Fair is Fair

On IRC, the Evangelical Atheists are always going on about the Inquisition and the other religious persecutions managed by Christianity over the ages, and expecting Christians to take the blame.

I don't buy it.

First, if you go by number of people killed for ideological reasons, Mao Tse Tung (a couple hundred million) and Josef Stalin (about 100 Million) lead the pack -- good ideological Atheists, both. Next comes Hitler's Germany -- which they falsely accuse of being Christian -- with 6 million Jews and another 6 million Christians, Romany, and other miscellaneous victims -- including atheist intellectuals.

In fourth place (if you believe his numbers in "De Bello Gallico"), comes that exemplary Pagan, Julius Caesar with 5 million Gauls slaughtered.

In 5th place is Pol Pot -- yet another ideological atheist -- with 3 million Cambodian deaths.

The Spanish Inquisition, on the other hand, seems to have tried about 125,000 people:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition#Death_tolls

. . . and executed 1200 -- 2500 over the period 1485 to 1808 -- between 3 and 8 a year, tops.

Numbers for other Inquisitions are similarly inflated, The Protestant "Fox's Martyrs" is grossly exaggerated, and Wiccan numbers for the "Burning Times" are simply ludicrous -- they take the worst fringe Protestant numbers and multiply by 100 or 1000.

So, my response to the Evangelical Atheists is:

"If you seriously expect us to take responsibility for executions in our far past, you need to take responsibility for your monstrously enormous executions in the near past." This really upsets them.