If these claims are accurate, they clearly paint a very bleak picture of atheism. After all, Hitler is responsible for the deaths of 20,946,000 people, Stalin for 51,755,000 deaths, and Mao for 56,218,000 deaths. That said, these allegations, are problematic on a couple of levels.
1. None of Them Accepted Evolution.
The first, and most obvious problem is that none of these genocidal despots subscribed to the theory of evolution. In fact, Hitler even banned all "Writings of a philosophical and social nature whose content deals with the false scientific enlightenment of primitive Darwinism and Monism", as well as "All writings that ridicule, belittle or besmirch the Christian religion and its institution, faith in God, or other things that are holy to the healthy sentiments of the Volk." What's more, in his own writings Stalin denied Darwinian evolution, in favor of the long-debunked claims of Lamarckism. There is simply no reason to think that any of these tyrants and despots accepted Darwinian evolution.
To anyone who wants to say that they practiced "Social Darwinism" to prove that they subscribed to the theory of evolution, let me just say that all you have proven is that the U.S. needs to invest heavily in a revamped and improved science curriculum. Let me explain. Darwin held that life was getting ever more diversified. He supposed, for example, that all of types of pigeons with all of their variety came from one type of pigeon that was sort of the "middle ground" between all of them (i.e. this pigeon has a large beak, this one has a small beak so the original one had a medium sized beak). In fairness, Darwin didn't know everything about evolution. He didn't know why creatures evolved, genetics hadn't been discovered yet, but he knew that life was naturally getting more diverse. Even a cursory examination was enough to prove to him that diversity was the key to the whole thing. As we've discovered Natural Selection, we've learned that Darwin was right and diversity is the key. The fact of the matter is that there simply is no state of perfection in evolution. There is no goal. If an individual survives long enough to reproduce, that's good enough, and Natural Selection is just fine with accepting "good enough". If 1,000 individual members of a species changes in 1,000 different ways and each one helps those individuals survive, than each one is good enough.
As such, Darwin would've laughed at the idea of an Aryan "master race" or any other sort of "master race". If I may presume to speak for Darwin, I think he would've laughed and said something about like this "So you think that blonde, blue-eyed, white people are a master race? How about you send them to live in the Sahara desert for a couple of years, then tell me how 'masterful' they feel when they're dying of skin cancer."
There is simply nothing "Darwinistic" about Social Darwinism, and the fact that the latter contains Darwin's name only proves that the person who coined the phrase also didn't understand evolution. So again, anyone who uses "Social Darwinism" to argue against the theory of evolution only proves that we need much more in-depth science education so that people know what evolution is, and don't continue to mistake "Social Darwinism" for the real thing.
Now that we have that problem cleared up, and we now know that evolution is unrelated to genocide (except insofar as evolution has meant that our prefrontal lobes are too small, our adrenal glands are too big, and our reproductive organs were apparently designed by committee, and this has caused some unhappiness and discontent), we may turn our attention to the charges against atheism.
2. The Religious Beliefs of Hitler, Stalin, or Mao, are of Trivial Importance.
I would like to start off by saying that the belief in god (or lack thereof) of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao is subject to debate and simply calling them "atheists" is quite probably an over-simplisitc assessment that does not accurately reflect any of them (in fact, there's substantial reason to argue that Hitler was a Christian). However, for the purposes of this post I will simply concede the Christian claim that they were all atheists. Even after making this (perhaps overly generous) concession to Christians, there is still a problem with the claim that atheism was responsible for this hideous democide.
Contrary to what many religious people may believe: atheism is not a religion. It has no dogma, no holy scriptures, no saints or holy figures, no requirement of worship… in short, it has nothing that could reasonably be used to classify it as a religion. In fact, it doesn't even require faith ("faith" by definition, is "belief without evidence". Since science bases everything it does on observations and evidence, you cannot have faith in science. You cannot have "belief without evidence, in evidence-based understanding", that simply doesn't make any sense). This absence of belief, dogma, etc, has a few characteristics that logically follows from it. Consider for a moment, how there is really no such thing as "cold". In physics there is heat, and the lack thereof, which we colloquially refer to as "cold", but "cold" is not a measurable quality, it's merely a lack of heat. In the same way, in the realm of religious discussion, there is dogma (which typically must be held as being incontrovertibly true on pain of exile or worse) and there is the lack thereof, which we colloquially refer to as "freethinking". There is also faith (or mandatory belief without evidence) and there is the lack thereof, which we colloquially refer to as "skepticism" or "belief only with convincing supporting evidence". Atheism is not a belief system, it is a lack-of-belief system. That lack of belief naturally leads to free though, mitigated skepticism, rational inquiry, etc.
