This old question is of course being discussed again now that three Muslims have been murdered in North Carolina by an atheist. It’s not really an question that’s germane to the killing, for, after all, Hicks acted on his own, and we sure don’t have an atheist government. Nevertheless, this is one of the main criticisms leveled at atheists who themselves accuse Christianity, Islam, and other faiths of promoting dreadful behavior. “What about Pol Pot, Stalin, Hitler, and Mao?”, the believers and faitheists say? They perpetrated some of the worst genocides of our time, and they were explicitly atheist governments!
We’ve heard many of the responses, and my view is that yes, atheist governments can certainly do bad things, but usually not explicitly in the name of atheism. In that way they’re unlike the murders and terrorism committed explicitly in the name of faith: the Inquisition, the perfidies of ISIS, the killing of Shiites by Sunnis (and vice versa), the persecution of the Jews, and so on. But what’s important here is not religion per se, I think, but the problem of faith: those governments or movements weren’t operating on Enlightenment values or on the institutionalization of reason, doubt, and considered examination, but rather on unquestioning obedience to an infallible leader and ideology.
I discuss the issue of faith in The Albatross, and say that religion is only one form of misguided faith, though it’s the world’s most pervasive form. The clash between religion versus atheism, is one battle in the war between faith and reason. When I discuss the Lysenko affair, for instance, and describe how a misguided agronomist, supported by Stalin, ruined Soviet genetics and agriculture, there is a definite faith-like element in the whole mess. Stalin was the father, Lysenko his anointed son—here we do have a strong parallel to religion!—and neither could do any wrong. Soviet geneticists even fudged their data so it could conform to Lysenko’s bogus theory that environmental exposure of seedlings to cold would change their genetic constitution. And so, because questioning was prohibited and faith encouraged, in the face of evidence, the Russians lost decades of scientific advances and thousands starved. (The Soviets also killed many of their “blasphemous” scientists who questioned Lysenko, notably Nikolai Vavilov.) Real genetics was denigrated as a Western corruption.
While looking at a YouTube video today, another one, featuring Christopher Hitchens, was called to my attention in the margins. (YouTube, of course, monitors our usage and makes “suggestions” of what we might like. This is one I did like.). Here, in 2007, Hitchens is asked The Question about Pol Pot, Mao, Hitler, and so on.
I’d suggest watching it. At times Hitch seems to be reaching, trying to blame religion or distortions of religion for these atheist-regime genocides, as when he imputes the aggression of the Japanese in World War II on “ancient ethnic (Buddhist) pseudoconfessional mystical nationalism”.
But then, toward the end, he zeroes in on the real problem: not religion but faith. (I discuss what I mean by “faith” in The Albatross as well, but a short version is “strong belief without sufficient evidence to support that belief, or belief even in the face of the evidence”. I don’t want to argue about that here, as I discuss all the ramifications in my book.) As Hitchens says, these totalitarian societies asked their citizens to “surrender your mind and put your trust in faith.”
As I watched the video, this question came to me, “What would it take to convince people that atheism was responsible for state genocide?” That’s a good question to ask ourselves, too, about the Chapel Hill killings. Before we call it a “hate crime,” or a crime motivated by Hicks’s atheism, we should ask ourselves these questions (and try to think about how we would have answered before the Chapel Hill killings): “What would it take to convince rational people that a murder was caused by atheism?” Or, “How would we decide whether a crime was a ‘hate crime’ motivated by animus toward a religion or ethnic group?”
And then—mirabile dictu!—Hitchens answers that question, at least for whole societies, beginning at 11:44 in the video. His answer redeems the whole discursive 20-minute discussion, and is characteristically eloquent. (God, I miss that man!) I’ll let you listen to the answer yourself (go to 11:40 or so), but there’s one sentence I will reproduce from Hitchens’s discussion of his ideal: the secular and rational society:
“If you wanted the transcendent you’d have love and sex and music you wouldn’t need any supernatural permission for any of this nonsense.”
