Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20061121/cm_csm/ydsouza
INTERESTING.
By Dinesh D'Souza
Tue Nov 21, 3:00 AM ET
RANCHO SANTA FE, CALIF. - In recent months, a spate of atheist books have argued that religion represents, as "End of Faith" author Sam Harris puts it, "the most potent source of human conflict, past and present."
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Columnist Robert Kuttner gives the familiar litany. "The Crusades slaughtered millions in the name of Jesus. The Inquisition brought the torture and murder of millions more. After Martin Luther, Christians did bloody battle with other Christians for another three centuries."
In his bestseller "The God Delusion," Richard Dawkins contends that most of the world's recent conflicts - in the Middle East, in the Balkans, in Northern Ireland, in Kashmir, and in Sri Lanka - show the vitality of religion's murderous impulse.
The problem with this critique is that it exaggerates the crimes attributed to religion, while ignoring the greater crimes of secular fanaticism. The best example of religious persecution in America is the Salem witch trials. How many people were killed in those trials? Thousands? Hundreds? Actually, fewer than 25. Yet the event still haunts the liberal imagination.
It is strange to witness the passion with which some secular figures rail against the misdeeds of the Crusaders and Inquisitors more than 500 years ago. The number sentenced to death by the Spanish Inquisition appears to be about 10,000. Some historians contend that an additional 100,000 died in jail due to malnutrition or illness.
These figures are tragic, and of course population levels were much lower at the time. But even so, they are minuscule compared with the death tolls produced by the atheist despotisms of the 20th century. In the name of creating their version of a religion-free utopia, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong produced the kind of mass slaughter that no Inquisitor could possibly match. Collectively these atheist tyrants murdered more than 100 million people.
Moreover, many of the conflicts that are counted as "religious wars" were not fought over religion. They were mainly fought over rival claims to territory and power. Can the wars between England and France be called religious wars because the English were Protestants and the French were Catholics? Hardly.
The same is true today. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not, at its core, a religious one. It arises out of a dispute over self-determination and land. Hamas and the extreme orthodox parties in Israel may advance theological claims - "God gave us this land" and so forth - but the conflict would remain essentially the same even without these religious motives. Ethnic rivalry, not religion, is the source of the tension in Northern Ireland and the Balkans.
p>Yet today's atheists insist on making religion the culprit. Consider Mr. Harris's analysis of the conflict in Sri Lanka. "While the motivations of the Tamil Tigers are not explicitly religious," he informs us, "they are Hindus who undoubtedly believe many improbable things about the nature of life and death." In other words, while the Tigers see themselves as combatants in a secular political struggle, Harris detects a religious motive because these people happen to be Hindu and surely there must be some underlying religious craziness that explains their fanaticism.
Harris can go on forever in this vein. Seeking to exonerate secularism and atheism from the horrors perpetrated in their name, he argues that Stalinism and Maoism were in reality "little more than a political religion." As for Nazism, "while the hatred of Jews in Germany expressed itself in a predominantly secular way, it was a direct inheritance from medieval Christianity." Indeed, "The holocaust marked the culmination of ... two thousand years of Christian fulminating against the Jews."
One finds the same inanities in Mr. Dawkins's work. Don't be fooled by this rhetorical legerdemain. Dawkins and Harris cannot explain why, if Nazism was directly descended from medieval Christianity, medieval Christianity did not produce a Hitler. How can a self-proclaimed atheist ideology, advanced by Hitler as a repudiation of Christianity, be a "culmination" of 2,000 years of Christianity? Dawkins and Harris are employing a transparent sleight of hand that holds Christianity responsible for the crimes committed in its name, while exonerating secularism and atheism for the greater crimes committed in their name.
Religious fanatics have done things that are impossible to defend, and some of them, mostly in the Muslim world, are still performing horrors in the name of their creed. But if religion sometimes disposes people to self-righteousness and absolutism, it also provides a moral code that condemns the slaughter of innocents. In particular, the moral teachings of Jesus provide no support for - indeed they stand as a stern rebuke to - the historical injustices perpetrated in the name of Christianity.
Atheist hubris
The crimes of atheism have generally been perpetrated through a hubristic ideology that sees man, not God, as the creator of values. Using the latest techniques of science and technology, man seeks to displace God and create a secular utopia here on earth. Of course if some people - the Jews, the landowners, the unfit, or the handicapped - have to be eliminated in order to achieve this utopia, this is a price the atheist tyrants and their apologists have shown themselves quite willing to pay. Thus they confirm the truth of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's dictum, "If God is not, everything is permitted."
