diagoras54: A Refutation

Okay, so I am going to make my first video about religion, etc. In this video, I will be refuting a video entitled "Christianity: A Contradiction" by YouTube user diagoras54, as well as several similarly nutty comments he made in the video comment section. This is basically the text version of what that video will be like. Let us get started, shall we? His comments are in quotes, mine are underneath.

"Humans are the pinnacle of creation, the reason for the existence of the universe and the locus around which it revolves."
Nope, the reason for the existence of the universe and the locus around which it revolves is God (Genesis 1:1, John 1:1-4). The Bible is actually pretty clear on this, so I find it hard to believe that diagoras54 somehow missed this.

"To believe that we share a common ancestor with chimpanzees and gorillas is to devalue us and deprive us of our special position above the animals."
Nope. I think you'll find that it is only fundamentalists who believe this. Saner believers, who still reject evolution anyway, do not reject it because of this. Whilst is largely differs between people, the main reason is because of the following reasons:
They do not have expertise or sufficient knowledge in science to determine for themselves whether or not evolution is true.
They have not had it sufficiently explained to them, in a way they understand.
Atheists poisoning the well, claiming that evolution removes the need for a creator, vis a vis Richard Dawkins.
They simply do not care enough about it and so remain agnostic.
They have not been shown sufficient evidence.
A combination of some or all of these.

Either way, this argument commits the genetic fallacy of trying to disprove something by explaining how that thing originates. How humanity originated plays no part in determining whether or not we have a "special place" above the other animals. It is also a straw man, in that it does not represent the tenets of Christianity whatsoever, or even what the majority of Christians believe.

"We are God's favourites, His ultimate conception and recipients of His love and gifts. And yet, we're inherently flawed to the extent that we require eternal punishment for not apologising for something we did not do."
This is also wrong. We are only held accountable for our own evil deeds and actions. Verses in the Old Testament where God says he will punish ancestors refers to the OT period only, and the punishment of further generations were the subsequent fault of the original perpetrator. diagoras54 may argue God is unjust for this, but God has the power to restore life, we don't. Of course, when successing generations were punished, it was only if there were continuing the sin of their fathers. Once they repented, punishment ceased, "...to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me" Emphasis mine. (Exodus 20:5)

"As Dan Story said, instead of condemning God for allowing evil, we should be thankful He witholds the punishment we deserve."
The obvious implication being here, diagoras54 is implying that God is responsible for there being evil. Yeah, it is God's fault that people chose to do evil things. This is is simply indicative that diagoras54 does not want to be held accountable for his own misdeeds. This is also an argument from personal incredulity, in that because he cannot understand why a good God allows evil, then, because there is evil, he concludes that a good God must not exist.

"This is the bizarre dichotomy of Christianity, for biologists to label humans as apes is insulting, but suffering is a result of our failings. More than anything else, this resembles battered woman syndrome, in that the victims hold themselves responsible and see no fault in the perpetrator."
Except that God is not the "perpetrator" of evil, we are. We commit evil, therefore we are not "victims". diagoras54 is assuming his conclusion in his premise without even making a case for it. This is also an appeal to emotion, by appealing to "battered woman syndrome" diagoras54 is attempting to associate God with woman beaters, and thus invoke a strong emotional reaction in his audience. He is also trying to paint a picture of God as a big bad ogre who is responsible for evil, and thus conjure up another strong emotional reactions in his audience. As you may or may not be aware, emotions and higher reasoning synapses cannot fire simultaneously, so a burst of extreme emotion can effectively shut your higher reasoning capabilities off. The question is, why use such dishonest tactics?

"On the contrary, the perpetrator is seen as a refuge and a source of comfort, leading to still greater dependency."
Same again really. diagoras54's conclusion, God is responsible, is assumed in his premise. This is thus begging the question and thus can be dismissed as logically fallacious.

"Christianity is psychologically damaging, not to mention contradictory,"
And the evidence for this is? This is simply a bare assertion fallacy.

