A million here, a million there....

The defense of the Faith against atheists has taken a strange new twist these past few weeks. In his latest article in that vein, political writer Dinesh D'Souza defends his much-criticized statement in an earlier article that "Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history". It's gotten to be something of an Everett-Dirksen-style numbers game: a million dead here, a million there, and pretty soon you're talking real casualties...

I find the whole debate rather beside the point, in an almost Kafkaesque sort of way. When I look at the violent conflicts in the world today, I see that in some cases religion has something to do with it, and in others religion has nothing to do with it. In point of fact, greed, ethnic hatred, and lust for domination are and have always been the strongest, most common motives for mass killing. Sometimes, religion or an ideology with quasi-religious force is used to rationalize such motives; sometimes it isn't. That is the real answer to what has become a stock atheist charge.