Whatever the motives for atheist bloodthirstiness, the indisputable fact is that all the religions of the world put together have in 2,000 years not managed to kill as many people as have been killed in the name of atheism in the past few decades.
It's time to abandon the mindlessly repeated mantra that religious belief has been the greatest source of human conflict and violence. Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history.
* Dinesh D'Souza is the Rishwain Fellow at the Hoover Institution. His new book, "The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11," will be published in January.
INTERESTING.
By Dinesh D'Souza
Tue Nov 21, 3:00 AM ET
RANCHO SANTA FE, CALIF. - In recent months, a spate of atheist books have argued that religion represents, as "End of Faith" author Sam Harris puts it, "the most potent source of human conflict, past and present."
ADVERTISEMENT
Columnist Robert Kuttner gives the familiar litany. "The Crusades slaughtered millions in the name of Jesus. The Inquisition brought the torture and murder of millions more. After Martin Luther, Christians did bloody battle with other Christians for another three centuries."
In his bestseller "The God Delusion," Richard Dawkins contends that most of the world's recent conflicts - in the Middle East, in the Balkans, in Northern Ireland, in Kashmir, and in Sri Lanka - show the vitality of religion's murderous impulse.
The problem with this critique is that it exaggerates the crimes attributed to religion, while ignoring the greater crimes of secular fanaticism. The best example of religious persecution in America is the Salem witch trials. How many people were killed in those trials? Thousands? Hundreds? Actually, fewer than 25. Yet the event still haunts the liberal imagination.
It is strange to witness the passion with which some secular figures rail against the misdeeds of the Crusaders and Inquisitors more than 500 years ago. The number sentenced to death by the Spanish Inquisition appears to be about 10,000. Some historians contend that an additional 100,000 died in jail due to malnutrition or illness.
These figures are tragic, and of course population levels were much lower at the time. But even so, they are minuscule compared with the death tolls produced by the atheist despotisms of the 20th century. In the name of creating their version of a religion-free utopia, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong produced the kind of mass slaughter that no Inquisitor could possibly match. Collectively these atheist tyrants murdered more than 100 million people.
Moreover, many of the conflicts that are counted as "religious wars" were not fought over religion. They were mainly fought over rival claims to territory and power. Can the wars between England and France be called religious wars because the English were Protestants and the French were Catholics? Hardly.
The same is true today. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not, at its core, a religious one. It arises out of a dispute over self-determination and land. Hamas and the extreme orthodox parties in Israel may advance theological claims - "God gave us this land" and so forth - but the conflict would remain essentially the same even without these religious motives. Ethnic rivalry, not religion, is the source of the tension in Northern Ireland and the Balkans.
p>Yet today's atheists insist on making religion the culprit. Consider Mr. Harris's analysis of the conflict in Sri Lanka. "While the motivations of the Tamil Tigers are not explicitly religious," he informs us, "they are Hindus who undoubtedly believe many improbable things about the nature of life and death." In other words, while the Tigers see themselves as combatants in a secular political struggle, Harris detects a religious motive because these people happen to be Hindu and surely there must be some underlying religious craziness that explains their fanaticism.
Harris can go on forever in this vein. Seeking to exonerate secularism and atheism from the horrors perpetrated in their name, he argues that Stalinism and Maoism were in reality "little more than a political religion." As for Nazism, "while the hatred of Jews in Germany expressed itself in a predominantly secular way, it was a direct inheritance from medieval Christianity." Indeed, "The holocaust marked the culmination of ... two thousand years of Christian fulminating against the Jews."
One finds the same inanities in Mr. Dawkins's work. Don't be fooled by this rhetorical legerdemain. Dawkins and Harris cannot explain why, if Nazism was directly descended from medieval Christianity, medieval Christianity did not produce a Hitler. How can a self-proclaimed atheist ideology, advanced by Hitler as a repudiation of Christianity, be a "culmination" of 2,000 years of Christianity? Dawkins and Harris are employing a transparent sleight of hand that holds Christianity responsible for the crimes committed in its name, while exonerating secularism and atheism for the greater crimes committed in their name.
