If I did find such an article, it wouldn't prove atheism is bad any more than the linked article proves Christianity is bad. It would be just as much an anomaly.
The point I made is that belief in God can, and does sometimes make people make choices that can lead to the death of others
specifically because they hold that belief. If you found an article that said 'atheist parents face charges after withholding medical treatment
due to their non-religious convictions' then you could make the argument that atheism can, at times, lead to making choices that cause the deaths of others.
If you asked the people who made the decision to withhold medical treatment, do you think they'd say their religious practice is 'an anomaly'?
And I completely agree. But I wanted to point out that it is rare.
As long as you agree that sometimes Christians (and only Christians, not atheists) withhold medical treatment for their children because they think prayers work and medicine doesn't, then we're fine.
It would be interesting to have reliable statistics. We could look at the ratio of believers who don't seek medical help to those that do.
What purpose would that serve? Just because the majority of Christians are smart enough to understand that their God doesn't actually do anything, doesn't mean all of them are. And the ones that aren't smart enough to realize it are the ones that watch their kids die.
And lets be honest here MM. Anyone who says that they believe in God, yet takes their kids to the doctor, looks both ways before they cross the street, and doesn't go 150 mph on the highway regularly does all of those things because they know, deep down inside, that God isn't real.
Well, that would certainly be an interesting excercise. Quite a challenging one to try and accurately and meaningfully quantify. Maybe when I have a year or two to spare..
Just give me one thing, MM. Name one good thing that God belief does for the world and then explain why that one good thing REQUIRES God belief and can't be accomplished as an atheist. If you need a year or 2 to think of one thing, take your time.
In the mean time, how many bad things done specifically as a result of God belief would you like me to identify? I could give you a pretty good sized list from just the past few weeks if you'd like.
The math is really simple.
All the things atheists can do that are good for the world = All the things Christians can do that are good for the world. There is no difference.
All the things atheists do that are bad for the world < All the things Christians do that are bad for the world. There is a major difference.
So if all the good stuff would be the same whether someone is a Christian or an atheist, then the only thing left to decide is whether or not all the bad things that come along with being a Christian are equal to all the bad things that come along with being an atheist. That's a loss for the believer side. So it's a net bad.
You can say religion does charity work and it gives people a sense of community, and it helps people out, but so do atheists and atheist groups, and book clubs, and little league baseball teams. The only novel things brought to the table by religion are bad. They bring nothing new that's good.