Both Father R. D'Souza & Dinesh D'Souza point out (links below) that upwards of 100 million people were murdered by certain secular regimes during the 20th century; add another 100 million for Vietnam, China, etc. So in the past 100 years more than 100 million + folks were murdered by professedly secular regimes. I don't know what that means, percentage-wise,
vis-a-vis the world's current population. Neither do I know what it means in contrast to The Inquisition, etc.,
vis-a-vis the (then) current population. However, I am willing to bet that the secularists are far more 'efficient' in their technique than was, eg, the Inquisition in its time.
Yet a brilliant man like Hitchens, and a presumably intelligent man like Dawkins (actually that's a stretch, because he is obviously an arrogant, poorly trained intellectual, with merely special 'scientific' training - let me expound: eg, he has less than a college freshman's learning & capability in fundamental, philosophical logic - the "informal fallacies" abound throughout his popular works) so as I was saying, still, these secularist men continue to spout off about religion being the Sole Source of all wars & violence - all the while lambasting drunkards such as Mel Gibson (who blamed all the wars & violence on the Jews) as they simultaneously blame all the war & violence on the "Religions" of the world.
Bigots, the lot of them.
In contrast - review, for example, R. Girard's work on Violence & The Sacred, and one must at least acknowledge that religious folk (Christians at that!) may very well admit to their own contribution to the cycle of violence; so indeed did Pope John Paul II! But will the secularists like Hitchens, Dawkins, et al, ever admit to their own complicity in the murderous violence?
One of the D'Souza's points out that thousands were killled by, among other religious folks, personages of the middle ages. Also add to that thousands and thousands of those murdered by modern Jihadists, etc. Quite a toll, eh?, religious-murder-wise? 100+ million? So, in the history of the world, since Cain killed Abel (precisely for religious reasons), the toll of "religious" murders may enter into 1 million or even much more, but more importantly, may very well enter into a substantial proportion of the % of the then current population.
Even if one attacks D'Souza for under-representing the religious source of murderous behaviour, one must still admit that -- for merely a 100 year stint at it -- the secular regimes did quite well, and far outpaced their former 'religious' counterparts.
100+ Million dead, in 100 years. So his (D'Souza's) point is made, overriding any necessary demographic & statistical qualifications -- for instance, adding in the most recent religiously motivated murders by Jihadist Muslims, etc.
Yet secularists like Dawkins and Hitchens still have to account for the inordinate amount of secularist murders within the past 100 years -- because it is only within the past 100 years that professed secularists (atheists & agnostics) have been operating political bodies. And we haven't seen the end of it, I dare say. 100+ million people murdered for explicitly secular, ie non-religious, aims.
By the way, add in the secularists 'murders',
in utero, of human persons not yet born into this world (abortion), and the millions pile up astonomically. 1 billion+? Within the past 100 years?
Let's be fair, at least, and honestly state that we all (whether religious or atheist) participate, more or less, in murderous hatred that seems to mark the Human Condition.
http://catholiceducation.org/articles/apologetics/ap0213.htmhttp://catholiceducation.org/articles/apologetics/ap0212.htm
This is a worthwhile read if you happen to be sappy and naive enough to care about what Jimmy Carter has been writing of late.
