But even if this turns out to be a true statement, what would we learn? If it was the case, for instance, that, say, Islam had caused fewer deaths than had Judaism (per capita and corrected for inflation) would we conclude that Islam is the "better" religion? I don't think I would, not on just this basis anyway.

I don't imagine anyone would wish to make a judgement solely on the basis. But are we really saying that nothing can be inferred about an ideology and its compatibility with human rights from its outcomes? That we have to disregard all such outcomes due to problems of comparability or of isolating specific ideological factors in the midst of other, political, economic or social factors? Isn't disentangling such factors precisely one of the principal goals of historical study? One of the particular reasons for my being nervous concerning such arguments is that I've heard believers invoke them too often; religion is always something where its social goods are easily quantified and vaunted but its social evils are always attributable to some other factor and can't be considered. Certainly, I always hear precisely the same reasons being advanced in the context of communism.

I can see that I need to clarify my problem with statements such as "Nazism was better than Communism because it killed fewer people." My difficulty is with the word "better". Whilst not exactly an abuse of language it veers dangerously close IMV.

Agreed, hence my earlier rephrasing. Though I must admit the question of what side to take in the context of something like the Spanish Civil War makes for an especially interesting thought experiment. As a counter-factual, what might a communist Spain have become?

(I'm convinced that it is this precise error that is the worm in the, err, rose of neo-conservatism.)

Yes. Ideologies that perceive themselves as utopian are always the most dangerous and neo-conservatism goes a long way to meriting such a description.

I would observe though that man's inhumanity to man has been a fairly consistent theme down the ages no matter what political systems have pertained at the time.

Hmm, why bother with the idea of a Virian replacement for religion then? Surely, man's inhumanity would simply play out in precisely the same way, irrespective of whether society was predominantly atheist, islamic or zoroastrian?

(Nice to see you posting again BTW.)

Thank you.

* Pol Pot, for instance, dissolved the Cambodian Communist party in 1981. Whether he was ever anything other than a maniac in Communist clothing seems open to question.

Quite possibly, but then that could be said of any number of historical figures, Mao and Stalin included (certainly someone like Churchill who never quite grasped the concept of political allegiance). I'm not convinced that that this is a reason not to consider the role of ideology in what happened; certainly, the worst of Pol Pot's purges had already been ended before 1981.