An atheist told me recently, ‘No one kills in the name of atheism’. In fact he was so sure he told me twice.
He’s not unique in making such a claim. Richard Dawkins writes in The God Delusion: ‘Individual atheists may do evil things but they don’t do evil things in the name of atheism’.
Dawkins won’t even allow us to think that atheism had any influence on Stalin’s murderous regime. He says: ‘The mature Stalin was scathing about the Russian Orthodox Church, and about religion in general. But there is no evidence that his atheism motivated his brutality’.
