Last week, Scott tipped me off to this article and it got me thinking a little. The author claims that while religion has killed many people throughout history (Crusades, Spanish Inquisition, etc) it is peanuts compared to Atheism. The author states:
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.
A few days later Itanshi tossed this frightening little nugget my way and I was furious. The author claimed that Darwin was the driving force behind much of the death and destruction in the 20th century. He sites that Darwin’s "survival of the fittest" inspired racism, Nazism, communism, etc.
But is either camp right? Is it even possible to settle this dispute?
For those interested in the text book Atlas of Creation, referred to in Itanshi’s article, you can download it here. I encourage you to read it as it is extremely flawed in it’s argument against evolution, but that it a topic for another post.
No related posts.
The only thing about the article I sent you that I don’t necessarily agree with is limping those madmen under the banner of “atheism”. While they may or may not have been atheists (arguments for Hitler go both ways) it isn’t as though they were following some sort of “atheist agenda”. And if the Crusaders or the Muslims had access to WMDs the death toll would have been higher. As it is it’s hard to kill hundreds of thousands/milions with swords and arrows. Having said that I do think religion gets an unnecessarily bad rap when it comes to death tolls. People just seem to love to kill each other regardless of belief system.
What some people don’t realise is that atheism is a blanket category, rather than a solid collection of ideals such as Catholicism or Islam. Its “followers” are united by what they don’t believe in, rather than who they do… so it’s a much much much broader category than any one religion could claim it is.
Hence accusations that atheism is the root and driving force of the evils behind Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Russia are poorly grounded.
It’s like talking about what ice-cream is the best. Some people claim chocolate is. Another group says vanilla. These 2 groups fight over who is correct. Chocolate stages a mass slaughter of vanilla-lovers in the name of their flavour and 100 000 die in the great Chocolate Inquisition.
Now, anyone who doesn’t like either of the flavours listed above is referred to as a flathiest by others. Understandably, this includes those who like vanilla, honeycomb, peacan… the list is endless. They have no common ground except an exclusion from a small number of groups. If certain flathiests staged a massacre of another flathiest or chocolate-lover, can you really hold the entire group accountable?
Hardly.
Damnation, second last paragraph should read strawberry instead of vanilla. The perils of metaphors…
I like how when someone kills someone else, and it isn’t because of religion, it’s because of anti-religion.
Killing Religious people doesn’t qualify as wasting human life, they gave up individuality and free thought long ago.
That’s just blatant stupidity. “Darwinism” IS NOT “Social Darwinism”. You’d have an easier time connecting Newton to the “death and destruction in the 20th century.” And Social Darwinism had more to do with the 19th century than the 20th.
Hitler was a catholic.
OMG! Darwin invented Evil!
…and other such absurd exclamations. Seriously, where do these people get off on such convoluted proclamations?
I’m sure people in every religion and non-religion have killed people at some point. It’s not the religion that does it. A book or an idea doesn’t grab a knife and go out into the world with a chip on it’s shoulder. To blame religion when someone kills someone is taking away any choice. It doesn’t matter who tells you what, it’s your choice to pull the trigger/sign the death notice/whatever. Religion, nor atheism, nor any political/spiritual belief is the ultimate, bare-bones cause. It is people that make the final decisions.
That being said, grouping atheists into a bunch of murderous psychopaths is much easier for arguing your point than putting forward an effort of trying to instill a sense of personal responsibility and value to make a better society, so I guess I can see where these people are coming from, which is to say that they suck.
I was always under the cynical impression that all wars were about money or resources (land). Even the crusades. As soon as a bishop has as much power as a duke, religion becomes government and concerns itself with matters of state.
Good point.
Power corrupts… and religion in modern society is certainly about power.
Surely if we had all been godfearing enough (all 20 dozen gods of them) there surely would not have been such mass murder in the 20th century and it surely would have nothing to do with population increases and weapons of mass destruction that such high numbers could not be causation of. right. yeah. call me when that guy finally puts the bong down.
Darwin’s theories had nothing to do with the horrors that came with the nazi regime. At best you could say that Hitler used a terribly twisted version of his view of evolution to justify what he ordered done.
The programs he speaks of fell under the ideals of eugenics, and the idea of purity in bloodline was around for far longer than Darwin has been.
Just look at animal and plant husbandry.
Snurp and Andrew have hit the nail on the head here.
Human beings cause atrocities, not books. In order to commit an atrocity, you need a “good excuse” by which you can justify it. See the atrocities today committed in the name of “freedom”, and you will see that any good thing can be used as an excuse.
