First, the patently ridiculous aspect of this is to say that it's harder or easier for any given human to experience the loss of a family member. Whatever your belief, such a loss is terrible to endure. While there have been famous attempts to "console" through conversion (such as Charles Kingsley's letter to Thomas Huxley, and the exquisite, haunting reply—linked below, under my name), people of faith who lose someone still suffer. It's the people around them who tell them not to be upset, "So-and-so is at peace/in heaven/in a better place."

In the moment of loss, however good we are at telling ourselves whatever we profess to believe, every human is an agnostic, if only for that moment. We just don't know.

Second: As to the comment that "religion kills and stifles thought in all its aspects," it's a good thing Einstein, Kepler, Newton, and others didn't feel as that commenter did. They very well may not have accomplished what they did. As Einstein put it, "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."

You are to be commended for your attitude. I agree, there is nothing wrong, given the mores of our society, with hiding our "personal bits" to avoid giving offense. (Although I must say, I think suekatz's letter below about cutting breasts off Iranian mannequins crossed a line for me—that sends a rather violent message about suppressing the feminine, don't you think?)

But which do you think is better: to edit a photograph openly, by a black rectangle or large "pixelation," or to edit it deceptively, by attempting to change the photo without notification? This isn't an advertisement in which a model's acne is being blurred; it's a news service.

As well, it's very probably not the member in question anyway. So they're hiding an inoffensive bandage on the off chance that it might be misinterpreted.

This behavior seems more like something I'd expect in a movie (trying to hide a boom mike digitally, or something), or an ad, rather than a service that is supposedly presenting reality. That's my gripe—not the hiding, but hiding the hiding.

I think what you're remembering is the Cistercian abbot and papal legate Arnaud-Amaury. In charge of the attack on the town of Beziers, he was asked how the soldiers were supposed to tell the true Catholics from the Cathars. He is reported to have replied, "Kill them all; God will know his own."

20,000 men, women, and children were slaughtered as a result.

Of course, the twentieth century has allowed much larger totals to be laid at the feet of individuals: Stalin, with 15-20 millions deaths to his account, probably single-handedly matched or exceeded all the deaths the Catholic Church was collectively responsible for in the various crusades and inquisitions.

BadReligion, I didn't mention Stalin's atheism below. I just said he exceeded the amount done by the Church. Also, when you say "atheism wasn't Stalin's primary motivation," you surely don't mean atheism was a secondary motivation, do you? Because that's implied in that wording, and I don't think either of us want to say it :-)

I don't think Stalin's atheism was any kind of motivation at all. He may have been an atheist later, and purged many churches (while allowing a few to continue so Papa Joe could look good), but he attended seminary briefly in his youth as well. He was simply opportunistic;l whatever target seemed threatening went down, whatever seemed to promote him well was promoted. Of course, it's possible he attended seminary while cynically hiding his atheism, but I doubt it. Labels such as atheism made some things easier, and perhaps the belief made him less concerned about the afterlife, but that hasn't stopped others from killing, so I doubt it would have stopped Stalin. I heard his daughter Svetlana speak in the early '90s, and it was pretty scary stuff.

You're right about there being more people now, but Stalin didn't use much technology. Mostly he starved people to death, or shoved them into work camps to die.

Stalin was defined primarily by his paranoia and extraordinary ability to deceive (he could smile, and smile, and murder while he smiled, to paraphrase the bard), along with a host of other problems. I highly recommend any book by Robert Conquest on the subject.

Personally, I think even when religion is used as a motivator, it is merely the excuse, not the cause. There are religious killers and religious pacifists in every major faith (yes, even Buddhism has killers), and killers and pacifists among atheists and agnostics. It's far from a one-to-one correlation, in other words.