My second problem with the complaint of Hitchens and others that Christianity has done more harm than good is that the violence of Christendom is dwarfed by that of non-religious causes. Just think of WWI (8 million deaths) or WWII (35 million deaths).

Then there is the very awkward fact that the 20th century’s three great atheistic regimes were hotbeds of unrestrained violence. Joseph Stalin’s openly atheistic project killed at least 20 million people, which is more people each week than the Spanish Inquisition killed in its entire 350 year history. Pol Pot, another avowed atheist, is known to have slaughtered 2 million people out of a population of 8 million. This is not to claim that atheists are more violent than Christians. It simply underlines that violence is a perennial human problem, not a specifically religious one.

And those who suggest that these communist regimes were quasi-religious in their zeal and, therefore, provide further evidence of the pernicious effect of religion have abandoned sincere investigation into the problem and have settled on crass anti-religious apologetics. Better to state the obvious: religion or irreligion can inspire hate.

The claim that religion has started ‘most of the wars’ of history ought to cause embarrassment to thinking people. And yet it remains, as David Bentley Hart points out, “the sort of remark that sets many heads sagely nodding in recognition of what seems an undeniable truth. Such sentiments have become so much a part of the conventional grammar of “enlightened” scepticism that they are scarcely ever subjected to serious scrutiny.”1

1. David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions: the Christian Revolution and its Fashionable Enemies. Yale University Press, 2009, 5.