"yet its most fervent adherents label atheists as dangerous for not appreciating how special humans are."
Please define "most fervent believers". I can only assume diagoras54 means fundamentalists, whose fervour is largely misplaced as they do not even understand what they claim to believe in. Either way, whilst this is, indeed, fallacious, you cannot really blame them given the events in Communist countries over the past hundred or so years. As diagoras54 is aware, atheist leaders were able to have countless millions of their own citizens slaughtered in peacetime without even so much as batting an eyelid. The reason they were able to do so without caring at all, was because they did not believe in the sanctity of human life, or that their crimes would hold any repercussions for themselves.

We must do away with this papist-Quaker babble of the sanctity of human life. - Leon Trotsky.

This is not to say all atheists are vicious murderering psychopaths, but it is reason to be just a little wary. Luckily, most atheists are, in fact, not like Lenin in any way whatsoever, so to make generalisations would be wrong.

"Yet, we are not the ones who view ourselves as having been created for no other purpose than to worship God,"
Neither are we. Worship is only one of our duties, and can be expressed in many different ways. Singing is one, dancing is another, music is another. The Bible says to praise God in all things. Then again, in a sense, everything we do can technically be seen as worship, it does not just have to be singing or verbal worship. (1 Peter 4:11, 1 Thessalonians 5:18)

"like a narcissistic tyrant forcing his subjects to pray to him daily."
Okay, this is just plain false and an appeal to emotion by using hyper-emotive language aimed at tugging at our heart strings rather than our reasoning synapses.

"Our lives are not merely temporary tests to determine whether or not we are worthy of spending an eternity in heaven or langusihing in a hell God has created."
I know. In Christianity, this life is more like a purification process, however what we do in this life still matters. What you do in this life matters in the next life. Our relational lives and how we treat others are a big part of our worship to God and us treating people well is pleasing to Him. (Luke 14:12-14, 1 Peter 4:8-11, 1 Thessalonians 5:18)

"Perhaps we do not see ourselves as above and beyond other animals as having dominion over them, but that is because we are part of them. We are members of an incredible universe formed of the same material and functioning from the same processes."
Non-Sequitur. How humans came to be has nothing to do with whether or not we are "special".

"Our existence is improbable, though not impossible, and we should not see ourselves as any less special for not being poofed into existence. On the contrary, I find it far more incredible and beautiful that we should have formed from self-replicating molecules using basic chemistry, and grown over millenia into complex multi-cellular organisms."
A straw man, a false dichotomy and a non-sequitur. Christianity does not teach that we were "poofed into existence". It is not a coincidence that the only people who believe otherwise know nothing about the Bible. diagoras54 is also presenting belief in Special Creation and non-theistic evolution as the only two options available to the masses. The only thing that could be considered as having been poofed into existence would be the singularity. It may be less impressive than say multi-verse theory, yet it is substantially more plausible.

"This is not pantheism, there is no worship of nature, only an appreciation of it, as one admires a painting."
Agreed.

"Rather than devaluing humans to God's playthings, let's accept that we are part of the universe and composed of it."
More question begging and false dichotomies. diagoras54 also fails to notice the apparent contradiction in his worldview. I take it he believes that humans are only composed of physical matter and that we are essentially collections of atoms in motion? I fail to see how this does not just reduce humanity to mindless automatons caught in the never-ending cycle of cause and effect, a la determinism.

"We are special, but no more so than any other life form, or star, or complex structure."
By giving humans value equal to that of inanimate objects, does this not devalue us? If I am ontologically equal to a blender, then does that mean, like when a blender is destroyed, it does not matter when I die?

"We should enjoy every day we have, knowing that they are temporary and fleeting."
You mean like how the Bible says? The Bible says to live each day as if it were your last, but also to prepare for tomorrow, just in case.

"This is not merely a pre-cursor to an infinite afterlife, with no greater significance than the moment it takes to welcome Jesus into your heart."
This is another straw man. As I have already explained, this life holds value. Also, salvation is not a single event where you simply "welcome Jesus into your heart" but a lifelong process (and if diagoras54 were familiar with the Semitic Totality Concept, he would be aware of this).

