Headlines can be misleading. The “Time” in question here is, in fact, the magazine TIME, this week’s edition (August 18, 2014) and its Letters to the Editor. Only eight of the thousands no doubt submitted were published, but as many as two of the eight concern religion. One says, without any great originality : “The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has raged on for too long. Peace will continue to be elusive as long as religion continues to influence the mind-set of the belligerents involved”. The other is more general : “My Dad taught me early on that more people have died because of organized religion than anything else”, and notes that “TIME has mirrored this sentiment”. Neither statement is particularly insightful. Some readers may dismiss both as truisms. But it is the proportion that strikes me : 25% of the letters chosen concern religion. This is not due, I’m sure, to any editorial policy or desire to denigrate religious belief the way some diabolical blogs do. And I am not suggesting that there is any particular statistical significance in the ratio I have underlined. It is just a reminder that religion is of permanent interest to many and of deep concern to some.
One could, I suppose, plot on a Gauss bell-curve the minority of people passionately in favor of religion, another minority passionately opposed to religion, and a big fat majority in the middle of people who more or less believe and practise religion within the degrees from indifference to fervor which the graph would illustrate. My Believers on the Brink are over there on the slope on the right, on their way, I hope, to joining the militant atheist minority.
Meantime the millions of TIME readers will, even if they haven’t yet discovered this Blog, perhaps reflect on the further evidence which the TIME letters recall of the truth in Hitchens’ sub-title : “Religion Poisons Everything”.
RIDENDA RELIGIO
Blind Faith: Blind Folly 
Four points are relevant:
1. In recent times, the huge carnage of human life has occurred under atheistic regimes, or at least godless regimes;
Hitler’s Germany, Soviet Russia, Cambodia, North Korea to pick a few.
2. In current times, Christians are being persecuted and killed by fanatics of false religions: Iraq, Egypt, Syria to pick a few.
3. In recent years, there are insignificant, if any persecutions or wars being inflicted by Christians.
4. The 20th century has seen more Christian martyrs than all previous centuries, mostly at the hands of the godless or false religions. There has not been a war started by Christians.
We must keep a balanced and truthful view.
Believers on the brink should stay firmly on their present side of their Bell curve, and move further towards its tail, while they examine the veracity of claims by literally those over the hill and on the opposite side. However, it is the more dangerous side!
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Hello all. This site was recommended to me by friends.
I don’t see how tallying up deaths proves anything. And a few hundred or even thousand years is nothing in terms of human history.
There is no doubt of course that Christianity has morphed into a less violent and less assertive form of its former self. Whether that is a good or bad thing only time will tell.
The ill-fated recent clashes of civilisations in Iraq and elsewhere might suggest that Christians are still prepared to do their fair share of killing.
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Tallying deaths does not prove anything, of course, but the previous comment, which suggested that religion was the source of wars, and so the world would be better with godlessness, was unfactual, and needed to be challenged.
Georgia, please examine the widely published facts and you will see there are no grounds for suggesting that Christians are doing their fair share of killing, or any provocation. This Is simply untrue; they are being driven out of homes, crucified, beheaded, churches destroyed.
There are towns in Iraq, formerly of some tens of thousands of peaceful Christians, a few years ago, that have now been completely emptied of any Christians for the first time in 2,000 years. These Christians were given 3 options: convert, get out or be executed. Any unbiased news source will tell you. My heart bleeds for these innocent, peaceful people. Many have fled out into the wilderness, starving and reliant on humanitarian US air food drops.
I am also disappointed to read your uninformed, unfeeling, glib comments.
As for former times, you might note that the first Christian communities were noted for the way they loved one another. This was extraordinary in those cruel pagan cultures, and was the reason for attracting many converts. So, to suggest that Christianity has morphed from a violent beginning is again, completely opposite to historical facts. Jesus preached peace, not violence and that is how true Christians will live and help delay sinking back into a cruel society that always accompanies godlessness. Examples of recent,godless cultures are currently North Korea, and recently Cambodia and China. There are current violent religious cultures, but these are opposed to Christianity. Facts, unlike mere opinions, speak for themselves.
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I agree completely about the tragedy of the Christian communities in Iraq and elsewhere at the hands of the murderous Islamic zealots.
The point I was and am making is that body counts on either side and throughout history are completely irrelevant to the truth or otherwise of the faiths of those involved.
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Georgia might have added that in the very recent past (in geological time frames) Christianity and Catholicism in particular visited awful suffering on those who refused to bow to demands – in much the same way as the ISIL fundamentalists of today. But as she states the numbers do not prove anything.
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