Have a watch:
Note that Hitchens’s “water” seems suspiciously amber-colored. Could it be tainted by Mr. Walker’s amber restorative?
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I would say Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot were motivated by a faith like ideology. A belief that the greater good justifies actions that you would not take toward friends. Such leaders are almost certainly psychopaths. The interesting question is why they have followers.
In Jean Lipman-Blumen’s book The Allure of Toxic Leaders, she lists 6 factors as to why people become followers.
1. A need for reassuring authority figures to fill parents’ shoes.
2. Need for security and certainty.
3. Need to feel chosen or special.
4. Need for membership in the human community.
5. Fear of ostracism, isolation, and social death.
6. Fear of personal powerlessness to challenge a bad leader.
Probably all good reasons for why individuals are seduced by narcissistic and sociopaths as well.
except for 1 and 2, I do recognize myself.
EDIT: 1 and 3
Yes, that was my thought as well. Which leads to the obligatory mention of Dr. Bob Altemeyer’s book “The Authoritarians” that should be obligatory reading for anyone who asks the question “why does X have followers”.
Stalinist Soviet Union is a perfect example of what we already know to happen when a new religion supersedes the old. Understanding even a little of the Russian Orthodox church practices helps to explain the creepy worshipful pilgrimages to see the wax-corpse of Lenin, the removal of religious icons replaced by a photo of Stalin, and so on. Lenin and Stalin replaced jebus, the communist govt. replaced the church. I know less about North Korea, but “dear leader” and all the magical things he (they) have attributed to them is strikingly similar to other religious mythologies. i can’t say anything really about Pol Pot or Mao, but can anyone enlighten me about the traditional religions of China and Cambodia? I’d be willing to bet they mirror the respect demanded of these leaders.
NK is what I call a “confucianist stalinist theocracy”. That’s a deliberate triple oxymoron, but that’s NK for you …
IOW, “dear leader” is supposedly dad, god and the defender of the people all at once!
I distingish between religion with a little r and Religion with a big R. Little religion is strictly personal. Big Religion is organised, presciptive and proscriptive to others. Big R requires obediance to the leader(s). Little r prescribes and proscribes to nobody but oneself and has no leader and no followers.
The regimes of Hitler etc I view as being secular Religions.
Faith OTOH I would place on the spectrum of hope/optimism – as I would wishful thinking.
Except that in the case of the Third Reich the exact opposite is true, they were theistic rather than atheistic. The only “rationale” for claiming they were “atheistic” is that they were evil, therefore they had to be atheists. Surely we need to rebut this argument every time this topic is raised?
“We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.” (Adolf Hitler, in a speech in Berlin on Oct.24, 1933, after outlawing the German Freethinkers League and imprisoning its leaders)
“The Party as such advocates the standpoint of a positive Christianity without binding itself confessionally to any one denomination.” — 25-point program of the Nazi Party.
“The national Government, seeing in Christianity the unshakable foundation of the moral and ethical life of our people, attaches utmost importance to the cultivation and maintenance of the friendliest relations with the Holy See.” — Hitler again.
“Hence this song [The German anthem] also constitutes a pledge to the Almighty, to His will and to His work: for man has not created this Volk, but God, that God who stands above us all. He formed this Volk, and it has become what it should according to God’s will, and according to our will, it shall remain, nevermore to fade!” (Hitler, Speech, July 31, 1937)
“For their interests [the Church’s] cannot fail to coincide with ours [the National Socialists] alike in our fight against the symptoms of degeneracy in the world of to-day, in our fight against a Bolshevist culture, against atheistic movement, against criminality, and in our struggle for a consciousness of a community in our national life” — Hitler again.
(cites and lots more quotes here)
I would say their motivations or at least Hitler’s and his psychopathic cronies were religiously motivated or at least religiously justified but I see Nazism as a secular movement on the whole simply because it wasn’t a theocracy but a nations tic movement that capitalized on the uniting of the Volk as Germans.
There’s surely a big difference between “not a theocracy” and being actually secular.