Religious fanatics have done things that are impossible to defend, and some of them, mostly in the Muslim world, are still performing horrors in the name of their creed. But if religion sometimes disposes people to self-righteousness and absolutism, it also provides a moral code that condemns the slaughter of innocents. In particular, the moral teachings of Jesus provide no support for - indeed they stand as a stern rebuke to - the historical injustices perpetrated in the name of Christianity.
Atheist hubris
The crimes of atheism have generally been perpetrated through a hubristic ideology that sees man, not God, as the creator of values. Using the latest techniques of science and technology, man seeks to displace God and create a secular utopia here on earth. Of course if some people - the Jews, the landowners, the unfit, or the handicapped - have to be eliminated in order to achieve this utopia, this is a price the atheist tyrants and their apologists have shown themselves quite willing to pay. Thus they confirm the truth of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's dictum, "If God is not, everything is permitted."
Whatever the motives for atheist bloodthirstiness, the indisputable fact is that all the religions of the world put together have in 2,000 years not managed to kill as many people as have been killed in the name of atheism in the past few decades.
It's time to abandon the mindlessly repeated mantra that religious belief has been the greatest source of human conflict and violence. Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history.
* Dinesh D'Souza is the Rishwain Fellow at the Hoover Institution. His new book, "The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11," will be published in January.
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At the very least, the article talks little about how atheism caused mass murders but more about how we should stop blaming organized religion for stuff.
At the very most, it is factually impotent.
EDIT: I just read this part
Propaganda is a 2-way street. Get over it. No one cares.
[Adolph Hitler, Speech, Reichstag, 1936]
"Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith . . . we need believing people".
[Adolf Hitler, April 26, 1933, from a speech made during negotiations leading to the Nazi-Vatican Concordant of 1933]
"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly, it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people. And when I look on my people I see them work and work and toil and labor, and at the end of the week they have only for their wages wretchedness and misery. When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people are plundered and exposed".
[Adolf Hitler, speech on April 12, 1922]
...
Hitler really believed his actions were justified by his religious faith. Like it or not, Hitler was a Christian (Catholic). Pretending he is not, for the sake of solidifying your point in a debate, negates your arguement altogether.
...
Chalk up 6 million on the 'Religion is Responsible' side.
Hail, Hail!!!
The whole article is so patently ridiculous, it's difficult to know where to start, but I was going to give it a shot ... I was deciding which two or three points to focus on, playing around a bit with the wording ... and then I googled the author, and according to his Wikipedia page, he used to date Ann Coulter and was at one time engaged to Laura Ingraham!
He dated Ann Coulter! Bahahahahaha!!!!!
I'm sorry, but knowing that, I can't take him seriously enough to even bother with a response.
Ann Coulter .... *snicker* .... tee hee ....
I believe the excuse he uses is, "Hey... I thought she was a guy!"
Hail, Hail!!!
Yeah... it is amazing what you can find on the InterNet.
...
I think that religions have to accept the responsibilities of the actions on Men who commit acts of autrocity in their name... especially, if the Church condones it.
For example... if you are Christian... and you do not accept Christianity's mistakes and flaws. Then, there is no way you can legitimately argue against the Churches of Islam that preach hatred towards all others in the name of Islam. ALL religions need to accept responsibility because they wield a great amount of influence on Man.
Blaming it on Aethiests... whom have fault and need to also be held accountable (although, on a personal level since they do not believe in God)... is idiotic. It's Salem, MA. all over again.
Hail, Hail!!!
naděje umírá poslední
Atheism in many circles, and a lot of times around this board, seems to be taking on the less desireable qualities of an organized religion. The religion of atheism seems to be getting more and more fanatical.
It's true Hitler was anything but an atheist, he leaned closer to religious fanatic. It's said that he believe he had the devine protection of God and that his conquest of world domination was God's will.
whats the first extremist religion that comes to mind?
reminds me of another current leader who claims god is protecting his country and that his decisions are guided by personal revelations of god's will...
southern baptist.
Sumerian
If you are referring to Bush, that's probably because before U.S. involvment in WW2, the US was interested in Nazi Germany's propaganda machine and adopted a lot of it's principles. Prescott Bush, if I recall correctly worked very closely with the Nazis.
The guy lost credibility with me right here. Not all atheists are liberal for one
What you are witnessing are individuals. There is no Atheist Doctrine that comes from an Atheist religion. Simply, individuals that do not believe in God, religion or church and do not not want any of those influences in their lives.