"Take every moment you have and use it to impact humanity. Grow our collective knowledge, improve the lives of others that they may do the same."
You mean just like the Bible says? I find it odd how diagoras54 could have missed all of these considering how he claims to be "exceedingly familiar with the Bible" and "more so" than myself.

"Do not merely sit back and wait for your time to go languish into paradise."
Christians don't. In case you have not noticed, Christians, actual Christians that is, are on the front lines, helping out in disasters across the globe, providing aid to impoverished nations. I guess it is no coincidence that Christians are the biggest givers on the planet, and atheists are among the lowest. I also find it highly ironic that diagoras54 says this, when, during the Haiti disaster, Richard Dawkins used the opportunity, not to call on atheists to give aid in order to actually help the people, but to call atheists to give aid to represent and big up atheism. Using other people's misfortune as a PR campaign is among the most dispicable deeds one person can do, yet diagoras54 would have us believe atheists value humanity more than Christians? How absurd! Luckily, not all atheists are like diagoras54 and Dawkins.

"Nothing devalues humanity to the extent of Christianity, and to follow its tenets is to waste an opportunity to accomplish something."
Asserted but not shown. Conversely, even if what diagoras54 were claiming about Christianity were true, I can still think of at least two things that devalue human life more so than Christianity. One is fairly obvious: Radical Islam. How you can even think Christianity is worse than radical Islam is mindblowing. However, the one thing that devalues human life more than anything else is atheism. Atheists have been responsible for the greatest crimes in human history because their lack of belief in God and the sanctity of human life enabled them to mass murder countless millions of their own citizens during peacetime without feeling guilty or even caring whatsoever. It was simply a statistic to them. Killing them was just a means to an end. Even the greatest crimes of religion pale in comparison to these events. When the Soviets came into power they executed more people in a single month than the Tsarist regime managed to execute during their entire reign! Humans are not special, we are just mindless automatons caught in a cycle of cause and effect. We are a cosmic accident, so if the government require you to die for their grand ideas, you can pretty much kiss your arse goodbye. That is the problem with atheism, it has no standards, so whenever somebody adopts life-stroying myths, they are acting perfectly consistently in an atheist frameowrk, and no rational atheistic objections that could be raised by sound-minded atheists to stop the madman. Of course, these atheists could appeal to ethics, but seeing as how the concepts of right and wrong are dependant on their being an objective moral lawgiver, atheists stealing religious concepts and removing their basis is what it would be like to watch a James Bond movie only to have him killed halfway through and replaced someone called Bames Jond.

"You are not flawed, you do not deserve punishment because of something your distant ancestor did. You are human nothing more and nothing less."
One final straw man and bare assertion fallacy eh?

I will now move onto the comments diagoras54 made in the comment section of his video. Some of these are so stupid that I find it difficult to believe diagoras54 is as well-versed as he would have us believe. I can only assume he is either a: a moron, b: simply ignorant, and thus is either lying about his expertise and/or someone with an overly inflated opinion of themselves as well as a pretty poor understanding of what qualifies as expertise, c: someone who is wilfully dishonest or d: a combination of some or all of the previous. I feel no need to copy and paste them here as the reader can simply view them for themselves.

