You have to forgive us statists, TB. We're a bit slow when faced with the obvious, or with issues of great subtlety, too. We just can't seem to get it at all.

"...in the past couple of centuries, how much damage have religious leaders done compared to political ones?"

Of course, religious leaders don't normally victimize the rich, do they? They usually work with them instead while they prey on the poor together.

And Tom, there have been few discussions about religion on this forum where you haven't felt the need to interrupt and point out that "big government" was worse. In fact, in this post I am responding to, you just did it AGAIN! Twice in one thread! You're getting too predictable to be effective.

With that in mind, you could probably save yourself a lot of typing, and us a lot of reading, if you just numbered your stock ripostes, in the interest of compactness and brevity. "Statists are worse than messiahs" could simply be 'Number 21!' It would have about the same effectiveness, but it would take a lot less effort.