When meeting this argument we must first be honest and admit to our shame that there are events in the past where Christians, in the name of Christ, have perpetrated wars and slaughter, usually of fellow Christians. We have also too often allowed our faith to be used as a pretext for war or to justify war.

Our first instinct is to argue that even the most cursory look at the history of the last century alone would prove that atheist regimes have slaughtered people on an industrial scale. There has never been such a mass bloodletting as that seen in the twentieth century, and it is difficult to detect any done in the name of Christ. Even Irish terrorists on both sides, while using sectarianism as a pretext for murder in pursuit of political and social ends, did not murder and torture for Christ’s sake.

However, when encountering this accusation, we should try to avoid ‘whataboutery’ and swapping horror stories or comparing numbers killed in a kind of league table of horror, as this is futile. ‘Your side killed more than my side’ does nothing to further the discussion and only increases antagonism.

Not In The Name of Atheism If our atheist is honest, his immediate response will be to admit the historical record shows that atheists have indulged in mass slaughter. But he then gets to the core of the issue and insists that there is a fundamental difference between Christians and atheists with regard to warfare: ‘Yes, Stalin, Hitler, Mao and the others were bad, indeed evil, but they weren’t motivated by their atheism, they didn’t follow the dictates of a supposedly holy book.’ The argument is that atheists have done great evils but they haven’t done them in the name of or in order to advance atheism. There were other aims behind their actions.

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