On Hell and Salvation
Essentially, this is nothing more than what Vox Day described as an "argument from the unfairness of hell". This is essentially useless as an argument against Christianity or the Christian God, as it nothing more than an appeal to outrage, and an argument from personal incredulity. However, diagoras54's problems do not end there, he is relying on an idea of hell that is not a tenet of Christianity that was invented in the Middle Ages and is now mostly believed by fundamentalists and other people who have not studied the Bible with a great deal of depth. Essentially, the view diagoras54 is attacking is the "eternal torment in hell" view. I guess he has never heard of Annihilationism, or the Honour-Shame view? He also says that it does not matter if we never did anything wrong, the Bible says we will go to hell anyway if we do not believe in Jesus. Sorry, this is just plain wrong. The Bible says humans inevitably do things wrongs, which is why we need to accept Jesus. This is just diagoras54's refusal to accept that he is not perfect. Lastly, he says that the actual view of hell,the honour-shame view, which was held by original Christians as well as a significant amount of Christians today, is just an attempt to appease our personal desire. Wrong. Even if the eternal torment view were the correct on, diagoras54's arguments would still be invalid, for reason's already shown. Furthermore, if diagoras54 was acquainted with the current scholarship on the subject he would realise how absurd his claims are. diagoras54 also argue why does God just forgive us anyway, why the need the for hell? In the same way judges don't let criminals out into the streets instead of sending them to prison.
http://www.tektonics.org/uz/2muchshame.html
http://www.tektonics.org/af/baptismneed.html

On The Dark Ages and Medicine
Ah, the good 'ol Dark Ages mantra. As if I needed more evidence that diagoras54 knows nothing about what he is talking about. As any real Historian knows, the concept of the Dark Ages as a period of backwardsness, lack of medicine, literacy and written history is, actually wrong. The origin of this view can be traced back Petrarch in the 1330s. Modern scholars now do not use the term Dark Ages to describe ANY part of the Middle Ages. I cannot be bothered to refute diagoras54's absurd counter-factual claims here again, so I shall simply leave a link in the description box to a good lecture on the topic which is available in .pdf format as well as video. I also recommend The Victory of Reason by Rodney Stark. Other than that, diagoras54 commits an array of egregious logical errors. Firstly, chronological snobbery. diagoras54 argues that because they believed in things that were wrong, and promoted scientific theories that were wrong, their contributions to science are worthless. Then there is the typical question begging, circular reasoning, bare assertion fallacies and appeals to emotion that characterise diagoras54's posts.
http://www.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/faraday/CIS/Numbers/index.html

Here is a list of scientists who were Christians as well as contemporary scientists who are Christians: John Philoponus, Bede the Venerable, Hunayn ibn Ishaq, Pope Sylvester II, Hermann of Reichenau, Robert Grosseteste, Pope John XXI, Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, Theodoric of Freiberg, Thomas Bradwardine, Jean Buridan, Nicole Oresme, Nicholas of Cusa, Otto Brunels, Nicolaus Copernicus, Michael Servetus, Michael Stifel, William Turner, Ignazio Danti, Giordano Bruno, Batholomaeus Pitiscus, John Napier, Johannes Kepler, Laurentius Gothus, Galileo Galilei, Marin Mersenne, Rene Descartes, Anton Maria Schyrleus of Rheita, Blasie Pascal, Isaac Barrow, Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz, Nicolas Steno, Seth Ward, Robert Boyle, John Wallis, John Ray, Gottfried Leibniz, Isaac Newton, Colin Maclaurin, Thomas Bayes, Emanuel Swedenborg, Carolus Linnaeus, Leonhard Euler, Maria Gatana Agnesi, Joseph Priestly, Isaac Milner, Samuel Vince, Olinthus Gregory, William Buckland, Augustin Louis Cauchy, Lars Levi Laestadius, Edward Hitchcock, Willaim Whewell, Michael Faraday, Charles Babbage, Adam Sedgwick, Temple Chevallier, John Bachman, Robert Main, James Clerk Maxwell, Gregor Mendel, Philip Henry Gosse, Asa Gray, Francesco Faa di Bruno, Julian Tenison Woods, Louis Pasteur, George Jackson Mivart, Armand David, George Stokes, George Salmon, Henry Baker Tristam, Lord Kelvin, Pierre Duhem, Georg Cantor, Dmitri Egorov, Mihajlo Idvorski Pupin, Pavel Florensky, John Ambrose Fleming, Max Planck, Edward Arhur Milne, Robert Millikan, E. T. Whittaker, Arthur Compton, Georges Lemaitre, David Lack, Charles Coulson, Theodosius Dobzhansky, Michael Polyani, Henry Eyring, Aldert van der Ziel, Carlos Chagas Filho, Sir Robert Boyd, Richard Smalley, Arhthur Peacocke, C. F. von Weizsacker, Stanley Jaki, Charles Hard Townes, Ian Barbour, Freeman Dyson, Allan Sandage, John Polkinhorne, Owen Gingerich, John T. Houghton, R. J. Berry, Michal Heller, Ghillean Prance, Donald Knuth, Eric Priest, Henry F. Schaefer III, Robert T. Bakker, Kenneth R. Miller, Francis Collins, Simon C. Morris, John D. Barrow, Denis Alexander, Christopher Ishan, Martin Nowak, John Lennox.

