Sam Harris

Many detractors of atheism like to point to the Holocaust as evidence of the immorality of atheists.

But the first Holocaust to ever take place in mainland Europe was the genocide of the Armenian Christian people by the Ottoman Turks.

This mass slaughter was observed by German onlookers who noted the use of cattle trucks to help make things easy, and was carried out by the Sultans and their Muslim warriors in the name of Islam.

One and a half million people died (in one estimate).

It’s hard to believe that something like this could go unnoticed by Christians.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide

Being a theist did not stop those men from killing and inspiring Hitler.

Unfortunately, the genocide on the Armenian Christians was by no means the first genocide that has taken place in mainland Europe by religious people and it wasn’t the last either. Genocides on religious (and non-religious) grounds have been occurring throughout human history. Most members of the Nazi elite force SS were in fact Christians, mainly Lutheran Christians. However, the Nazi leadership based much of its ideology of the ‘Uebermensch’ on the thoughts of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche who was an atheist (but definitely not a racist!).