Atheist Atrocities versus Religious Atrocities
The question is whether or not intolerance is intrinsic to the nature of atheism, or Christianity.
Vicious crimes have been committed in the name of Hinduism, yet Hindu is praised by most as a nonviolent belief system. Even Buddhist have murdered Hindu, Christians and Muslims in the name of their beliefs.
Is violence intrinsic to Buddhism? No. Is violence intrinsic to Hinduism? Or to Christianity? The fact that a Buddhist can remain a Buddhist without the need to kill non-Buddhists proves beyond any possibility of debate that Buddhism is not the cause of the violence. The same goes for Christianity, Hinduism and any other belief system.
A causal relationship between a theism and violence, or between atheism and violence, would preclude the possibility of nonviolent adherence.
1. Violent is intrinsic to Christianity. (Premise)
2. Therefore all Christians must be violent.
So we see that the logic of the Christians-as-violent crowd fails.
Let’ take a quote from my favorite Straw Man, Austin Cline.
One of the most common arguments which atheists offer against the value and utility of religion is the extent of violence, suffering, and death which religious believers have caused in the names of their gods. It’s tough to argue against the very real and very horrible record of religious violence across the millennia and while some do, many religious theists try to rebut this critique by arguing that atheism is responsible for much worse.
Or perhaps I should say that they try to argue this — all such arguments are rendered invalid even before they start by the very simple fact that atheism and religion are not parallel and cannot be compared directly. Atheism is simply the absence of belief in gods; religions are complex ideological systems which a myriad of beliefs, ideas, traditions, etc. Mere disbelief in gods cannot really motivate anyone in any direction.
As we discussed earlier, atheism is not the mere absence of belief in a god. It is the belief that god cannot and/or does not exist.
So here we have a belief - i.e., “God does not exist”.
We all know that any belief is enough to divide people. As a child, I liked blue and my brother liked brown. I hated brown, and never really felt close to him, for that odd reason.
Often times location is enough to drive a wedge between people. “He’s from the East Side,” I’d hear, with it said in such a way as to leave me suspect of anybody who had the gall to be from the East Side. Sometimes West Side boys would attack East Side boys.
Now try this logic out:
1. West Side boys attack East Side boys.
2. Therefore, West Sidedness must cause violence.
Of course it doesn’t.
What then is the Cause
Some West Side boys did not attack East Side boys. Some did attack East Side boys. There were no beliefs demanding an attack. The attack was caused by intolerance.
Some Christians attack and killed non-Christians. Most do not. Intolerance, not Christianity, caused that violence.
Some Muslims attack and kill non-Muslims. Some do not. Again, intolerance is the cause.
Some atheists attack and kill Christians. Stalin was pro-atheist and vehemently anti-theist, and he wanted to force that atheism on everybody. He killed millions of Christians, to further atheism.
Pol Pot, again an atheist who killed more than his fair share of Christians. So are we to conclude that atheism is the cause of atheist atrocities? Or that Christianity is to blame for Christian atrocities?
One explanation of atheist atrocities is that, it wasn’t atheism that killed those people. It was communism. Anybody who has done a fair amount of reading on the former Soviet Union, however, will tell you that many of those Christians killed were staunch supporters of communism. So, no, communism was not the cause.
Whenever somebody or some group kills others because of a difference of opinion, it is due to intolerance.
Nothing in heterosexuality demands that we kill homosexuals. But intolerant people do it anyway. Nothing in atheism demands we kill theists, but they do it anyway. Nothing in modern Christianity demands death unto nonbelievers, but they do it anyway.
There is no causal relationship between atheism and the massacre of believers. The is no causal relationship between Christianity and atrocities committed by Christians.
Ongoing Intolerance
Intolerance will continue as long as we allow it.
I recently posted on Austin Cline’s Atheism Blog about the arrogance of Dawkins, referring the penchant of Dawkins to call names and and generally suggest that anybody who does not agree with him is mentally handicapped.
Austin Cline’s response was that “Feel free to explain how anything written by Dawkins is more “arrogant” than the orthodox teachings of religions like Christianity.”
