Alan Shore: "When did religion get such a good name, anyway? Hundreds of millions have died in religious conflicts..."

Are Christians and other religions responsible for the majority of bloodshed in history?

Consider this: Have all policemen in all history always stood for justice? Have some accepted bribes, imprisoned innocent civilians, assaulted suspects beyond reason? Are they taught to do such things? No, of course not. But such things do happen.

Not every fireman rescues every victim from every fire. Or even arrives at the fire on time.

Am I attacking the police or the firemen? Of course not. They are heroes and do great things and perform a necessary service. We need them. A few bad police or bad firemen do not spoil the whole department, let alone the whole profession.

Sometimes people act outside of their teachings or beliefs.

So, unless a religion demands conversion by the sword, the religion cannot be judged by those who operate outside its teachings to do those things. Galatians 5:22-23a states,

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control...

In sharp contrast to the works of the flesh:

Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.

Paul goes on to say:

I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

So you cannot judge Christianity by those who claim Christianity, yet practice "enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, etc." Paul says they are not Christians.
It cannot be stated much more clearly than in 1 John 3:4-10

Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that he appeared to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.

Okay, Dragnet time. Let's look at the Salem Witch Trials where millions were burned at the stake. Oh--er, according to Wikipedia, the trials "led to the death of 20 people (14 women, 6 men) and the imprisonment of 150 more people." Oh, and scroll down to "Closure." It was the Reverend Francis Dane who led the opposition. I'm not minimizing the 20 who died or the 150 who were imprisoned. It was tragic. However, 20 is not anywhere near "millions."

Now, that's America. In Europe the numbers were much higher. From 1484-1782, the Christian church executed 300,000 women accused of witchcraft. Again, I don't want to minimize the tragic loss of 1,000 women per year. But 300,000 is still less than "millions."

The Crusades, everyone's favorite topic, killed tens of thousands. An atrocity to be sure, but still less than "millions." And, again, these were all, at best, misguided, if not outright denials of Biblical teaching.

So, what has Secular Humanism contributed? According to Wikipedia, Mao Zedong (Mao Tse Tung) "pursued the ideal of a strong, prosperous and socially egalitarian China, endeavoring to build a modern socialist nation." According to Matthew White's 30 Worst Atrocities of the 20th Century, Mao's responsible for 40 million deaths.

Nobel Prize winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn estimated 66.7 million killed from 1917-1959 under Lenin, Stalin, and Khrushchev.

From Wikipedia:

Saloth Sar (May 19, 1925 – April 15, 1998), better known as Pol Pot, was the ruler of the Khmer Rouge and the Prime Minister of Cambodia (officially Democratic Kampuchea during his rule) from 1976 to 1979, having been de facto leader since mid-1975. During his time in power Pol Pot instigated a policy of relocating people to the countryside in an attempt to purify the Cambodian people as a step toward a communist future. The means to this end included the extermination of intellectuals and other "bourgeois enemies". Today the excesses of his government are widely blamed for causing the deaths of up to three million Cambodians. In 1979, he led Cambodia into a disastrous war with Vietnam which led to the collapse of the Khmer Rouge government.

Consider, those were three million out of a total population of eight million.

Zhang Xianzhong was responsible for an estimated 40 million deaths. When scholars rejected his claim as emperor of the Great Western Kingdom, he had them killed. Then he killed women, merchants, and all officials. "Then he had his soldiers kill each other and the officers' wives' feet cut off and put on top of a mound."

So, where do we find "hundreds of millions" killed? In non-religious conflicts-- God-less conflicts-- atheist conflicts. So, Mr. Shore, when did humanism get such a good name?