Most of Nazi ideology was explicitly theistic. Their writings and speeches were full of theistic content. They had a theistic declaration in their manifesto. Further, Himmler said in 1944: “I have never tolerated an atheist in the ranks of the SS. Every member has a deep faith in God”, and belief in God was part of the SS oath. Et cetera, et cetera.
Yes of course they were theistic. It was a powerful propaganda and separated them from people like Marx and those other godless communists, especially those ones in Russia.
America did the same thing post WWII (it’s how you got all the God crap on your money).
However, their government was a fascist one, not a theocratic one.
OK, but no-one is suggesting they were theocratic. The point is that they were very definitely not “explicitly atheistic” and nor were they secular, they were theistic and religious.
Large numbers of religious governments stop short of being theocracies.
The majority of the Nazis were theists but so was most of Germany at that time. Pushing theology was part of the over all Gleichschaltung so everyone was nice & uniform and this included slapping around some churches to make them get in line too.
I see this as a state religion and all the strange religious aspects of Nazism and nationalism built into this state religion.
Not secular but ecumenical-Christian. A temporarily winning strategy in a nation where power was fairly evenly divided between Catholics and Lutherans.
Nice one, Coel: from a University of Keele alumnus. x
I have no time for the contention Hitler’s government was an atheist either. In Mein Kamph he states clearly his desire to rid the world of Jews for Almighty God, and even if you accept he became an atheist, which he never explicitly stated, almost all of his high command were Christian, and the vast majority of those Catholic. Well over 90% of his strongest supporters were Christian, and Catholics were way higher than their proportion in the general population.
Hitler didn’t do it alone, so even if he was an atheist, what about all his supporters? Saying Hitler was an atheist is an example of prejudice against atheists.
I mean ‘Mein Kampf’ of course. It’s such a hassle doing the HTML on a tablet, I lost my ability to spell!
I’m very much with Coel on this. It’s unfortunate that in spite of the mounds of evidence that Hitler was a Catholic, religious people can now say “Hitler was indeed an atheist; even Jerry Coyne admits it!”
“What would it take to convince people that atheism was responsible for state genocide?”
The thing is that religion is a highly effective tool to control people and get them to do what you want and oppress them. One has to remember that effective religious leaders do not actually believe the non sense they espouse (just like the used car salesman doesn’t really think the car he sells are great). They want power, territory, etc. and use the correct tool to garner these.
Atheism being simply the lack of belief in a narrow specific set of outrageous claims, can not even register as a tool for this sort of use. It simply is not in that category.
Atheists (some) can still often fall pray to insidious beliefs such as the moral superiority of invading less enlightened countries, bombing and droning them farther into the dark ages and then feel even more enlightened by comparison. People even tweet all day with this attitude thinking it will somehow make these poor barbarian bastards see the light. Now if that’s not a belief for which there is no evidence, what is?
There are too plenty of atheists whose skeptical abilities are a bit lacking imo: 9/11 truthers, anti-vaxxers, etc. Then there’s those whose Twi**er profile reads something like “Atheist, Aquarius …”.
LOL, “atheist, Aquarius”. It’s like the open mindedness goes too far. I knew someone like this who was a former JW. She wasn’t exactly an atheist, but she disliked organized religion & in no time she became a 911 truther, anti-GMO, RF gives you brain tumours kind of person.
I once reminded her that she had a science degree and followed up with, “the English graduate is now going to school you on the radio spectrum and ionizing vs. non-ionizing radiation”. Oddly, she didn’t stop being my friend at that point.
🙂
“Don’t be so open-minded your brains fall out!” as the saying goes.
The funny thing about the 9-11 truthers is that they are digging so hard to find a conspiracy behind the plane crashes that they miss the more obvious conspiracy that was in plain sight, aka the invasion of a country having nothing to do with it, the war on terror and the complete spying apparatus.
What actually happened with the planes and whether there was any government involvement… I have no idea and don’t even care. Hard to care about something you can never really know for sure, not that lapping official government propaganda uncritically at this point would be that high minded either.
