Religion, when in power, has pretty much always led to genocide. Democracy not so much.
Baseless claims Ahoy!
Let's begin with a fun challenge- find me a major world-playing country with democratic elections that HASN'T commited genocide- on some scale- or promoted it or sanctioned it.
Then we run into when 'Religion' has been 'In Power'- that's a fun one with about a dozen definitions, and plenty of wiggle-room to manipulate any figures. America- poster-boy of Democracy, has had a hand in a good few genocidal projects. But we've got a get-out clause! They're religious! So THAT must be the underlying cause. Not human nature, not the concept that 'power corrupts', nope- because they believe a C1st Jew told them to stop hacking each other and try and help other people, regardless of the social stigma or percieved 'wrongness' of their ways, that's what motivates them to do bad things. It's all so clear now...
Again, we can blame it on 'religion', but the fun fact that you're still ignoring is that even governments with claims to be as secular as possible STILL commit genocide. A more accurate claim would be, "governments always commit genocide, sooner or later- whatever their power base, and those with pretensions of religious-ness use that as an excuse". But that unfortunately misses out the important 'religion' bit, and we're trying to pin genocide on that... so we'll just use the generalisation.
Equally fun is that those non-religious governments who commit suicide usually cite science! (Ubermensch, racial purity, 'evidence' of inferiority of ''subspecies'', 'cleaning up the gene pool'- evidence 'd'em black folk can't think like us', etc. etc.) Does that mean that science is to blame? No- because everyone realises it's just a kind of BS quasi-science that thinly justifies amorality. The same as the quasi-religion- but because it serves an anti-religion argument, we neatly ignore that bit too.
For most of the 'two millenia' we keep rolling out, genocides were considered a normal tool of statecraft- frankly, everyone did it. What did 'religious rulership' do? They bent their religion to fit the values of the time, and hunted desperately through texts to find bits that allowed them to behave how they always wanted to behave, and threw out the odd passage of Leviticus as an excuse. That's not religion- that's known as a religious gloss. A state leader who is religious is still a leader first, and a leading religious figure second. Hence why the most ideal religious figures who typify 'religious behaviour' are rarely secular leaders at the same time. The two don't gel well. Leaders generally have to be b*stards. It's hard to try and be a saint at the same time.
Equally, we could cite the fact that the pressure group who finally pushed slavery into 'unacceptable' within the UK were almost universally religious. So all non-religious types are (by the black-and-white ridiculous method of argument) pro-slavery. ((But that neatly ignores the bit where previous religious leaders cited slavery in the bible as good precedent for doing it. Ignore the bits where it leads to boundless suffering, and is presented negatively- it's in the Old Testament! Carte Blanche!)), but given that we can omit facts as it strengthens our position, I can drop the second bit, right? And claim all religious types are saints?
And we're on about twelve back 'n' forths without a single quote from Jesus promoting immorality. Still waitin'.
And as for the COLDS thing? Baptising someone without their consent is both meaningless and insulting- as well as neatly degrading the ceremony to 'MAGIC WARTER LOL|Z!" instead of a symbolic marker. Religion is like sex- if one person isn't consenting, something's gone HORRIBLY wrong...