Now tell me, when you look at Nazi Germany, Stalin's Russia, and Mao's China, which one of them calls "free thought" to mind? Which one calls "rational inquiry" to mind? Which one calls "mitigated skepticism", or "belief with strong supporting evidence" to mind? I sure hope that none of them do, because none of them were famous for it. The reason why none of them call any of these concepts to mind is because you simply cannot wage a successful genocide using a typical atheist mindset. Think about it, how would you conduct a genocide in the name of atheism? What would you say, "You're not a real freethinker unless you join our cause and help us kill these people!"? Can you imagine the responses to that sort of statement? "So wait, unless I follow you blindly, I'm not a freethinker? You're a special kind of stupid aren't you?" You can't run a society based on genocide and propaganda, in a society of skeptics and freethinkers! You just won't get anywhere. That's one of the reasons why Hitler outlawed all atheistic groups in Germany and converted the headquarters of the German Freethinkers League into a bureau to advertise church-related materials to the German public. (Kind of a strange move for a so-called atheist to outlaw atheism, don't you think?)
In place of freethinking and skepticism, the dogmas of Nazism, Stalinism, and Maoism were imposed. While Hitler and Stalin employed secret police to ensure that anyone who disagreed with their dogmas or who was skeptical of their propaganda pieces was swiftly dealt with, Mao primarily employed propaganda and shaped Chinese culture, knowing that Asian culture typically places a high value on conformity, thereby making secret police unnecessary. You see, contrary to being atheist societies, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao essentially imposed their own religions onto their societies. They recreated themselves - and were recreated by their cultures - as essentially being demigods and messiahs who would would finally return honor and glory to their respective peoples.
So you see, the religious beliefs (or lack thereof) of Hitler, Stalin, or Mao, are of trivial importance. The key to their success was that the people who obeyed them were fanatically religious. All they really did was take the already existing predispositions towards religious dogma of their societies (or the predisposition towards cultural conformity, in Mao's case), and focussed it into the political arena. What would any of these genocidal maniacs have been, if they had been in atheistic, freethinking, and skeptical cultures? Who would've built the gas chambers if everyone were busy asking for proof that the Jews were actually an inferior race, and had to verify Hitler's propaganda pieces? These tyrants would've gone nowhere if the people of these cultures had thought for themselves, and had refused to worship their new leaders with all of the fervor normally reserved for celestial deities. If they had not seen their new leaders as Messiahs who would bring glory to their respective peoples (and of course, banish a few "infidels" in the process).
In the same way, it doesn't matter if Pope Urban II was really a Christian or not. The simple fact is, so long as he was able to convince the people that Yhwh wanted Christians to control the "Holy Land", the Crusades would've happened just the same. However, if the Pope had made the proclamation that Yhwh wanted Christians to control the "Holy Land" to a society of atheists and free thinkers, there would've been no Crusades at all! In the same way, the problem isn't that Hitler, Stalin, or Mao were atheists, the problem is that nobody else was! Had the people of these cultures been freethinking skeptics, instead of "good Christians", or "good Nazis", or "good Stalinists", or "good Maoists", all of these egregious crimes against humanity would've been non-existent in world history.
Contrary to disproving atheism and freethinking, invoking Hitler, Stalin, Mao, only proves that the greatest atrocities in human history could never have occurred if there had only been more atheists and freethinkers in the world.
3. To Implicate Hitler, is to Implicate Yhwh.
There remains one huge difference between atheists and Christians when it comes to democide: atheists - almost without exception - denounce democide as horrendous, and denounce those who commit such atrocities as monsters. Meanwhile, Christians not only defend, but actually worship Yhwh, a deity who claims to have killed well over 87 million people! That's more people that Mao and Hitler combined.Where did I get that number? To start, if one goes through the Bible and count all of the people killed by God where a body count is given, the total comes to at least 2,552,453 people (and if you're Catholic, the body count is even higher at 2,821,364 people!). It should be noted that this 2.55 million does not include the people that Yhwh drowned in "the Flood", burnt in "Sodom and Gomorrah", killed in the "Plagues of Egypt", and numerous other killings which did not include a body count. It is also worth noting that this number treats many other killings very charitably. For instance, Genesis 34:24-26 states that "Simeon and Levi... took their swords and entered the town without opposition. Then they slaughtered every male there, including Hamor and his son Shechem". As it only mentions the deaths of Hamor and Shechem by name, this is included as only two people having been killed although the text clearly states that there were more than just two males in the town. If we were to take a more realistic estimate of the various killings, it would put the put the total body count well over 4.6 million (not including "The Flood").