One thing to keep in mind is that a conspiracy (that now heavily loaded word) is just a meeting you haven’t been invited to. Most organizations operate using these.
I think a lot of conspiracies are just incompetence, and often that incompetence is the result of a mindset that values faith. I think this goes a long way to explaining the invasion of Iraq.
Of course, there are many reasons for being an atheist, and I doubt that skepticism and rationality are among the most common. I suspect that apathy about religion is, at least in the UK. (France might be different.)
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PS. I used to have the signs for Aquarius and Metal Rat in my Twitter profile, but just as a “cute” way of hinting at my birthday. I guess at some point I realised that this looked like an endorsement of astrology, whereas in fact I share the opinions of Stephen Fry and Brian Cox.
I am trying to imagine a condition in which one could hold atheism responsible for state-sponsored genocide. One would have to strip out all the other variables and assume, I think, that the leader held no other opinion than his/her not-Goddism and no other historical, social, economic or cultural factors bearing upon the civil society.
Say, in this hypothetical state and society, all except a few civilians were persons of faith, then, if the leader has no other world-view but not-Goddism, then it may be rational and good from his/her point of view to have them all killed by those not of faith.
My thought-experiment assumes a human and state which have never existed and is therefore an easy case to refute: there must be more ambivalent, and better thought-through, hypothetical cases. x
I think you would first have to turn atheism into a dogma and issue though shalt not pamphlets that required all atheists to abide by them. To enforce ℅mpliance, atheists could shame other atheists into compliance.
This, I think, is an essential first step.
Yes, Diana, and then consider the minimum number of separate types of belief within the atheist dogma which would enable you to get from group identity as atheists to the idea and practice of killing the other group.
We need an anthropologist or group psychologist to weigh in. x
GBJame! Paging GBJames. 🙂
I’m glad you entitled that Stalin et al. did not kill in the name of atheism but that they did procure a faith based leadership. I would call this a state religion of sorts.
The thing with state religions is, as history shows, they fail more quickly than religious ones, perhaps because their leaders are mortal. The only way to force them to endure is to suppress the people horribly (North Korea) and that in itself is a failure.
Yes there is a good parallel between communism and Christian (Judeo-Christian?) religion. There are prophets (Marx, Engels) there is a chosen people (the proletariat), a view of an historical course (historic materialism), a utopia/paradise (the fully communist state), a fallen angel (Trotski) and devils (the plutocrats, kulaks etc.), a present day pope-like representant (in fact Stalin and Mao were probably more than that, possibly the prophet or God himself).
Others have elaborated this much better and in much more detail, but communism is very close to a religion.
As for Nazism, “Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Gott” was replaced by “Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer”. We can rest our case right there, in my humble opinion.
As well as the little-noted point, which Richard J. Evans comments on, that the Third Reich is a direct Hitlerian reference to the First Reich, the Holy Roman Empire of Charlemagne, down to the detail of it lasting 1,000 years, like the Nazi Empire was to. x
In order for atheism to be responsible for…well…anything, you’d have to provide evidence that simply believing in Quetzalcoatl would be all it would take to change the behavior.
When people accuse atheism of being the motivator for things, what they’re really doing is claiming that their own gods are what’s lacking. Were it actual atheism, then any god or set of gods would be sufficient.
I think we can safely agree that abandoning atheism in favor of worship of some volcano war god who demanded human sacrifices by the tens of thousands would not significantly improve the situation when it comes to genocidal maniacs. Yet it would still constitute an abandonment of atheism in favor of theism.
It’s rather depressing how few theists actually get that point…yet, if they did, they wouldn’t be theists any more….
b&
Yes, of course: Every believer is an atheist wrt every other God but their own.
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The main ingredient for disaster is the belief that everything is justified to make it a better world.
The really great thing about Hitch is his ability, after reading so much about political history and all these things, he had this recall during conversation to slip this knowledge in and win almost any discussion. His mind was exceptional.