Whilst a few were not "Orthodox", for example ibn Ishaq was Nestorian, Servatus was Unitarian and Albertus Magnus and Swedenborg were occultists, they were all Christian-style Theists.

On The Supression of Heliocentrism
I take it diagoras54 is not a physicist then, or has never read Galileo's works firsthand, because if he did then he would know that Galileo's theories and observations DID NOT support Copernicanism. Galileo's observations supported the Tychonic view that the Earth did not move and that everything else circled around it AND the sun, named after Tycho Brahe, a Danish astronomer from the sixteenth century. Simply put, Galileo's works were rejected because they were bad science. The reason Heliocentrism as a whole was supressed was because the Geocentrists used this as opportunity to promote their view. Simply shouting "BUT HE WAS RIGHT!" does not change the fact that Galileo's observations and theories DID NOT PROVE HELIOCENTRISM. Galileo should have reformulated his arguments as well as consider arguments against his position instead of just insulting the Pope.
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100305/full/news.2010.105.html

diagoras54 also makes a brief complaint about Christianity supressing Liberalism. It is funny how he says this when only one-third of American Liberal voters were actually atheists and two-thirds were religious.

On Different Denominations
Ah, the good old, if Christianity is true why are there thousands of demoninations argument? This is a complete non-sequitur. Every single denomination falls into one of three categories: Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox or Protestant. Each groups differ very little, and each "denomination" within each group differ from each other by even less.

On The Messiah
It does not matter what the Jews believed. The diciples initially believed that Jesus would be an earhtly king, which is why they were so distraught when Jesus was crucified. Yet, despite Jesus being killed, they went on to proclaim his physical resurrection and that the kingdom of God was a spiritual one. As did hardened and committed sceptics of Jesus' claims such as Paul and James.

The Supression of the Cathar Heresy and the Inquistions
Here diagoras54 is arguing that the killing of the Cathars was evil. Whilst I do disagree with the entire wholesale slaughter of the Cathars, the Catholics reasons for doing so were not entirely wrong. Now, as any student of History would know, the Cathars were Gnostics who believed that matter was intrinsically evil, and that the primary goal of man's life on earth was to transcend matter, perpetually renouncing anything connected with the principle of power. Their goal was the liberation from the realm of material existence, and this included its ecclesiastical and social structures as well as earthly knowledge. If everybody had become Cathars, then the pursuit of knowledge would have ended. Furthermore, since the social and poltical structures of Europe would have collapsed if Catharism had taken over, that would have left Europe vulnerable to Islamic invaders. In all probability, Europe would have been easily conquered by Muslim invaders. However, one of their most heretical ideas to feudal Europe was their belief that oaths were a sin. In a society where illiteracy was wide-spread and almost all business transactions and pledges of allegiance were based on oaths, to call them a sin because they attached you to the world was very dangerous. The truth is Christians were not "brutal killers" but were fighting for their very survival. Of course, there were brutal and bloody excesses, which must be condemned, but such is the case with all war and violent conflict. Of course, the war against the Cathars was largely political in nature, as various French Nobles, including Raymond VI and Raymond VII of Tolouse, sided with the Cathars so that they could undermine their rivals. diagoras54 then goes on about the Inquistions, which he claims killed large percentages of the population. In actual fact they did not. The Inqusitions were largely inneffectual, the only major "successes" being against the unfortunate Cathars. The Spanish Inqusition ran between 1481 and 1834, with a total number of people executed of 3,230. That is an average of 9 per year. The Medieval Inqusitions ran between 1184 and 1500 claimed 2,000. That is an average of 6 per year. The Portuguese Inquisition ran between 1540 and 1794, with a total of 1,175 deaths. That is an average of 5 per year.
Lea, Henry Charles, A History of the Inquisition of Spain.
Agostino Borromeo, Vatican Revision on Inquistion History.
Rodney Stark, God's Batallions
http://www.ptsem.edu/koinonia/assets/issues/16/r_powell.pdf
http://www.fact-index.com/c/ca/cathar.html
http://ignatiusinsight.net/features2005/print2005/tmadden_crusades_print.html

