Recently an acquaintance posted the usual rant against religion: “religion poisons everything.” Now this person is an avowed extremist atheist who loves such other extreme atheists as Hitchens and Dawkins. I won’t go into the logical fallacies of them at length because you can get a number of books on the subject, but suffice it to say that I think Hitchens and Dawkins do most atheists a disservice because their arguments are often cherry-picked to misrepresent what religion represents. Among other failings.
Now let me be clear about how I feel about atheists, as well – I love them. I think they ask much better questions about faith and religion than many people who are deeply involved in religion, faith or spiritual disciplines. I think they ask the hard questions of religion (though you will see I don’t think they ask the hard questions of atheism) and faith that many fear to ask. They were, in my graduate studies, some of the people who asked the most challenging questions. Moreover I feel they have every right to believe as they want and have faith that there is no God (because it is on faith that they have to believe and assert such a thing). Moreover I completely agree that there is no scientific, empiric evidence for God (which is why it’s faith, religion and spirituality – not science). To make the assertion that there is “no God,” however, seems like the ultimate in hubris because such an assertion requires that you also make the assertion that you know all there was/is/and will be to know about the universe to make such a statement.
Anyhow, the discussion evolved into one where I stated that extremism certainly poisons all things but that singling out religion is dishonest. I brought up Mao and Stalin as examples that atheism has spawned some monsters as well, and what came back was a link to a pro-atheist blog (http://stupac2.blogspot.com/2006/10/hitler-stalin-and-mao-were-not-atheists.html) supporting the position that Mao and Stalin were not atheists (I do agree with the author’s assertion that Hitler was not an atheist and used religion to push his horrific agenda and nationalism). The author argued that Mao and Stalin abolished religion as a power grab and therefore weren’t really atheists, or if they were that their atheism wasn’t the cause for such power grabs (of course ignoring the fact that the same arguments could be made for power grabs by Christians justifying their power grabs / tribal wars with Christianity).
Moreover the author tried to make the argument that “put up against each other, religion beats atheism by several orders of magnitude in number of people killed.” Which could be true if Mao and Stalin weren’t atheists, and if you also pretend that everything done by religious people or in the name of religion is because of religion rather than due to power grabs, tribal conflicts that existed before that religion, or simple political expansionist policies.
So my question becomes “Why don’t atheists want to claim Stalin, Mao and Pol-Pot as atheists?”
I’m more than willing to admit that religion of all colors (especially as I myself come from two traditions) have a colored history of promoting violence and committing horrors (Crusades, WWII Zen buddhist participation, anti-Semitic horrors committed by Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, Coptics, et cetera).
But I can also balance that out with all the good religion has promoted in the world (social justice, education for the non-elite, hospitals, nursing, soup kitchens, homeless shelters – how many atheist homeless shelters do you know of?, YMCA/YWCA, earliest universities, science -- http://www.konig.org/wc49.htm, arts, et cetera).
So why can’t atheists embrace the horrors of Stalin, Mao and Pol-pot as their own and admit that it is humanity, not religion, at fault for the horrors of the world?
Both Stalin and Mao began their reign by murdering the religious. First by murdering priests and nuns, then by dismantling religion as a whole. One of Mao's more famous lines regarding his thoughts on religion and theism was “religion is poison.”
If atheists are to hold Christian (and other religious) regimes responsible for crimes committed in the name of Christianity (and/or Islam/Buddhism/Sikhism/Paganism/et cetera) then it would be intellectually dishonest to not also hold atheist regimes responsible for their crimes committed in the name of atheism.
To quote from another author: “And who can deny that Stalin and Mao, not to mention Pol Pot and a host of others, all committed atrocities in the name of a Communist ideology that was explicitly atheistic? Who can dispute that they did their bloody deeds by claiming to be establishing a “new man” and a religion-free utopia? These were mass murders performed with atheism as a central part of their ideological inspiration, they were not mass murders done by people who simply happened to be atheist.”
All one has to do is look at Marx, Lenin, Nikolai Bukharin and Evgenii Preobrazhensky and their statements about religion, along with the example of communist regimes and their consistent anti-theist and atheist stance along with statements by Stalin and Mao. All historians agree that Stalin held true to Lenin’s stance on religion and atheism.
To claim that these men, responsible for horrors that far outshine those of religion throughout the centuries, are not atheists is intellectually dishonest. Moreover it’s a modern fallacy being promoted by atheists who don’t have the guts to admit that humanity is responsible for its own horrors, whether committed by religious people or atheists and those against religion. It is, I'm sorry to say, atheist dogma not supported by the facts. Just like the statement “put up against each other, religion beats atheism by several orders of magnitude in number of people killed.” It is dogma not supported by the facts.
Let me leave you with a few numbers. For those not familiar with world history in an intimate manner, they will come as a shock. Mao Ze-Dong (who said “religion is poison” to the Dalai Lama) and his implementation of atheist communism is responsible for the deaths of 49-78,000,000 people. Yes, million. Stalin and his implementation of his understanding of Lenin's atheist and anti-theist communism is responsible for the deaths of 23,000,000 (including the purges and the Ukranian famine, due to implementation of communism).
Each of these genocides took place in about the space of a decade. By comparison, the Spanish Inquisition (which Atheists love to bring up often) “held 49,000 trials between 1560-1700 and executed between 3,000 and 5,000 people.” So that's about 5,000 over the space of 140 years.
Another favorite of atheists is the Crusades (which could really refer to any number of the many ‘Crusades,’ but usually refer to the first through ninth and not the Northern Crusades or Teutonic Crusades). The best estimates (and records are spotty) put the participants in the crusades in the middle tens of thousands. For an example, in the first Crusade about 10,000 are thought to have gathered in Europe and gone on to the Middle East (and the first Crusade saw the greatest percentage killed). Anti-theists tend to estimate (and perhaps exaggerate) the number to 1 million. Which is still 100 times fewer people over the course of a few hundred years in comparison to Mao and Stalin in the course of a decade alone.
The upshot of all these numbers, and all these genocidal horrors is this: humanity is capable of horrors. Without a doubt some of those horrors are directly attributable to religion and the promotion of religious doctrine. Without a doubt some of those horrors are directly attributable to atheism and the promotion of atheist doctrine.
Instead of attacking religion, or attacking atheism, or pretending that someone else is “the other” because of their beliefs – shouldn’t we as religious people AND as atheists be seeking both honest dialogue and real world ways of reducing killing, murder, poverty and homelessness? Shouldn’t we set aside differences in what amounts to faith and opinion in order to promote goodness in the world whether or not you source it from God(s) or Natural Humanist Morality? I, for one, would absolutely LOVE to see non-religious and atheist homeless shelters spring up across this country. I would love to see people from all traditions and belief stances reach out to those in need, and make bold, concrete statements against violence and oppression.
The difficulty is, it’s getting hard to tell the difference between extremists on either side of the ‘theism’ coin. Let’s hope the Buddha was right in his various assertions regarding the middle path. And let’s hope we can all walk such a path holding hands together. Rather than striving to push one-another off the path to get ahead.
Whether or not you are a theist, non-theist or a-theist the reality of our universe is that we are all intimately interconnected on this planet. The action(s) of one person can have a horrific, or incredibly positive effect upon millions (or billions) of people. Even if you have an effect on only one person that is apparent to you, let it be one that enhances their basic quality of life on this planet.
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