“What would Jesus do” isn’t just some silly little saying designed to sell rubber bracelets. It’s a phrase that all Christians need to remember, as it’s a simple way of figuring out if our actions are appropriate or not.
Looking at many atheist arguments, it’s clear that they could do with remembering the phrase as well. They often point to “Christian” atrocities committed in the past. Sometimes, they point to the actions of specific denominations (orthodox or heretical). Sometimes, they point to the actions of specific individuals. Sometimes, they point to people who, at some point in their lives, merely claimed to be Christians. Sometimes, they point to people who never even made that claim, or even to those who opposed Christianity fiercely. Worryingly, they sometimes even point to the atrocities of completely different religions.
All of these people or groups have one thing in common: Not a single one of them is Jesus. Jesus, of course, never did anything wrong. He did good to everyone He could at every opportunity. Close friends, total strangers and even His enemies received nothing but love from Jesus, and He commands us, as His follwers, to do the same. It follows, therefore, that the atrocities committed by “Christians”, whether committed by real Christians or not (Christians sin too), were not committed by Christianity, but by a failure to follow Christianity.
Imagine a competing pair of soap companies. One of them, in an effort to sell more soap, starts bashing the other. They bring in people who don’t use their competitor’s soap and say “see? This guy still stinks!” Then they point to someone who does use the soap, but only uses it on specific parts of their body. “See? This guy stinks too!” Yet another person claims to use the rival soap, but doesn’t. “We’ve got another stinker!” Then they unwittingly pick out one of their own customers. “See? This guy also stinks!” The rival company then points out that the first guy isn’t one of their customers, the second uses the soap incorrectly, the third only claims to use it, and the fourth guy is actually one of the attacking company’s customers.
See, one element I left out until now is that, unlike Christianity, there is only one way to disqualify someone as an atheist. As Christians, we can reasonably weed out the fakes. In fact, the atrocities they commit are, themselves, signs of non-Christianity. As James says in chapter 2 of his book, “But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?”, so if you consistently act as a non-Christian, you’re probably a non-Christian. But atheists lack this argument. You can’t say “the atheist who did that isn’t a real atheist!” The only way to not be a true atheist is to believe in a god of some form. If an “atheist” believes in God, he is by definition not an atheist, but if an atheist slaughters 3-60million of his own citizens and calls that a statistic, but still believes there is no God, as Stalin did, he is still an atheist.
Unlike Christianity, atheism has no rule book. They don’t have gods, they don’t have prophets, they don’t have Bibles. A Christian follows the written word of God, which we believe to be completely error free. An atheist is free of such limits, accountable only to himself. Therefore, there is no such thing as a “Christian” atrocity, but there are such things as atheist atrocities. This atheist argument, therefore, is not only fallacious, but even if we were to grant the logic, it would refute atheism, not Christianity.