The Israelite Campaign Against the Midianites et al.
Here diagoras54 reveals his monumental ignorance of Ancient Near Eastern culture and the Bible. It is the old: "HOW COULD GOD COMMAND THE SLAUGHTER OF ENTIRE PEOPEL GROUPS" or "WHY DID THE ISRAELITIES SLAUGHTER SO MANY PEOPLE" type arguments. Can we all say: "argument from outrage"? If diagoras54 had spent any amount of time studying the Old Testament and its background then he would know that the Israelites were NOT commanded to slaughter every single man, woman and child of every people group in the "promised land" at all. Simply put there was no "war of extermination". This is a straw man. Firstly, the Israelites were only ordered to kill the citizens of a few cities and only of certain people groups. There were other people groups in other cities that Israelites were not ordered to kill and simply passed them by asking permission to travel through their lands. The one exception is where one nation pre-emptively strikes the Israelites, who then fight back. Secondly, the people groups in question were vicious bandits who went out attacking and raiding weaker people groups, who also participated in child sacrifice and orgiastic rites etc. Thirdly, if diagoras54 knew anything about Ancient Near Eastern culture, then he would know that children were educated from an early age, and boys were trained to follow in their fathers footsteps and were taught to avenge their fathers. Well, if they weren't sacificed before an idol of Molech or Baal. The final few facts that squarely contradict diagoras54 here are as follows. From what we know of Ancient Near Eastern culture, virgins were not kept as sex slaves, the reason they were spared was because they posed no threat. Lastly, women and children would have fled prior to the battle. Those that stayed behind did so at their own peril. I also like how diagoras54 repeatedly makes the same appeal to emotion over and over again. "YOU'RE INSANE! YOU'RE SICK!" Well, the simple explanation is, that is all he has, as there is no factual support for his position whatsoever.
http://www.christian-thinktank.com/midian.html
http://www.christian-thinktank.com/qamorite.html

Atheist Regimes
diagoras54's intellectual dishonesty is really quite staggering. I guess he is completely unware that the atheist regimes in question manufactured these famines either through incompetence or on purpose. Furthemore, they did nothing to stop them. The point about technology is false as Mao lacked the level of technology available to others. Also, when the Soviets came to power, they executed more people in one month in a single execution camp than the Tsarist regime killed throughout Russia throughout their entire reign. The point about population is meaningless too. The Crusades were waged across many countries (and continents) over hundreds of years, yet still resulted in less deaths than Pol Pot racked up just in Cambodia in a much shorter space of time. Either way, it is fairly clear to the unbiased observer that they WERE motivated by atheism.

Here are a few quotes, just using Lenin as an example:
"Every religious idea, every little god, even flirting with a little god, is unutterable vileness... vileness of the most dangerous kind, a plague of the most abominable kind. A million sins, filthy deeds, acts of violence and physical plagues are much less dangerous than the subtle, spiritual idea of a god dressed up in the smartest intellectual costumes. A priest who seduces young girls... is far less dangerous for 'democracy' than a priest without a cassock, a priest without crude religion, a principled and democratic priest who advocated the construction and creation of a little god." -Vladimir Lenin, Polnoe Sobrani Sochinenii, 5th ed., vol. 47 (Moscow: Fospolitizdat, 1965-1873), 226-227.