Religion is no different. Nor is evolution, which was, once upon a time, commonly misapplied to theories of eugenics and racial superiority.
The thing I don’t get with this article is this: if bad guys believe in evolution, that doesn’t make it false. I’m reasonably sure that Stalin believed in gravity, too; does that make gravity the tool of evil.
(Hitler is an odd case, and I can’t actually conclusively say whether or not he believed in gravity…)
Every religion contains, in varying degrees, elements of the soft and the hard. For the sake of world peace, dialogue within religions and among them must strengthen the softer aspects.
Johan Galtung.
As shown by Galtungs work: http://www.crosscurrents.org/galtung.htm all religion accepts/encourage some types of violence. In my opinion only a small part of the ppl killed during man time can be traced directly to any religion per se, but rather (as some already has pointed out) to a groups struggle for land and/or power. Religion has been used since “the beginning ™†to get people to submit to another groups claims and needs. Without religion it would have been much harder to get people to accept the claims their leaders put forth.
ï® All those in favour for waging war (and dying) to get me more land and power, please raise their hand.
ï® All those in favour for waging war (and enter paradise) on the behalf of God, please raise their hand.
Even though the result of the war eventually will be the same, any believer will “see†a big difference between the two.
BTW: Johan Galtung is one of the more interesting men ever been born in Norway, to bad some ppl didn’t see him that way, but more as man they needed to get rid of. He was therefore more or less forced to leave the country. Only a small fraction of todays Norwegian adults under 30y know who hi is. Whenever Galtung visits Japan 100.000 ppl shows up to honour him, when he visits Norway no one even know who he is. If you have not read his works I would recommend a quick update on this fascinating man (he is more interested in war&peace than religion but I think many here will find his works interesting)
The article was so close to actually being insightful:
“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.”
If they had stopped the article there, I would have been impressed. However they left this perfectly reasonable line of thought for something inane:
“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 … 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… Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history.”
So this is how it goes:
1. Athesist author claims religion killed lots of people.
2. Religion points out that wars are about land and power, not religion.
3. Somehow only atheists are concerned about land and power. Really? Is that really your argument?
4. Therfore, religion claims that athesim killed all those people instead.
“Winckle Says:
November 27th, 2006 at 2:03 pm
Hitler was a catholic.
”
He didn’t kill people because he was a Catholic. He killed people because he was cra-zazay.
“If certain flathiests staged a massacre of another flathiest or chocolate-lover, can you really hold the entire group accountable?”
If certain lovers of chocolate kill someone you can’t hold the entire ice-cream loving world responsible.
“Shaze Says:
November 27th, 2006 at 12:58 pm
Killing Religious people doesn’t qualify as wasting human life, they gave up individuality and free thought long ago.”
*yawn*
I agree with the previous poster.
The author of that article does have a strong point. If one is to consider the Crusades, the Inquisition, etc. as examples of how organized religion is the bane of human civilization, what are we to make of the atrocities of Joseph Stalin, the Khmer Rouge, etc.
It’s too bad (and rather ironic) that the author discredits himself by falling victim to the same fallacy that he accuses religion-bashers of. He attributes to Atheism that which can be more correctly attributed to one group’s desire for land, wealth, power, political control, etc.
As for associating Darwinism with racism, Nazism, communism, and terrorism. I can see how someone might (very misguidedly) associate racism, eugenics, the Nazi racial philosophy, and Darwinism. But terrorism??? How does that work?
Well anyways, this whole argument is why I stay on the fence. Both the claim that organized religion is the cause of all the woes in the world and the claim that Atheism is the cause of all the problems in the world are extremely dubious to me.
“”Both the claim that organized religion is the cause of all the woes in the world and the claim that Atheism is the cause of all the problems in the world are extremely dubious to me.”"
It’s quite simple, I think. Idea’s do not kill people or start wars. Large groups of people with the same idea, who think they’re right and everyone else is wrong, kill other people and start wars. (Christians, Chinese, Communists, Catholics, Colonists)
It’s just that religion tend to bind people into like-minded groups a lot better then Atheism.
disclaimer: random groups selected on basis of starting with a ‘C’
I agree that Darwin was missunderstood and NaziGermany and so on claimed to have a social darwinism. So in fact, it’s the misinterpretation of Darwin’s work, not himself who’s responsible for the try to create the “über-race”.
I just had a flash!
Humans are responsible for all wars!!!
Yeah, all wars had to do with humans… and possibly broccoli.
You leave the broccoli alone, you anti-broccolist!