Was that supposed to be an excuse? A justification? A denial? Surely Austin Cline must know his reasoning is an undisputed logical fallacy.
Many Muslims want to enforce Islamic Law, which calls for the end of democracy and the institution of an Islamic State based upon the Sharia.
This is of course a threat to the freedom of millions of people, and cannot be allowed, says I, wearing my Captain Obvious cap.
Likewise, some Christians in America have supported laws that ban gay and lesbian marriage. Some of the stated reasons are religious. Religion has no place in legislation. These laws should be considered Christian intolerance, and opposed.
Atheists have their own brand of intolerance. Recently two petitions were forwarded to the Prime Minister of England. One stated in part:
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Make it illegal to indoctrinate or define children by religion before the age of 16.
The other stated in part:
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Abolish all faith schools
Both petitions were widely popular in the atheist community, with Richard Dawkins speaking in favor of at least one of the petitions.
When atheists want to prohibit parents from sharing their beliefs and values, and depriving them of the right to send their children to schools of their own choosing, then we must admit that what we are talking about is atheist intolerance.
The Answer
The answer to intolerance is not in opposing any belief, atheist or theist. It is in respecting the right of individuals to choose their own beliefs.
November 29th, 2007 at 8:08 pm
If God were for us, who could be against us?
Nice job on the blog John, keep it up and I’ll be happy to keep reading.
November 29th, 2007 at 11:56 pm
> As we discussed earlier, atheism is not the mere absence of belief in a god. It is the belief that god cannot and/or does not exist.
Wow. Apparently, we discussed but you were absent the discussion.
We argue on one thread, and come to a nice agreement, and then you ignore that and spout rubbish in your following post. If I didn’t know you were such a fan of confrontation as a means to an end, I might take offence!
> Pol Pot, again an atheist who killed more than his fair share of Christians. So are we to conclude that atheism is the cause of atheist atrocities?
Hitler was a vegetarian. Does that mean vegetarians caused the holocaust? Does that mean all vegetarians are the cause of all vegetarian atrocities?
Regarding the petitions … the first seems to be a good idea. Kids are too young to be in a position to make up their own minds about religion. Making it illegal for parents to indoctrinate their children is probably going too far, but I’ve yet to hear a cogent, never mind coherent, argument against the idea. Feel free to put forward one.
Banning faith schools in the UK is a subject on which you are unlikely to be well placed to comment. The issue there is that those schools receive government support, which bearing in mind some of their practices is seriously questionable. All private schools get state funding in the UK, no matter their crazy factor.
People can believe whatever they want, no matter how crazy, but when people start to disfigure other people, attack other people, threaten other people, and demand that everyone else support those beliefs financially and with respect, it stops being their business and starts being the business of the other people affected too.
Your link bait and argument skills are as top notch as ever. You coherent argument skills, however, seem to be failing.
November 30th, 2007 at 5:20 am
Dave, did you miss the part where I say that:
Despite your misinterpretation, we are as a matter of fact in agreement on the point that atheism didn’t kill anybody.
And on the issue of faith schools - end government support for them. Why abolish them?
December 3rd, 2007 at 12:40 am
I just happened to stumble upon your blog, and specifically, this post for the first time today. I can’t really argue one way or the other about Stalin’s motives, because I don’t know enough about him, but there does seem to be a logical fallacy in this part of your argument:
One explanation of atheist atrocities is that, it wasn’t atheism that killed those people. It was communism. Anybody who has done a fair amount of reading on the former Soviet Union, however, will tell you that many of those Christians killed were staunch supporters of communism. So, no, communism was not the cause.
The fact that Stalin killed communists who were also Christian doesn’t prove that he killed them because they were Christian. Stalin had a lot of people killed, mainly, from what I know, as a means to eliminate opposition and maintain his hold on power. While he may have killed those Christian communists because they were Christian, it may be that he killed them because he percieved them as a threat.
As I said, I don’t know enough to say what his motives are, but this particular argument doesn’t prove your point.
