What's So Great About Christianity?

Dinesh D'Souza

Ch 18: Rethinking the Inquisition: The Exaggerated Crimes of Religion

Atheists raise moral arguments against religion by claiming that religion causes conflict and violence (the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, etc.). DÕSouza argues that the First Crusade was a legitimate response to Muslim aggression and subsequent Crusades were based on mixed motives and tainted with unjustifiable crimes. Stories about The Inquisition are largely myths which were created by the political enemies of Spain and by later political enemies of religion. Conflicts such as the Thirty Year Wars were initially fueled by religion but later became economically, politically and ethnically motivated. Religion can be accompanied by self-righteousness that leads to persecution and violence in the name of religion, but for the Christian, violence is not acceptable.

p203 Weinberg quote

p204 Harris, Russell, Dawkins blast religion for great evils

p205 Crusade description

p206 Kamen The Spanish Inquisition - stereotype of the Inquisition is essentially made up.

p207 Kamen estimates 2000, others 1500-4000 executions over 350 years. Salem witch trials fewer than 25, witches burned 100,000.

p211 Brothers Karamazov Christ before the tribunal -thrown into prison - go and never return - Christ is a peacemaker, the opposite of the persecutions and violence that have been perpetrated in the name of Christianity.

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What's So Great About Christianity?

Dinesh D'Souza

Ch 19: A License to Kill: Atheism and the Mass Murders of History

Though atheists love to share about the violence that religious believers have done, they rarely take stock of atheistic crimes such as those done by Stalin (20 mill. killed) , Mao (70 mill. killed), Hitler (10 mill. killed), Castro, Pol Pot, Ceausescu, etc. Atheists such as Dawkins deny that rejection of God has anything to do with these killings, but the one common factor in these movements was the denial of God.

p214 "In the past hundred years or so, the most powerful atheist regimes - Communist Russia, Communist China, and Nazi Germany - have wiped out people in astronomical numbers."

p214 Stalin 20 million, Mao Zedong up to 70 million, Hitler 10 million

p214 Not including Lenin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev and "lesser" atheist tyrants Pol Pot, Enver Hoxha, Nicolae Ceausescu, Fidel Castro, Kim Jong-il. Pol Pot about 1/5 of his population 1.5-2 million people.

p215 All of religious violence approx 200,000 Scales to world population about a factor of 5 to a million, still a factor of 100 down from the atheist regimes

p216 presses the case that atheists have as much responsibility for those atrocities as they could attribute to religion

p217 Details on Hitler and Nazi regime to counter claims of major complicity by Christians

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