It is easy to say at any time that the religious cannot argue their case for belief in anything and supply evidence to support the belief. So the only alternative is to attack the atheist with false and silly comparisons such as claiming a bag of dictators were atheist. If they did not go marching off to war with a cross strapped to their backs, they must have been atheist.
Thank you for putting into words what I have been stumbling around with in my mind, that the Stalin regime actually was kind of a religion. The way I said it to myself was that the people’s faith in and fear of Stalin sort of filled that same hole in people’s lives that religion seems to, except of course for the element of comfort which some religions seem to offer.
Many Russians were terrified about what would happen when Stalin died. He’d been in charge for long enough that many couldn’t remember anything else, and awful as he was, he provided a point of stability. Pretty much the only point in a very uncertain world for them. He had them convinced everything he did was for them, like a father figure, which is what a god is for many. They didn’t know what the rest of the world was like and, for example, he had saved them from Hitler.
And they thought the rest of the world was hostile toward them and was unstable, in a constant state of proletariat uprising. In other words, as bad as things were, they thought everyone else had it worse.
The scary thing?
That’s exactly how most Americans are today. Just look at all the people who think that socialism has ruined Canadian and European healthcare and that you have to wait years for heart bypass surgery and the like, that European cities are drug-infested crime-ridden hellholes, and so on.
b&
Yes, it is odd, isn’t it? Although that ignorance is more willful, it is easy to see how Americans could be deceived about socialism and social medicine as it would take a bigger effort to find the truth. I know enough well educated Americans who had the complete wrong idea about Canadian medical care.
Still makes you stop and think. How was the Soviet ignorance of the rest of the world different from American ignorance? Shirley, many of them must have been equally willfully ignorant.
I still remember all the jokes we used to make about how awful it was in the Soviet Empire as I grew up at the tail end of the cold war…and far too many of those jokes now apply to us as well. Internal passports, military “guards” at city hall and in the courthouse and the airports, you’re considered a terrorist if you photograph a bridge, secret prisons and people who get “disappeared”…we met the enemy, and we became him….
b&
There was the iron curtain and not asking questions, if not rewarded, was certainly better than being flung into the gulag.
I’ve often made the parallel that the US (and Canada to some extent as well) is giving away its freedom and how we used to feel bad for the citizens of the USSR. I even make modern equivalents, noting that our police, with their lack of true oversight would be as corrupt as Russian police today if it weren’t for the freedom of the press and even that is being subverted.
I hope I’m not on any watch lists, having said that, but since government agencies are typically less competent than conspiracy theorists would have us believe, I’m not too worried.
Oh & I think some Goethe is apt here:
Niemand ist mehr Sklave, als der sich für frei hält, ohne es zu sein.
Here is someone else’s interpretation of the phrase in English, which is better than mine:
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
Good quote.
The idea of “American Exceptionalism” is one that worries me quite a bit. So many Americans genuinely think they are better at everything than everyone and worse, to suggest otherwise is unpatriotic. NZ does better than the US on almost all international league tables, but we don’t think we’re the best at everything (except rugby!). We look to other countries for ideas to improve ourself, and criticism is about making things better. America is falling behind in many areas, like education, because of this imo.
Heather,
That is definitely a key problem with the US, and one of my number 1 pet peeves. The reasons for that attitude of exceptionalism are numerous.
I think education and health care are the two biggest problems we have. And the reason we can’t seem to do anything but watch them get worse is that pathetic exceptionalism. Obviously what should be done is look to see who is getting the best results, study how they are doing it, and then determine, based on reason and evidence, how to best adapt their methods to our socio-economic environment. But, nope, we won’t even look. Hell, as has been pointed out we won’t even admit than anyone else could possibly do it better than we could. Even when you force the typical exceptionalist to look at and acknowledge the data that clearly shows another country doing it much better than the US, that doesn’t convince them. Their fall back position is that the other country is unethical, i.e “socialism.”
@ Heather : You’re pretty good at sheep farming, too.