Also, you wrote “Whenever somebody or some group kills others because of a difference of opinion, it is due to intolerance.” That’s also not always true. Two groups may come to violence because they differ over who has the rights to a certain territory (the situation in Kashmir, for instance). One person might kill each other because they got into an argument over… well, almost anything. People kill each other for trivial reasons all the time.
December 3rd, 2007 at 6:21 am
Hi David,
Thanks for the comment!
Historians have documented very well the persecution of Christians in the former Soviet Union, as well as the anti-religion policy of the former Soviet Union. I won’t take it upon myself to prove that they were killed because they were Christian, when there is no debate on that topic in amongst historians.
Isn’t that the definition of intolerance? In the former Soviet Union, it was illegal to criticize atheism. Most likely because it was a threat to atheism.
White Supremicists see African Americans as a threat. British atheists see religious people as a threat and have authored two petitions to restrict the freedom of religious believers.
The point I’m trying to make is, belief in itself isn’t a threat. It threatens others when you try to force that belief on others, whether it be Christian belief, Muslim belief or atheism.
True, I did fail to qualify my statement to indicate that I was referring to violence by religious and atheist militants.
December 3rd, 2007 at 4:32 pm
As I mentioned, it’s not something I’m particularly knowledgeable about, so I wasn’t arguing about the veracity of this statement. Just noting that the example you used didn’t really support your argument.
If Stalin killed those people specifically because he hated them for being Christian, then that would be intolerance. However, if he had them killed because he viewed them as a threat to his power, and not because of their religion, then I would say that no, that isn’t an example of intolerance.
Yes, but in those cases, the groups in question feel threatened specifically because of the race/beliefs of the other group, so those are examples of intolerance. However, it’s possible that the group;s identity is incidental to the perceived threat. So, for instance, you could make the argument that Stalin persecuted the church, not because he hated Christianity, but because he saw the church’s influence as a threat to his own power (I’m not arguing whether that’s the case one way or the other, just pointing it out as an example because I’ve this argument made before). Or for another example, I feel threatened by fundamentalist Christians, not because I hate Christianity, but because I know that, were fundamentalist Christians to come to power, they might very well enact laws that are anathema to me. This isn’t the same thing as hating someone because of the color of their skin or the country of their origin.
December 3rd, 2007 at 4:33 pm
Hmm, sorry. For some reason the html tags I put in the previous post to separate out my responses from what you wrote didn’t work.
December 3rd, 2007 at 9:34 pm
Hi David,
I’ll edit your response if you don’t mind to mark the quotes as such. Is that okay?
And I want you to know that I do appreciate your taking the time to respond. It’s hard to have a discussion without people who take the time to respond. I just might not be able to respond for a day or two - super busy - and I don’t want you to think I don’t appreciate your input.
December 4th, 2007 at 1:34 am
First, let me state that the view you have expressed has been expressed by others, and when some of those people expressed that view, they did so in an inaccurate way. I have heard it said just today that Christians want to impose their morality on others.
Reagan was a Christian, and one of the most laissez-faire presidents we have had. Most Christians support the separation of Church and State.
One glaring exception to that would be the fundamentalist Christian opposition to gay marriage. I’m sure there are more.
How do we deal with this? I deal with it the same way I deal with the Leftist attempts to impose their morality on me. I oppose it. But I am not going to impinge upon their freedoms.
For example, in Seattle – a very Liberal city – the Liberal politicians put laws into effect which pretty much shut down strip clubs. Regardless of your personal feelings on strip clubs, it cannot be denied that banning them is impinging upon the rights of both patrons and employees. It’s imposing one’s own morality on others.
Another case of morality legislation is the “pornography as a civil rights violation” laws. Noted feminist Catharine MacKinnon campaigned for laws to be enacted which made pornography illegal. Although the law was challenged and overturned as unconstitutional, many Liberal Feminists did support this encroachment on our freedoms.
Come to think of it, Liberal Leftist social planning has stripped a lot of Americans of a lot of rights.
We cannot react to intolerance with intolerance, because that is the problem to begin with.