"Our aim is not to 'renovate' the church, but to abolish it, to eradicate all religion. That aim can be achieved only when society is organised on communist principals... So far, we have had little time to pay serious attention to religious prejudices. We were confronted with things much more urgent and important.But now the time has changed and all this filthy idolatry will be swept away." - 1923 Editorial of government newspaper Izvestiia. Cited in, A.A. Valentinov, The Assult of Heaven (London: Boswell Printing and Publishing Co., 1925), 7.

"In what sense do we reject ethics, reject morality? In the sense given to it by the bourgeoisie, who based ethics on God's commandments... We say that our morality is entirely subordinated to the interests of the proletariats' class struggle. Our morality stems from the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat." - V. I. Lenin, Selected Works in Three Volumes, vol. 3 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1970), 476-477.

I also guess it was just a coincidence that churches were burnt and torn down, that religious people made up a significant percentage of those killed, sent to gulags and experimented on, that religion was outlawed and that the perpetrators believed they were acting on "scientific atheism", which is what they beleived Communism to be based on.

* The average atheist crimes against humanity is far greater than the worst crimes committed by Christians, even though atheist leaders have had less than one 20th the number of opportunities to commit them.
* Not even 1 out of 1000 religious leaders have commited such similar atrocities.
* Every time there has been an atheist state, it resulted in the repeated mass democide of that countries own citizens by that government.
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM

Just using Stalin and Mao as examples, the lowest reliable estimate for the amount of deaths at their hands are 20,000,000 and 60,000,000 respectively. These two were by far the worst of the whole hellbound lot. This does not magically disprove atheism, or magically prove theism, so it makes me wonder why diagoras54 thinks that his complaining about crimes committed by Christians (in stark violation of Christian tenets) can somehow disprove Christianity.
Here is the full list of atheist leaders who have committed atrocities of considerable size. This list does not include Hitler (who was a Pagan) or those whose bodycounts did not rise above the 20,000 mark, and does not include those whose religious beliefs are uncertain: -
Afghanistan: Nur Muhamad Taraki, Babrak Kamal
Albania: Enver Hoxha
Angola: Agostinho Neto, Jose Eduardo dos Santos
Bulgaria: Vulko Chervenkov, Todor Zhivkov
Cambodia: Pol Pot, Heng Samrin
China: Mao Tse-Tung, Hua Guofeng, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintau
Cuba: Fidel Castro
Czechoslovakia: Klement Gottwald, Antonin Zapotocky, Antonin Novotny, Gustav Husak
East Germany: Walter Ulbricht, Erich Honecker
Ethiopia: Tafari Benti, Mengistu Haile Mariam
French Republic: Jean-Marie Collot d'Herbois, Jacques Nicolas Billaud-Varenne
Greece: Nikolaos Zachariadis
Hungary: Matyas Rakosi
Laos: Kaysone Phomvihane, Khamtai Siphandone
Mongolia: Khorloogiin Choibalsan, Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal
Mozambique: Samora Machel
North Korea: Kim il-Sung, Kim Jong-il
Poland: Wladyslaw Gomulka, Boleslaw Bierut
Romania: Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, Nicolae Ceausescu
Soviet Union: Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev
Spain: Manuel Azana, Francisco Largo Caballero
Vietnam: Ho Chi Minh, Le Duan, Le Kha Phieu, Nong Duc Manh
Yugoslavia: Josip Broz Tito

The correlation here between State Atheism and mass-democide is very apparent and to deny the connection between atheism and these acts would be like denying we exist. Then again I have spoken with an atheist who admitted he often doubt we exist at all, so maybe diagoras54 will continue denying the obvious? Who knows, or cares. I'm sure diagoras54 will probably try and appeal to the secular countries of Europe as beacons of atheism, but the total percentage of atheists in the EU is 18%, with 52% theists and 27% spiritualists.
http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_225_report_en.pdf