Talk:20th century atrocities

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)

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.