If you hang around atheist forums, as I do, then you'll know that eventually you're bound to see a stupid argument crop up. It's very common, and I've seen it everywhere.
This argument usually goes like this;
"Atheists produce more evil - look at Hitler and Stalin, they were atheists."
"Well actually, Hitler and the Nazis supported the Catholic Church, and Stalin trained as a Russian Orthodox monk..."
"Well, Pol Pot then!"
And on and on and on it goes. A race to see if atheists or theists created the biggest most awful monster.
This argument, sadly, is a load of shit. It is irrelevant whether Arsehole X or Arsehole Y was a theist, deist, atheist or a sentient cucumber from Venus. People are arseholes. When someone's going to be a prick, their ideology is almost irrelevant. You'll see this too, with the way the argument progresses.
"Well, actually Hitler was more Catholic than anything..."
"That's not Christian!"
"It's more Christian than atheist!"
"A real Christian wouldn't act that way!"
And you see what I mean. We own and disown and split hairs based on convenience alone. What does it end up proving anyway? Let's say Hitler was fervently Catholic. Are all Catholics then evil? What if you say yes, and then a lost biography is found where Hitler claims to be fully atheist? Does that mean all Catholics are in the clear and all atheists are now evil? What if that biography turns out to have been tampered with, and Hitler actually reveals he was a Buddhist? Are all Catholics and atheists in the clear, but now all Buddhists are arseholes? No, of course not. It's ridiculous. Elementary logic - just because all black birds are birds, does not mean all birds are black.
What do we get out of this argument? A bit of cathartic release? 'Hah! That big fucking arsehole belongs to your team, you fucking fascist!!' Probably that and not much more. It feels good sure, it may get you a laugh, but it proves and disproves nothing at all.
This is especially true when someone tries to compare broad faith and broad science/rationality to see which has created the biggest evil. It's like trying to find who's the fastest runner, by getting two guys to juggle capsicums - irrelevant, pointless and proves nothing.
If there is any meaningful content to be found in arguments like this, it has to be drawn from motivations that are clearly stated. Did Hitler say anything that clearly identified the Holocaust, annexation of Poland, French Occupation, English Blitz as being protected, mandated, endorsed by his personal faith? If so, then the only thing you can say is 'Hitler relied on his personal beliefs to commit acts of evil.' If you wanted to characterise it as broad support from an organised religion, to taint the religion itself, you would need to evince support from the church at the time (something btw, that's not particularly difficult). Still, all this says is that Hitler and the church at the time supported certain barbaric acts, they claimed were endorsed by their faith. To further claim that this is an ongoing, enduring evil, you would need to say that the current Catholic Church continues to endorse the Holocaust and the Nazi regime. Which is much, much harder. You might find individual clergy who think that way, but proving it as a consistent ideology is harder.
It's much easier to prove a consistent policy on shielding child abusers.
This type of argument, from who has the greater champion of evil, usually requires a huge amount of argument and justification to merely make a very slight point. The best you can usually achieve is agreeing that X or Y was an arsehole.
If we really want to attack ideas and see if they have created real-world evil, we have to have to avoid the individual and aim for the organisation, or the ideology itself. We can attack organisations with stated ideologies. We can attack ideologies. But the individuals who belong to those organisations, or claim to hold that ideology are much harder to attack. The best you can do is attack them because of that ideology or allegiance to that organisation.
In this instance, we are left with a centuried platform of faith that has real-world stated ideology, as well as noted and known organisations, versus a largely disparate ideology supported and championed by various people, few of who agree with one another. The organs of faith are predominant, visible, and have endured. They have shaped human civilisation. Atheism is not an ideology, it is an absence of superstition. All an outsider can attack is the person, as the ideology rarely has any unity. Is it any wonder atheists are tarred with the brush of being 'like a religion'. Beliefs can be attacked, the unity bought about by a rejection of a specific type of belief is much more nebulous.
Which is why it's easier to label someone as being 'just like Hitler!' Sure it's easy. It's just stupid too.
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