*{{cite book no ws|title=Christianity, Islam, and Atheism|first=William|last=Kilpatrick|location=San Francisco, CA|publisher=Ignatius Press|year=2012|url=https://books.google.com|quote=Actually, it's helpful to think in terms of two Enlightenments: the Enlightenment that was nourished by Christianity and the Enlightenment that cut itself off from God. The former led to the American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence, the abolition of slavery, and the civil rights movement. The latter led to the French Revolution, the Reign of Terror, the suppression of church by state, and the godless philosophies of Marx and Nietzsche and their offspring—National Socialism and communism. More recently the abandonment of God has led to the regime of cultural relativism that regards rights as arbitrary constructs.
:"It's this second Enlightenment tradition that Cardinal Ratzinger referred to when he wrote, 'The radical detachment of the Enlightenment philosophy from its roots ultimately leads it to dispense with man.' Actually this transition happened not 'ultimately' but almost immediately. The first instance occurred when Enlightenment worship of abstract 'reason' and 'liberty' degenerated quickly into the mass murders committed during the antireligious Reign of Terror in France. 'Liberty, what crimes are committed in your name', said Madame Roland as she faced the statue of Liberty in the Place de la Revolution moments before her death at the guillotine. She was one of the early victims of a succession of secular systems based on rootless notions of 'liberty', 'equality', and 'reason'.
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:"As many historians have pointed out, the atheist regimes of modern times are guilty of far more crimes than any committed in the name of religion. Communist governments alone were guilty of more than one hundred million murders, most of them committed against their own people.|pages=p. 57|accessdate = July 18, 2014}}</ref>
Although Communism is one of the most well-known cases of atheism's ties to mass murder, the French Revolution and subsequent Reign of Terror, inspired by the works of [[Denis Diderot|Diderot]], [[Voltaire]], [[Marquis de Sade|Sade]], and [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau|Rousseau]], managed to commit similar persecutions and exterminations of religious people and promote secularism and militant atheism. Official numbers indicate that 300,000 Frenchmen died during [[Maximilien Robespierre|Robespierre]]'s Reign of Terror, 297,000 of which were of middle-class or low-class.<ref name="A Primer of the Illuminati">McIlheny, William H. (June 12, 2009). [https://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/history/item/4660-a-primer-on-the-illuminati "A primer on the Illuminati"]. The New American website. Retrieved on May 22, 2015.</ref> Of the numbers murdered via the guillotine, only 8% had been of the aristocratic class, with over 30% being from the peasant class.<ref name="Operation Parricide">von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Erik (October 1989). [http://www.culturewars.com/CultureWars/Archives/Fidelity_archives/parricide.html "Operation Parricide: Sade, Robespierre & the French Revolution"]. ''Fidelity'' magazine. Retrieved from Culture Wars website on May 22, 2015.</ref>