How do you answer theists who say “atheists like Stalin and Mao have killed more people than religious leaders”?

that totalitarian regimes seek to eliminate religion because they represent a counter authority to their nefarious agenda which of course cant be permitted to continue

NOT that the absence of religious belief is the reason for the nefarious agenda

vile destructive leadership has occurred at many times throughout history - its intellectual dishonest to claim that religious belief protects societies from such

indeed quite often religion has been used as a justification for truly vile political agendas

EDIT

your arguments are ok but not refined and will not end the discussion

be worth you expanding a little

Christopher Hitchens explores the idea very well

heres one of his explanations of Stalin - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRhczvtmbWE

the point is what leaders like Stalin do is supplant the "god" and have the citizenry revere them

the lesson we learn is that ignorant fragile humans - yes all of us - can be manipulated when we arent educated and vigilant

I tell them to learn the first thing about statistics and stop embarrassing themselves.

Most murders are committed by people who wear shoes. What interesting conclusions about the morality of footwear can our mathematically-impaired friends draw from that information?

I say they're full of ****. Especially since their 'statistics' don't take into account the total population of the people in the world during the time of theistic rule.

For example, a christian who kills 1000 people in a world of 1025 people is going to, comparatively, make stalin and mao look like Mother theresa.

And then of course, theres always the vastly overblown and heavily influenced propaganda numbers that are still around from the cold war american administrations. Stalin, unlike the catholic Hitler, didn't order his people killed. They died of starvation, because he abused the system of communism to grab power. Like Every other dictator. I haven't looked into Mao's situation, but I'm guessing it was similar.

If we're going by the people their administrations specifically targeted and killed, Hitler still outnumbers them all. This is why he's ten times as infamous. The deaths from Stalin and Mao came from their version of communism, their lust for power, and of course, fear. Hitler drew up a ******* plan, and had his people put it into action. Those who disagreed with it became a part of it.

Smart people have already figured this out. In fact, this was already understood decades ago. Like most christian arguments, they've been debunked. Someone should inform the christians of this.

Many do not understand the difference between a political agenda where the leaders are worshipped as gods and Atheism where there are no gods.

I live next door to Jehovah s Witnesses. For more than 10 years now. They have a dog that barks all day long, she said "it can not be trained". When the postman throws out an extra bundle of junk mail they throw it over my fence? The woman stands outside my lounge room window with her dog barking for 5 or 10 minutes every couple of days. The lady actually has 2 dogs, she lets them out every hour or 2 and they run into my yard and piss on my house, thats an average of 15- 25 dogs pisses every day. I finally lost it and told them to shut the bloody dog up, stop the dogs from pissing in my yard, stop throwing crap over my fence and ideally leave me alone.
They are now calling my cat and feeding it. Cat thieves!
How do I get these pests to leave me alone?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2eC08On-rU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fy3PF5frQQ

yes