with the Council for Inquiry. There's no reason to characterize what they do as a sham. As far as I have seen (and I may be wrong) they don't do any charitable work themselves. But they raise funds for secular charities, which is an entirely legitimate enterprise. If someone passes around a hat in church to collect money for a charity, is that a cynical ploy to make Christianity look good? Or is that an effort to raise money for a charity?
Many atheists enjoy pointing out the bad things that some believers do in the name of religion, and those same atheists contend that evil done by atheist dictators or atheist governments or atheist people is never done in the name of atheism.
It's not merely about doing bad things in the name of religion. Both good and bad actions motivated by atheism are nonexistent.
The point is that you can build a logical pathway between "I believe in X" and "I should perform action A." You might believe in "God," or "the superiority of the German volk" or "liberty and justice." Once you arrive at a belief, whether it be in the existence of a certain entity or in a more abstract idea, then you reason from that premise, and likely some others, to determine what action you should take. If you don't believe in "the superiority of the German volk," that doesn't motivate a particular action. Opposing the actions of the Third Reich would be motivated by some other belief--that Jews have a right to life, or that the fascist tactics of the Nazis are immoral, or that the success of Germany is a threat to the goals of the Soviet Union, etc.
In the same way, not believing in God doesn't motivate any particular action. Those who oppose religion do so because they have drawn a logical path from some other belief. Stalin shut down most of the churches in the Soviet Union, but his lack of belief in God did not motivate that action, because lack of belief fundamentally cannot motivate an action. The evidence suggests that Stalin closed the churches because they represented a rival power center. The belief that "I am justified in acting to preserve my own political power" or something similar could lead via a logical pathway to Stalin's actions against the religious groups in the USSR.
When discussing the moral implications of a belief, you have to consider the actions that logically follow from that given belief. Someone who believes in Christianity can draw a logical pathway to some grossly immoral actions (an easy example is the conquest of Latin America, which was explicitly motivated by a desire to propagate the Catholic faith.) Stalin's crimes were motivated by things he did believe, not but what he happened not to believe in. Stalin didn't believe that the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve was populated by space aliens from Neptune, and neither do I. That commonality is irrelevant to what Stalin did and to my opinions about Stalin's actions. So is our common lack of belief in an omnipotent deity.
Anyone who claims to do something in the name of not believing in God is someone who doesn't understand the logical processes that motivate his own actions. I am going to work at a Habitat for Humanity site on Monday, but my lack of belief in God was not in any way a motivation for my decision to do so. It fundamentally could not have been. Instead, my actions are motivated by what I do believe. Furthermore, I believe that my work with Habitat will constitute a moral act, which will occur in the absence of any belief in God. The fact that theism is not a prerequisite for performing moral actions is one of the salient points here. Of course, you and I would both endorse that statement, but for different reasons.
Therefore, it could be concluded that the Christian religion is good as contrasted with atheism, because it motivates people to do good things.
I would argue that, since atheism is entirely morally neutral, to compare Christianity to atheism is merely to evaluate Christianity on its own merits. While it is difficult or impossible to compile all of the relevant evidence, it is my tentative position that Christianity has not been a beneficial moral influence on humanity. I come to this conclusion not merely on the basis of the immoral actions taken by Christians, which have of course been discussed at great length in this forum. Remember that there can indeed be a logical pathway from belief in Christianity to immoral action. It is my sense that many or most of the bad actions by Christians discussed here have been motivated by some aspect of the Christian beliefs held by their perpetrators.
More fundamentally, however, I disagree with many of the basic moral precepts held by Christians, including some of the red-letter ones in the New Testament. Since many of the moral ideas of Christianity are wrong, it seems unlikely to me at the outset that Christianity as a set of ideas would provoke more moral actions than immoral ones.
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