread atheism the most, and only because Communism declares itself ideologically incompatible with major religions, and<br \/>\n2. there <em>are<\/em> no tenets of atheism, besides statements of its actual position.  Nowhere does it say, &#8220;There is no God, therefore do this.&#8221;<br \/>\n<br \/>\n&#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/smartlx\">SmartLX<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s more important is whether the atrocities were committed <em>because<\/em> of Christianity\/atheism, either in an effort to specifically spread Christianity\/atheism or because some tenet of Christianity\/atheism commanded it.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[26,140,35,97,141],"class_list":["post-409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-text","tag-atheism","tag-atrocities","tag-christianity","tag-communism","tag-thomas-more"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pB6tr-6B","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=409"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":413,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409\/revisions\/413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}