It seems people want to impose their morality on others. You can’t wear fur without somebody throwing ketchup on you. You can’t eat meat without some vegetarian calling you a murderer. You can’t drive an SUV without some crazy lady accusing you of killing the planet. You can’t earn a decent living without some people accusing you of “exploiting” your employees and being a greedy and / or evil SOB.
So, yeah, I think it’s human nature to want to impose one’s morality on others. That is usually balanced out by the value of individual freedom. But I think the mindset today is against individual freedom, and toward collectivist morality. The Right thinks they know what is best for us, and some of them want to legislate that. The Left also thinks they know what is best for us, and several of them are ready to legislate it.
The victim here is tolerance. Tolerance says, “yes, people can make bad choices, people can believe untrue things, but they have every right to believe wrong things and make bad choices, as long as they do not impinge upon my the freedom of others”.
Intolerance says, “we know what is right and we are going to make laws to force you to do it”.
The atheist petition in the UK to criminalize the sharing of religious beliefs with one’s child. That’s intolerance. No different from Christian intolerance or Islamic intolerance.
December 4th, 2007 at 4:33 am
Thanks for fixing my post.
Unfortunately, I don’t really have anything else to add, because there isn’t really anything in your last response I disagree with.
December 22nd, 2007 at 11:54 pm
You are aware Stalin reopened the Orthodox churches when the Nazis got within sight range of Moscow. That sounds more like an opportunist then a man motivated by hatred of all religions. And of course the christian communists can be explained that they were heretics to the “pure” communist ideology. An example would be saying Christianity didn’t cause the crusades because the first people they killed were other Christians (the first battle of the crusades took place in the Balkens between the People’s crusade and the farmers who want the bastards to stop pillaging. The farmers lost.).
Think about this slowly. All the examples of atheist intolerance and atrocities happen to be totalitarian communists. Do you think it is possible you picked the wrong correlating factor?
December 23rd, 2007 at 2:08 am
Yes, Samuel, I am aware that Stalin reopened the Orthodox Church. And Khrushchev again imprisoned and killed hundreds of thousands.
If you care to study the Soviet proclamations in regard to religion, you will see that they were militantly atheist, regarding religion as an enemy of the proletariat.
If you bothered to read the post that you responded to, you would find that neither religion nor atheism is at fault for the atrocities imputed to those ideologies. It is intolerance that is to blame.
Atheism in itself doesn’t kill people, as demonstrated by many peace-loving atheists. Christianity in itself doesn’t kill people, as demonstrated by many peace-loving Christians.
South Carolina’s Constitution of 2006 holds that atheists cannot hold public office. Is the US a “totalitarian communist” state?
Nice try, but no good.
Intolerance is not the sole property of communists. Dawkins does a fine job of being intolerant, and he’s a fan of democracy, last I checked.
December 27th, 2007 at 12:00 am
I’m to lazy to read all of the above comments. So I am just going to jump right in. Are there people out there still naive and antiquated to believe that their actions, past ,present or future will actually influence or make (better) this world?
December 27th, 2007 at 12:03 am
What does it mean that my comment is awaiting moderation? And wo is doing it?
December 27th, 2007 at 4:01 am
Hi Todd,
All new comments are held in moderation until they can be reviewed. If they aren’t spam, they get approved.
December 27th, 2007 at 4:23 am
What the heck?!!? I stated all the examples of evil atheist are totalitarian communists. I didn’t say the were the only people who were intolerant, just the only examples people give of atheists who are.
Saying religion isn’t respnsible for atrocities is …….. (flips through dictionary). I’m going to go with blind. You are familiar with witch burnings, Aztec human sacrifice (bastards give solar power a bad name) and of course, sanctioning slavery. It is important to note slavery has nothing to do with intolerance, only a callus disregard for other human beings. Fortunately having it given the stamp of approval from the almighty makes it okay.
December 28th, 2007 at 9:05 am
Tax religions , take then to court , they must prove they are not cheating the masses , i was batised i will sue the chruch for that when i have time .
john sharp atheist peacfull and loving to the nice poeple