Re: The light turns green

bIXX [EMAIL PROTECTED] ix.sas.com (Bill) wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
>  [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Ray Fischer) writes:
> >Marie A. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >>bIX [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bill) wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
>  
> >>> The difference between Judeo-Cristianity and Islam, is
> >>> really a simple one, but quite profound.  Christians
> >>> are saved by faith, and their discipline comes from
> >>> within themselves, while Moslems are saved by their
> >>> works, and their discipline comes from without/others.
> >>
> >>Uh, do those "works" include slitting the throats of flight attendants
> >>and ramming jet airliners into skyscrapers? Uh, no, you say?
> >
> >Uh, yes, actually.  Or something very like it.  Considering hundreds
> >of years of persecution against Jews and Muslims and Pagans I'd guess
> >that the death toll caused by "Christians" far exceeds anything done
> >thus far by any other religion.
> 
> Your *guess* is pretty far off the mark, there Ray.
> The atheists of Czarist Russia murdered an estimated
> 20-30 million people in the last century.  

*Czarist* Russia ? Say it ain't true !

The nazi's
> of WW2 Germany murdered some 6 million. 

Let me remind you that Nazis were definitely theists; and the war that
they started killed much more than 6 millions.

 Do you have
> any figures for those killed in the several Islamic
> wars, the Spanish Inquisition, or perhaps the Irish
> conflicts of recent history?  I do not have a cite,
> but recall the numbers in the hundreds and the thousands,
> not the millions...   Try again.

Take into account the total population figures and available methods,
and the comparison becomes quite realistic.

But what you forget is that communists killed in the name of communism
- not of atheism -, while theists killed in the name of their god.
IOW, it's *ideologies* which kill people; they can be secular or
non-secular, but for the victim it is irrelevant whether he dies as an
enemy of the proletariate, or of the true faith.

Thus the actual score stands: ideologues many millions, non-ideologues
essentially zero.

Regards,
HRG.