In reaction to the letter that was written by John Guillaumier, I would like to focus on the really big crimes committed by atheist groups and governments.

In the past 100 years or so, the most powerful atheist regimes – Communist Russia and China and Nazi Germany – have wiped out people in astronomical numbers. Stalin was responsible for around 20 million deaths while Mao Zedong’s regime killed a staggering 70 million, the most murderous in world history.

Both Stalin’s and Mao’s killings – unlike those of the Crusades or the Thirty Years War, to mention two examples – were committed in peacetime and were performed on their own fellow countrymen.

Hitler comes in a distant third with around 10 million murders, six million of them Jews within four years. Pol Pot eliminated approximately one fifth of the Cambodian population.

Having said that, this is not to justify the wrongdoings of the Christians but only to put the argument in its true perspective. Stalin and Mao enforced atheist policies by systematically closing churches and murdering priests and religious believers.

All Communist regimes have been strongly anti-religious, which suggests that their atheism is intrinsic rather than incidental to their ideology.

In defence of the truth, it is so great to be a Christian.