In the interest of being generous and fair-minded, I won't bother defending the estimates for deaths that supposedly occurred in mythical biblical cities, or the casualties of bloody battles that strangely don't seem to have occurred according to modern archaeology. Neither will I make any argument for or against the validity of the seven "Deuterocanonical" books of the Catholic Bible. For the purposes of this discussion, I will simply take the 2.55 million as the actual figure. (For those who are interested, I've included a full chart, detailing Yhwh's killing - along with official tallies and estimates of the body counts - at the bottom of this post.) However, I will take a moment to examine the extent of the death that would've happened if "the Flood" had actually occurred.
According to early Jewish tradition (dating back at least to the second century CE) Yhwh created Adam on October 7th, 3,761 BCE. Meanwhile, the Bible's chronologies tell us that the "Flood story" would have taken place 1,656 years after creation, or in the year 2,105 BCE. Next, using our best estimates of world population throughout human history, the median estimate of the population of the world in 2,105 BCE comes to 84,708,654 people. After subtracting eight people for Noah and his family, that means that Yhwh killed approximately 84,708,646 people in the flood alone. Can you imagine? According to the Bible, in only 40 days Yhwh accomplished the same feat that took years for Mao and Hitler and all of their armies combined to accomplish. Of course we're not done yet. We still need to add that to our previous total of 2.55 million, which results in a total body count of approximately 87,261,099 people in the Bible alone (If you're a Catholic, that number increases to 87,530,010 people). Of course, this does not include the above-mentioned killings that had no body count attached, the Crusades, the Inquisition, or any other killing carried out by people who were certain that Yhwh was on their side.
Bearing this in mind, what could a Christian possibly say to object to the actions of the most brutal mass murderers of the 20th century, save that Hitler, Stalin and Mao didn't say "In Jesus' name" as they performed their bloody democide? What can a Christian say to denounce Hitler, that does not equally condemn King David, the "man after Yhwh's own heart" who - after an illustrious career of slaughtering everyone in his path - used his dying breath to order the murder of just one more person. If David had been alive in the 1900's, what wouldn't he have done that Hitler did? What can a Christian say to denounce Stalin, that does not equally condemn Moses, the man who ordered the killing of so many people, and burned so many towns, that the virgin womyn prisoner's of war, alone, numbered 32,000 (A realistic estimate for this battle would be something like 200,000 dead in one battle alone). If Moses had been alive in the 1900's, what wouldn't he have done that Stalin did? While an atheist can denounce these actions as being crimes against humanity, what can a Christian possibly say against these crimes that does not doubly implicate their own deity and their great religious figures? Further, if Yhwh and Jesus are one as stated in John 10:30, then it follows that Jesus killed over 87.2 million people! For a Christian to say "Jesus is not ok with genocide", when Yhwh routinely commits genocide, is to deny the divinity of Jesus (a proposition that many Christians simply will not accept).
Contrary to refuting atheism, invoking Hitler, Stalin, Mao, or any other despot or mass-murderer in history, forces Christians to either implicate their own deity, admit that these people may very well have done nothing wrong, or admit that Yhwh isn't real.
This has been your Sunday Sermon, go without god.
Click Here to Show/Hide The Full Chart Detailing Yhwh's Killings
You're missing the largest "body" count, at least by evangelical standards. Human biology is such that roughly 30-50% of all fertilized eggs never attach, and 10-20% that do attach miscarry. That makes god the world's first and most prolific abortion provider, by a wide margin.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.babycenter.com/0_understanding-miscarriage_252.bc
Can you please fix the last link to Show/Hide The Full Chart Detailing Yhwh's Killings?
ReplyDeleteThe link is working just fine for me... So I'm not sure how to fix that. Sorry.
Delete