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I hope my American friends here will forgive this, but I regard the American situation as far *worse*. Stalin butchered his internal opponents (and others) and sent still others to rot in horrifying prisons. Most (a few exceptions not withstanding) Americans are much more free to learn about the world, etc. and yet do not. I must say that us Canadians are often in the same boat, alas.
Meaning, what would it take to convince me?
I think it would be this. Atheism is a conclusion, not an entire world view. There are therefore several significant competing stances within atheism based on how it was arrived at and what its value is thought to be. The main distinction has to do with the status of reason and it seems to me there are two primary questions here:
1.) Am I an atheist because it is the most reasonable conclusion? In other words, is the real, underlying standard that of being more reasonable and focusing on the process — rather than being good and believing the True Right Thing?
and
2.) Are the ‘extremists’ on the other side reachable through reason? Is there any point in trying to persuade, negotiate, compromise, debate, and change their minds? Or are they so deeply entrenched and beyond reason that there is no common ground to stand on and try?
If a movement has said “yes” to both then I don’t see how “atheism” could be responsible because as Hitchens points out the issue has shifted from the conclusion that there is no God to the Enlightenment values from which the whole idea of human rights and tolerance has sprung. “I’m right; you’re wrong: let’s talk.” That last part makes all the difference.
But if an individual or movement has said “no” to either of those two, then I would agree that ‘atheism’ was a significant part of the problem… but further down the line of causes. Atheism only has implications because of how it’s embedded in a way of thinking. It can’t be a direct cause any more than ‘theism’ with no added implications can be considered a direct cause. But detached from both a ground of reason and the ability to see the other side as open-minded, any conclusion about the supernatural or natural is now going to be dangerous.
This is why I think that, contrary to popular criticism, it’s actually accomodationism which is more likely to result in violence than gnu atheism. An accomodationist doesn’t want debate on religion: let the Little People alone, respect identity, and so forth. “They” can’t handle open discussion. Under the mantle of being more respectful this form of atheism dismisses the possibility of persuasion. It buys into the insidious and pernicious ideals of “faith” and how it equates one’s belief with one’s identity. It allows religion to divide human cultures and it forbids argument as useless.
There are three ways to deal with the Other Side: persuasion, isolation, and force. If there’s a clash and you can no longer maintain the happy happy isolation of a live-and-let-live attitude framed inside of how we treat preferences — and one is convinced that persuasion is impossible — then what’s left?
Force. Violence. The denial of the common ground or the need to make one.
I think comparing atheism to a religion is unfair. Atheism and theism are single “doctrines” or “ideas”, not an ideology like a religion is. It would be more appropriate, I think, to compare atheism and theism or Christianity and communism or humanism, but not Christianity and atheism, since they occupy different categories.
Right, I think they are different categories. The assumption of the question seems to be, that religion provides morality and atheism removes that limitation on humanities naturally sinful character. Without gods, all things are possible (so lets face the music and dance).
Hitchens is partly, not entirely, correct when he ‘imputes the aggression of the Japanese in World War II on “ancient ethnic (Buddhist) pseudoconfessional mystical nationalism”.’
Most Buddhist temples in Japan in the 30s and 40s supported the militarization of Japan, and were indeed imbued with a nationalistic philosophy.
However Buddhist sects which dissented from this (Honmon Hokkeshu and Sokka Gakkai) were actually outlawed by the Japanese government.
By 1912 Buddhism had been largely pushed to the margins of Japanese society and Shintoism had risen as the national religion.
Suppose Hari Seldon were to perform his psychohistorical calculations and conclude that:
(a) atheist populations behave, on average, more ethically and less violently than religious populations;
(b) utilitarianism justifies violence against the few for the good of the many;
(c) therefore, it’s legitimate to conduct a war against religion in order to hasten the arrival of the atheist utopia predicted by his theory.
In that case I think we’d be justified in saying that Seldon’s advocating state-sponsored violence in the name of atheism. But I don’t think we’ve (yet) seen a real historical example of this sort of reasoning. Soviet Communism had pretensions along these lines, but no science to back them up; just uncritical faith in the correctness and historical inevitability of their ideology.
