Talk:20th century atrocities

Perhaps a mention could be made of the lives saved by technology, for example without the advances in agriculture by the non-religious http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug the world would probably have about a billion people less, paling the deaths of any regime. BelgianAtheist 09:36, 21 August 2008 (CDT)

secular dogma
There is ambiguous reference to Stalin, which many people might find incredibly annoying. Here is the list of things you might want consider for accuracy
 * 1) Killings and communist crimes in USSR did not start with Stalin, nor the ended with his death. Examples are Red terror of 1918 and Prague 1968
 * 2) if you want to find number of people killed in USSR good reference would be http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm. You mention 3 million however in some estimates it is as high as 60 millions.
 * 3) The reference to Stalin NEVER mentions that very rarely(hardly ever) people were prosecuted for their theistic believe. In fact most people were prosecuted for questioning official dogma . "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda" article 58.x(http://www.cyberussr.com/rus/uk-rsfsr.html) later became article 70 (http://books.google.com/books?id=Nx0gnXpMbnsC&pg=PA83&lpg=PA83&dq=soviet+criminal+code+article+70&source=bl&ots=HjmU_-AKK8&sig=MGHDxadvPWrT5uWYpk-jGH_wGB4&hl=en&ei=GuWnSrueLYSCMqbR0JIC&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3#v=onepage&q=soviet%20criminal%20code%20article%2070&f=false)
 * 4) As a follow up to #3 you might want to mention that official state DOGMA of communism was written as article #6 of USSS constitution of 1977 http://www.friends-partners.org/oldfriends/constitution/const-ussr1977.html

Sorry for my english, but all the references to Stalin as atheist are invalid in my opinion since he was a profet(saint or whatever) of a new religion of communism which is dogmatic, unscientific (not testable, not verifiable) and quite irrational in my personal opinion.

Christopher Hitchens' counter-argument
Christopher Hitchens has an original counter-argument for this as presented in a debate with Reverend Al Sharpton, which can be found here, seven minutes in: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWt8a1aMkZ4 Gordon 03:41, 22 September 2009 (GMT+10:00)