Hey, thought I when I saw this. Unfair! What about the Jews?
So, in the interest of fair play, here are some awesome example of acts of extremism committed by our peeps in the name of our God.
And Mattathias and his friends went about and tore down the altars; they forcibly circumcised all the uncircumcised boys that they found within the borders of Israel. -- 1 Macaabees
David and his men went out and killed two hundred Philistines. He brought their foreskins and presented the full number to the king so that he might become the king's son-in-law. - Samuel 18Now, because someone is certain to mention the communists and their war against religion, let me point this out at the top.
They fought against Midian, as the LORD commanded Moses, and killed every man. -- Numbers 31
Stalin did persecute believers. That is true. He was an atheist. That is also true. However, Stalin also had a mustache. The grounds for saying atheism caused Stalin to persecute believers are about equal to the grounds for saying his mustache caused him to persecute believers. Stalin murdered clergy in the name of Marxism-Leninism, a communist ideology, not in the name of atheism -- which is not an ideology at all.
Atheism is a position regarding a single question. An ideology is a list of positions. Destroying religion is a position of Marxism-Leninism. It is not a position of atheism.