I think that since there is no fatwa within atheism to harm others, no one should seriously look to atheism as a motivation for causing harm. I also cannot think of any atheist that advocated violence/murder/genocide in the name of atheism. This is of course decidedly different from religious people doing violence in the name of their religion. The recent shooting in Denmark being just the latest example.
Stalin and other murderous people who happened to also be atheists were horrible people for decidedly materialistic reasons such as for power and control. I likewise think we should be able to identify religious people who have committed crimes for materialistic and not for religious reasons.
The Pursuit of the Millennium by Norman Cohn draws fascinating parallels between religious millenarianism of the late Middle Ages and violent 20th century revolutionary/totalitarian movements.
How well the book has stood up to criticism by historians in the nearly 50 years since I read it, I don’t know, but it’s still in print.
I appreciate the information given earlier about Hitler’s allegiance to Christianity. It is curious he was such a fan Norse mythology as well. His actions of course were not just – or even mainly – based on these, but rather on the principle of revenge against the victors of World War I and hatred against Jews, gypsies, and even the mentally ill. A truly nasty brew, complex in historical origin but frightfully modern in its utilization of propaganda to exploit existing prejudices among his countrymen to motivate them in an aggressive war.
“What would it take to convince people that atheism was responsible for state genocide?”
When atheists are killing people for being non-atheist.
I’m not sure about communistic regimes. It may be faith based, or just fill in the gaps of religion but that alone doesn’t doesn’t mean that communists believed in the existence of any deities. If communists targeted people on a big scale because they believed in a God, I would plead guilty for them.
There will always be road bumps but our civilization is at its best when science and secularism lead us to solution.
What would it take to convince me that atheism motivated a person to murder? Maybe a sacred book of atheism with more and less direct calls for the murder of others in atheism’s name, imposed by force on people for 50 generations. That might be a start, but having witnessed lately several murders and other cruelties in the name of a similar book, even then I might wonder, since the consensus seems to be that book had nothing to do with the murders and cruelty.
Maybe if the murderer said explicitly, this thing said by Sam Harris inspired me to kill. But if that thing Sam Harris said didn’t sound to me like incitement, which of course it would not because nothing he says is incitement, then I might look for other explanations. And, again, since this has been the pattern with Islamic terror over the years, people not taking the terrorists at their word, I might expect I would find support for alternative explanations in the mainstream media.
People of good will can differ over the culpability of Islam for these various recent crimes, but pinning one atheist’s crimes on atheism is absurd: Sam Harris is noone’s jihadist imam.
Meant to say: I might expect I would find support for alternative explanations in the mainstream media, but I’m pretty sure I would not find that support: the rationalizing and excuse-making is for religions only.
Hitler was not an atheist, Pol Pot was not an atheist (what he was is anyone’s guess) Mao, I’m not sure of, but he spoke of notions like heaven, then we have Stalin.
Stalin was a paranoid psychopath who found his moment in history. Lenin warned that he was too vicious, Trotsky argued against him, as did many other atheist bolsheviks, to their cost.
The victims of Stalin were victims of paranoid psychosis rather than atheism, certainly the kind of atheism symptomatic of evidence based reality.
One of the main victims of Stalin being reason and discourse.
That he was able to prevail due to the circumstances of two world wars, and in a way a necessity to be ruthless because of this, is unfortunate.
It is those circumstances that allows the large numbers of victims to be claimed as victims of atheism when a large number were victims of historical contingency.
In the end, how many people did Stalin actually ‘kill’? A lot, but not the huge numbers claimed.
If it still matters, religion still has the figures.
“Heaven” in traditional Chinese thought is a very awkward concept. A sinologist can correct me, but a better translation is “impersonal moral order of the universe”. Is it religious? That’s complicated. For comparison: are the Platonic forms a *religious* doctrine, or “just” metaphysics?
I do not know much about Mao’s own views, however, and whether he held something like the traditional one. Some of his “nationalist” opponents (Chiang Kai-shek, IIRC) were Christians, that I know – but that’s an aside.