“”I agree that Darwin was missunderstood and NaziGermany and so on claimed to have a social darwinism. So in fact, it’s the misinterpretation of Darwin’s work”"
Well, the crusades are based on the same thing. It does say ‘thou shalt not kill’, so the crusades are basically wrong from christian standpoint. I can see the pope back then “Thou Shalt Not KIll….*christians*”
Let’s just agree that ALL humans EVERYWHERE are fallible, and that there is no sense in beleiving ANYONE except YOURSELF about ANYTHING.
To quote South Park “Fuck you Scott, you’re a dick”
broccoli isnt the source of all evil carots are … if you make that statement one more time i will kill you.
some how if there was no religion and every one had the same looks the same smell the same etc. we evil humans will still find a reason to kill.
look at any school near you and there will be alpha dogs and losers what makes us human so bad is that we all want to be the alpha and thus join them in order not to become a loser.
i dun know about you guys but thats almost darwinism in a nutshell the survival of the fittest wich makes all religions part of darwinism.
for those who wont agree just check any religious person and ask if a good man who did nothing but good but doesnt belive in god can enter heaven.
we all want to be “special” so we ALL follow …
including me,
the alpha and the omega =P
Broccoli?? Carots??? No!
Is it not written that POTATOES are the fruuuit of the devil???
some is written about forbidden fruits … i dun recall what fruits it where and or if it was even discribed.
i do know carrots broccoli and potatoes are no fruits :P.
and i do know that the only reason i know the bible is because the salvation army forces non beleving homeless to know there religions even though (or specially if) they are 12.
thats my reason to be against religion as it is i cant belive any god would allow helping only people that do belive the bible or at least know the bible well enough.
again can a good man that did nothing wrong and lived like a saint enter heaven even though he doesnt belive in god ?
Um..i don’t know where you get your information from but Adolf Hitler was a catholic…..he even had the pope’s blessings for the first half of the war…till he started loosing. So um get your facts strait before you start making crazy statements that one thing could be the source of all evil….and FYI man would be that source not god or satin it’s man who does evil…
actually, the church never apologised for the support to the nazi’s. Nor have they apologised for the safe escort of war criminals out of germany. Nor have they apologised for the handing over of birth records, which led to large scale ‘arrest’ of jews.
And that’s just WW2
A note: Darwin never said anything about the survival of the fittest. That was 19th century robber baron apologist, Edmund Spenser. Darwin’s was a project informed by the mysteries of chance over millions of years, while Spenser’s had everything to do with a morality of capital in which the rich may do as they please (i.e they are more “fit” socially speaking).
Just making sure the quotes are straight.
If Religion is an invention of sick perverted freaks and degenertaed weirdos, who managed to get all the sons of bitches at that time and managed to kill all the great scientists of that time, then Atheists are just other idiots who are against Religion.
As the matter of fact, the gread idocy of Atheism is that if someone is claiming to be an Atheist this doesn’t make the Atheist a normla person automatically.
Charls Darwin is a great example, of how an iodt an atheist can be. He invented an unplausible bullshit about the bloody monkeys being the progenitors of humans.
If you ask someone normal – sane in mind and body, he will always easily explain, that the most plausible theory, is that humans were born toghetehr with all the animals, but nature decided that humans are the most evoluted species on earth mentally, therefore their bodies are th emost evoluted in odrer to fit their mental capacity.
As the matter of fact, there are two natural mechanisms able to regulate life on earth, they are called “Natural selection” and “Natural evolution”.
Natural selection and Natural evolution are the basises of normla society, which is a Democratic Republic, based on Meritocracy, Technocracy, Nationalism and Federalism.
If somebody doesnt still know, all this was allready explained almost 2000 years ago by Greek and Roman normal, mentally sane scientists, all dead by the conspiracy of Perverts and Degeerates, who actually created the insane Dictatorship of Religion and Monarchy.
So if you see some idiots that claim to be Atheists, fighting Religious mindless bullshit with their own mindless pseudo scientiphical bullshit, always remember that there is only one kind of normal people, they are called mentally sane people, and they are easily recognisable, they all look sane in mind and body, and they never say bullshit pretending to be serious as hell.
This is to explain that even if the Religious idiots are the dominant evil on earth, it doesnt mean that any other idot thta is against religion in some unnatural way can become automatically an ally of normal people.
i think darwin is the father of hitler. hitler was a nice person but he just freaked out. but darwin freaked out from his birth on.. lawlzzz
What an ignorant and narrow minded way of looking at these crimes against humanity. Many atrocities have been committed directly in the name of religion, but what Stalin and the others did was NOT committed in the name of atheism. They_just_happened_to_be_atheists. Their motivation was political… nothing more or nothing less. There is a huge difference. Talk about clutching at straws.