It's about love and faith in Christ.
Let me explain. The doctrine of Christ preaches tolerance and love towards your fellow man and your God.
MetalDogGear
The problem for you is that people can both be Atheistic and have tolerance and love toward their fellow man. Neither belief in or love of Jesus are required for these 2 states of being. Also, many non religious people actually go out of their way to expose themselves to as much moral philosophy as possible, including philosophy within religious literature. The difference between a non religious person doing this and a religious person doing this is that the non religious person has absolutely no reason to take on indefensible moral positions and can merely toss them out without any hassle and the religious person has to waste time making excuses for how those indefensible positions exist within their infallible scripture. It's merely and only an unnecessary obstacle that only exists for the faithful.
You can bring up the bad caused by religion, but honestly, it does no good. The Salem witch trials were an honest error in human judgement. If anything you can blame your fellow man for not following Christ appropriately. A true, honest to God (Excuse the pun) Christian would never have condone such horrors. God's plan forsaw the witch trials and he is willing to forgive our sins. He sacrificed his only son on the cross and so people like that can and do atone for their sins. I am a firm believer in once saved always saved.
MetalDogGear
The problem of religion isn't specifically that religious people have done bad things. It's deeper than that. The problem is dogmatism - people's propensity to believe propositions without sufficient objective reason and evidence. It just so happens that religion almost always (especially in the case of Christianity) embraces this propensity. There are better and worse ways to thrive as a species and whether or not our fundamental moral beliefs are true and realistic will have a significant impact on whether or not we act morally.
Now, if the nonbeliever wishes to make a case for the sins caused by Christianity, they may look to their own belief (yes it is a belief). Hitler was an atheist. Stalin as well as Mao adhered to the Atheist belief. To attack religion for this is to castigate yourself for the same crime.
MetalDogGear
No this is ridiculous. Atheism is a lack of belief in deities. The people you list had a multitude of other beliefs that existed above and beyond their lack of belief in deities. Hitler for instance, had many beliefs about other races and the purity of certain types of blood. These regimes were dogmatic and the problem is dogmatism, not religion. Atheism, by itself, is not dogmatic and has no dogmatic beliefs entailed. The only necessary prerequisite is a lack of belief in deities. Atheists can be terrible people or they can be good people or they can be neutral. If it weren't for the semantic fact that 'ist' is only used to refer to people, it would be semantically correct to call a rock an Atheist. It represents a lack of a certain belief and that's it.
And so I make the following argument:
A: If Christianity is responsible for the many crimes of humanity, then it follows that any crime under any belief is also responsible
MetalDogGear
This isn't very coherent. No one claims that Christianity is responsible for 'the many' crimes of humanity. They do claim that Christian literature has animated people to behave certain ways, many of which were immoral, but so have many other types of scripture. Ultimately, though, all of this scripture was written by man so it is man, and man's seemingly innate propensity to belief propositions on insufficient objective evidence and reason that is responsible, not Christianity or religion per se.
B: As Devil's Advocate, it is the case that Christianity is responsible.
MetalDogGear
What?
C: Therefore Atheism is responsible for the same crimes.
D: Atheism is corrupted.
MetalDogGear
I gather that you might be new to this but this isn't how logical arguments work. You have a list of premises there that don't lead to conclusions. I might interpret your 'argument' charitably by assuming that C and D represent conclusions but even then C and D don't follow from your earlier premises and your earlier premises are either absolutely untrue (A) or incoherent (B). C and D seem to be merely unsubstantiated assertions. Atheism is a lack of belief and that's it so if you want to show how it's responsible for the same crimes as certain other beliefs or how it's corrupt, you'll have to actually expose the logical links entailed.
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