DJ: Are you not omitting China from this? You could add North Korea too.

PS: Yes, you could add China and North Korea, but you could still argue that Christian countries have participated in atrocities of similar scale — and been equally atrocious. I don't think that you can put the blame at the door of atheism, but if you're asking, "Can one guarantee that this will not happen again?", the answer is no, one cannot. If the suggestion is that we need God in order to be ethical, then that's not the case. We have societies where God has really not been a significant part of it, that have practised very ethically. You mentioned China, of course, China under Mao, but earlier Chinese tradition such as the Confucian tradition is an ethical tradition that is not a theistically ethical tradition.

NB: The pre-Christian Greeks and Romans had ethics, no doubt about it. Certainly we can be ethical without God. The question is, can we be humanistically ethical without God? Now this is a controversial point — obviously atheist-humanists think you can. But there are some philosophers, like Jeremy Waldron, who really doubt that the concept of basic human equality really has any secure home outside of theology, outside of the notion that all human beings are equal in the sense that they are responsible to God. Thus, Peter, I respect you, not because I like your preferences, not because I think your preferences are good (indeed, they may be vicious). No, I respect you because you have an independent relationship to God, an independent vocation that is not mine. You have a unique role in the world, a unique responsibility and a calling to promote good in the world in your own particular circumstances and with your own distinctive talents, which I don't share. That acts as an  objective break upon my will, stopping me from using you as a tool of my will; and some think that such respect for another's equality cannot be secured except through a theological reference. Another point where God enters the picture is through the way in which monotheism implies an objective moral order. For reasons I understand, you are quite reluctant to affirm any kind of objective, moral reality or order, and you want to articulate your ethic in terms of individuals' preferences —although I continue to see in you inadvertent affirmations of some kind of objective morality. For example, in the case of the man who volunteered to be dismembered and eaten, you wondered whether he could have been treated, implying that his understanding of his own good was wrong.

PS: Well, it was not a well-informed and considered understanding. Not that it was wrong in some other sense.

NB: He thought it was well-considered and informed.

PS: I don't know enough about the case to know whether or not he did.

NB: The issue is that even if he thought really hard about it, I think you would still think that he was wrong. It's not really a matter of how long he has thought about it.

PS: It is to some extent whether he has really considered it and decided if that is something that he really wants.

NB: Suppose he really had?