Truthbomb Apologetics: Book Excerpt: The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Bible by Robert J. Hutchinson

This post has an excerpt from an important book (pictured on the right). This isn't the first place I have seen this information presented but it sure is easiest to bring it up now. Here is the part of the excerpt I want to point to:

According to research conducted by the political scientist Rudolph Rummel at the University of Hawaii, the officially atheist states of the Communist bloc committed more acts of genocide than any societies in governments in the twentieth century-communist, socialist, fascist-equals about 170 million.

* USSR: 61 million people murdered 1917-1987
* Communist China: 35,2 million people murdered 1949-present
* Mao's army: 3.4 million people murdered 1923-1949
* Nazi Germany: 20 million people murdered 1932-1945
* Communist Poland: 1.6 million people murdered 1945-1948
* Communist Cambodia: 2 million people murdered 1975-1979
* Communist Vietnam: 1.6 million people murdered 1945-1975
* Communist Yugoslavia: 1 million people murdered 1944-1987
* Anti-Christian Mexican Revolution: 1.4 million people murdered 1900-1920
* Turkey:1.8 million people murdered 1900-1918
* Pakistan: 1.5 million people murdered 1958-1987
* Japan: 5.9 million people murdered 1936-1945

...Rummel's conclusion is as shocking as it is inescapable: War wasn't the most deadly evil to afflict humanity in the twentieth century. Government was! And not just any government, but atheist government.

This information flies in the face of accusations from atheists like Dan Barker, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins who seem to think that more people have died over religion than have been killed by Atheistic regimes. The same book also gives an estimate of the number of people who died because of religious wars and persecutions waged by theists.

Historical demographers estimate that, in the 350 years between 1478 and 1834, the Spanish Inquisition was responsible for the execution of between 2,000 (Encyclopedia Britannica) and 32,000 people (Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews, 1987.)

That works out to about ninety-seven people a year- a ghastly number, to be sure, but a far cry from the "millions" routinely cited by secular fundamentalists.

By the way, no one is suggesting that all atheists are evil or any worse than anyone else!


Truthbomb Apologetics: Book Excerpt: The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Bible by Robert J. Hutchinson