LordsFire
Internet Wizard
Corruption and abuse of authority is endemic to the human condition.
Christianity is not 'far up the shitlist,' though the Catholic Church and its many heresies is, as well as some heretical Protestants like John Calvin.
The distinction is that these people can be called heretics, because their abuses of authority violate the teachings of Christ, whereas this is not true of Islam, Hinduism, etc. Buddhists get at least partial credit, because they do teach that humility and self-denial are virtues.
The very concept of servant leadership, that the point of having power was to serve the people, rather than have the people serve you, was popularized through what became western culture by Christianity. It wasn't unique to it, there were some non-Christian leaders who displayed this value, but it was not an accepted cultural doctrine in the various preceding pagan religions.
Atheism, Communism, modern neo-marxist and other identity-politics types, none of these ideologies teach universal moral franchise, or universal human rights. Atheism has no intrinsic moral system at all, and the others explicitly teach dehumanizing 'us vs them' morality, wherein any action against the out-group is justified.
From when the Roman empire was christianized to when atheism began overtaking the culture around the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, yes, tens and hundreds of thousands of people died in wars, some of them driven as much by power struggles within religious hierarchy as between the nobility. This was in violation of Christ's teaching.
In the 20th century, atheists, especially socialist atheists, killed tens of millions. And it isn't just because it was 'easier with modern technology' or 'because the populations were larger.' No, they managed to starve millions of people to death, and this was not in contravention to the doctrines of communism or atheism, it was directly fulfilling them.
Meanwhile, what did Christian nations do in the same time? Either became the most prosperous and advanced nations in the world (USA, much of the anglosphere) or stagnated (much of the spanish and Portueguese-speaking world), and notably the more stagnant places were usually having a lot of their problems come from struggles with communists, who were usually atheists.
If we compare death tolls, atheists have butchered far more in a much shorter period of time.
If you insist on only comparing to the 20th century, you still have the atheists butchering tens of millions, while the christians built prosperous nations, and started sending aid to other nations. (Communist) atheist nations exported communist revolutions that resulted in tyranny, slaughter, and economic failure (Zimbabwe being a particularly notable case of induced famine), while the worst that christian nations did was bring about stagnation.
On every comparison, on every level, the fruit of cultures and nations that go full atheist is massively worse than even 'christians' who are outrageous heretics doing terrible things that violate Christ's teachings. When you have nations that make at least some reasonable effort to follow said teachings, you get the most prosperous and stable nations in the world.