For me... that's their gig. Their disbelief is not going to alter my belief and I am not going to try to convince them that my belief is the way. I believe that my faith is personal and I relate to in on a personal level. I also believe that the God I believe in isn't so petty as to shun those that do not believe in Him. My God is all loving and all forgiving... quite unlike the picture the Holy Scriptures depict Him as. He will not forsake someone simply for questioning Him... including the existance of Him.
Religions are the ones that sell God as vengeful and judgemental... which leads to the term, 'God Fearing'. I ain't buying it. God doesn't scare me... God loves me. And His love is unconditional. All that other crap is Man, placing human faults upon God... blaming Him for their shortcomings. I'm not treating my God in that manner... I have more faith in Him than that.
Hail, Hail!!!
I believe that religion as an organization is made up of individuals. The more undesireable individuals tend to look down on and condemn those who believe differently. They have an organization of people like them who back them up. There are atheist organizations out there. Many of these organizations are made up of people who look down on anyone who believes in a God. I have seen it many many times on this board, I see them on the street, etc... They are forming a "religion" based around a belief that there is no God and that all of those who disagree with their belief are of lesser intelligence.
Other than that one point, I agree with your post. My beliefs are my own as well and I don't try to force those on anyone. I will, however, take the side of anyone who I see as being shunned for his own personal beliefs no matter what those may be.
Including the one whose belief is not believing... right? That's his gig... no one else's.
Hail, Hail!!!
Absolutely...that's why I put the last part of that statement in there.
that is the problem,...
we need to get a few more electrons to make a full 8, then maybe we'll be more stable,...
~Ron Burgundy
so your belief in God is not sustained by the holy scriptures?
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
Thanks for these quotes. It's sometimes hard for people to grasp that the Nazis didn't see themselves as evil. They actually saw themselves as moral crusaders with God on their side whose job it was to rid the world of Judaism and Bolshevism. Their mind set was not a million miles away from the current gang of self-important chest beaters in London and Washington who believe that they are on a quest to rid the world of evil and to spread freedom and democracy in the world. In fact, if you look back through history then you will be hard pressed to find any so called tyrant or dictator who differs from this pattern.
No... not really.
I mean, the Bible is the only place I can find stuff out about Jesus... and i like His teachings. Was He the Son of God? I don't know... but, i'm not taking the Bible as the truth... more like the truth the church wants me to believe.
As for God... I need something. Something greater than I can imagine. The creator and guide of the Universe... call Him Nature or Natural Order or whatever. I see His creations in our Earth and our surroundings. The mountains... the surf... the stars... much more inspiring to me than hymns from the inside of a church. Nothing against churches, here... Nortre Dame is fucking awesome... but it pales in comparison to the Grand Canyon at sunrise.
That God in the Bible that did that shit to Job... well, He was kind of an asshole. I just don't think God is that vain. I'm guessing it was more of a Bible Story created in the mind of Man to make us believe.
So... nope. I don't place my faith in the Bible or the religions that are out there. I placing my faith in God, Himself.
And who knows... I'm probably wrong. But, just because i'm wrong doesn't automatically make religion right.
Hail, Hail!!!
nice post.
and i agree there is truly nothing more awe inspiring than Nature. even when she is angry.
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
We are all worshiping the same God, just in a different way. Why can't people coexist??
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but what criteria do you use to judge whether or not somebody is living a moral life?
Just wondering why you would apply your comparison first to those in Washington and London rather than to those in Tehran and Damascus.
1998 Seattle 7-21
2000 Seattle 11-06
2003 Seattle Benaroya 10-22
2005 Gorge 9-1
2006 Gorge 7-23
This is an extremely disingenuous point. They single out Salem when the vast majority of witch trials occured in Europe, where 40,000 - 100,000 people were killed for practicing witchcraft. When people bring up the witch trials, they are referring to something much more widespread than Salem.
I appreciate many of those sentiments. However, I can't find any reason to postulate, nevermind believe that a "God" of any sort exists. I accept it's possible there is a God, only because there is so much we don't know about the universe and the meaning of existance. However, based on what we do know (or what I know about what we all know) it doesn't seem reasonable to me to think that a God exists. However, when I witness many of the amazing aspects of nature, it does make me want to capitalize Nature, and revere it as a "God".