Vox Day discusses the huge gap between the reality of the Inquisition courts and the popular myth which elevates it -- undoubtedly for political ends -- over such death-dealing atrocities as 20th-century socialism:

Compared to other medieval secular courts, the Inquisition was positively enlightened. Why then are people in general and the press in particular so surprised to discover that the Inquisition did not barbecue people by the millions? First of all, when most people think of the Inquisition today what they are really thinking of is the Spanish Inquisition. No, not even that is correct. They are thinking of the myth of the Spanish Inquisition. Amazingly, before 1530 the Spanish Inquisition was widely hailed as the best run, most humane court in Europe. There are actually records of convicts in Spain purposely blaspheming so that they could be transferred to the prisons of the Spanish Inquisition. After 1530, however, the Spanish Inquisition began to turn its attention to the new heresy of Lutheranism. It was the Protestant Reformation and the rivalries it spawned that would give birth to the myth.

Vox Day quotes this NRO article:

The 763-page report states that approximately 1,250 sentences of death were meted out, around one percent of the 125,000 heresy trials, over a period of 356 years. Accounting for population differences, it was thus about one-half as deadly on an annual basis as children's bicycles in the United States. (This about one-quarter of the 6,000 deaths usually estimated by academic historians, however the larger number refers to the entire Inquisition, not only the Spanish.)

... and adds ...

Keep this in mind the next time that an atheist wishes to lecture you on the historical crimes of Christianity. The world will be fortunate indeed if the determinedly secular experiment of the newly constitutional (if still unratified) European Union should turn out to be one-tenth as civilized as the dread Spanish Inquisition.

A lot of people have been murdered senselessly throughout history. Consider some otherwise mundane exploit, such as the building of the "Great Wall of China": How many of the workers conscripted for that died in service and had their bones added to the mass? How many Africans were killed in internecine tribal warfare? How many victims of ritual sacrifice were killed in dedication to the goddess Kali? How many Hindu children have died of starvation because we can't kill the rats eating their grain?

A heck of a lot more than 6,000 people killed for each.

Christians must be, what, hundreds -- or thousands? -- of times as virtuous as every other cultural or religious alternative in order to be considered moral. When 1,250 or 6,000 death sentences loom more largely in a mind than 100,000,000 rotting corpses churned out under the atheistic regimes of the 20th century, we're looking at someone who will sacrifice any kind of rationality in order to justify their own theological bent.