The Atheist Atrocities Fallacy – Hitler, Stalin & Pol Pot

[Major Nikon]

39. I'm not sure how to do that

I'm just not convinced there's very many people who can legitimately credit religion with keeping them from doing evil things and such a thing would be impossible to verify. How many people would say they'd really like to bash their neighbor's head in with a hammer, but they are afraid of rotting in hell if they did? Furthermore I don't know of any religion that doesn't include some sort of path to redemption regardless of what evil they do. There's no shortage of believers on death row.

As far as what can be measured, countless studies have shown atheists are no less ethical than believers and some even suggest the inverse relationship. Certainly there's no shortage of people who credit religion for keeping them on the straight and narrow, but I'm not sure how many of those claims are legitimate. People tend to do whatever they feel strongly enough to do regardless of their religious beliefs or lack thereof, and religion can not only be easily used to justify harm, it can also be used to convince others there was no actual harm to begin with. Look at how long the Catholic church covered up priest pedophilia. The followers of David Koresh actually offered up their children to him.