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Saturday, July 23, 2016

"Don't Blame Atheism for Stalin!" Why Michael Sherlock is wrong

Image result for stalin cartoon
"Jesus made me do it!"
The New Atheism has a lasting grudge against history.  Sometimes that grudge is expressed overtly by atheists who try to diminish the discipline ("history is bunk") in comparison with science, to which the New Atheism falls collectively prostrate.  (Or to an idol on whom the label "Science" has been pinned.)  But as even so radical an atheist as Richard Carrier pointed out, in the end science is mostly a province of history, since knowledge obtained through experiments or other observation is in the end knowledge of events that happened in the past.

But the New Atheism burst onto the public consciousness in the wake of 9/11, when western intellectuals like Richard Dawkins sought to tar the Christian faith with the same brush with which they more plausibly painted Islam.  (Though Dawkins now admits that Christianity has reformed, in the kindly afterglow of the Enlightenment, so the greater problem at the moment is an unreconstructed Islam.)

The reason the New Atheism arose at just that moment, I think, is because a new generation of ignorant young skeptics had been taught the purported evils of the Christian past, but left ignorant of the far greater evils that radical atheism (and Islam) had much more recently visited upon the world.  They are like the rabbit in the Chronicle of Narnia that sits next to a great waterfall (of blood), yet hears the drop of a pin a hundred miles away.  Often the brainwashing inflicted upon our children involved  straightforward historical falsehoods.  The New Atheism probably couldn't have arisen in 1989, just after the Wall had come down: the world would have laughed.  But give public school teachers a couple decades, and such ignorance of history that an outspoken socialist like Bernie Sanders could gain traction in a major party without a word of explanation or apology, and the New Atheism can appeal to a generation that knows nothing of the Gulag Archipelago or the most basic facts about "socialism in practice."  (Here in China we are surrounded by propaganda about the goodness of socialism: they felt the Bern when Bernie was still a baby!)

Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris relentlessly reminded readers of the Inquisition, which happened most of a millenium ago, but talked about "Joseph Stalin" as a mere apologetic "debating point"  (as Dawkins put it) that needs to be refuted.  Christopher Hitchens also tried to shrug off the fact that atheists had just murdered a hundred million innocent people a few decades before, in his popular book god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.  These gentlemen argued that atheism had nothing whatsoever to do with the crimes of Stalin.  (Who alone they mentioned, being apparently ignorant of the fact that Stalin was merely one of many cruel communist dictators.)  Some New Atheists have even dared suggest that Christianity was to blame for Stalin's crimes, because he attended a religious school as a young man.

In The Truth Behind the New Atheism, I responded, in part:

"This isn't just a 'debating point' to me.  I researched faith and communism under Donald Treadgold, a leading historian of Marxism-Leninism.  I've eaten meals with people who lost loved ones or spent decades in prison for their faith . . . Stalin wasn't the only atheist of modern times.  Nor did he emerge from a vacuum."  

And so as an historian -- which none of these gentlemen can claim to be -- I answered their counter-arguments over several pages. David Aikman also focused on this issue in his response to the New Atheism.

I'm not going to defend my arguments in that book, or my more thorough explanation for "Why Marx Went Wrong" in my earlier Jesus and the Religions of Man, in this post.  So far as I know, no one with any relevant knowledge or credentials has ever challenged my arguments.

But as the New Atheism continues its free-fall into historical ignorance, new expressions of the bigotry that follows in the train of that ignorance arise, as winter follows autumn.  In this post, I will answer one of those expressions, by an Australian grad student named Michael Sherlock.  Michael is worth answering not because he is knowledgeable or a skilled logician -- his talent lies in purple prose more than reasoning, in history least of all -- but because he has written a lively post on this subject which some silly fools seem to take seriously.

The article is called "The Atheist Atrocities Fallacy -- Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot."

Sherlock begins with a lively three-paragraph rant against apologists who make the argument he wants to refute.  (Without, of course, addressing my rebuttal of the first crop of New Atheists, nor that by other historians like Dr. Aikman.)  Half his paper (7 1/2 pages of my printout) then argues that Adolf Hitler was a Christian, not an atheist.  Sherlock devotes a little more than two pages to asserting that while Stalin was a "confirmed atheist," Christianity, not atheism, was to blame for his crimes.  He devotes a bit less space to showing that Pol Pot was a Buddhist, not an atheist, and his atrocities "parallel" and should be blamed on Theraveda Buddhsim.   Then he "clinches" his argument by describing five fallacies that we apologists allegedly commit in blaming atheism for these crimes, before ending with an appeal to the Problem of Pain which he deems clever.

Sherlock's article is a target-rich environment.   Let us start with the introduction, then examine his claims about Pol Pot, Joseph Stalin, and Adolf Hitler, in that order.   We won't need to say much about Hitler, since the subject (like the man) has been done to death, and most informed Christians don't claim Hitler was an atheist, anyway.  But this paper represents many common confusions, on all levels.  While the writing is lively and skillful, the thinking is muddled.  And the paper shows just how desperately modern atheists need to begin making peace with history, before that is what their movement rightly becomes.  (After becoming a laughing stock.)


Opening Rant and its Problems

"Religious apologists, particularly those of the Christian variety, are big fans of what I have dubbed, the atheist atrocities fallacy.  Christians commonly employ this fallacy to shield their egos from the harsh reality of the brutality of their own religion,(1) by utilizing a most absurd form of the tu quoque (“you too”) fallacy, mingled with numerous other logical fallacies and historical inaccuracies.  Despite the fact that the atheist atrocities fallacy has already been thoroughly exposed by Hitchens and other great thinkers (2), it continues to circulate amongst the desperate believers of a religion in its death throes (3).  Should an atheist present a believer with the crimes committed by the Holy See of the Inquisition(s) (4), the Crusaders (5) and other faith-wielding misanthropes (6), they will often hear the reply; “Well, what about Stalin, Pol Pot and Hitler? They were atheists, and they killed millions!”" (7) 

#1 Whereas atheists shield their eyes from the painful truth that the Gospel has liberated billions of people, and cultures around the world, changing our planet for the better.  No one who has yet to read at least a large proportion of these books and articles should even try to deny it.  

#2 Christopher Hitchens was a "great thinker?"  I concede he was a pithy journalist who thought for himself and wrote entertaining and sometimes insightful screeds.  But he was not a historian, nor a scholar of the religion that he attacked.  His views about communism are no match for those of scholars who know something about the movement.  Hitchens didn't lay a finger on my argument, nor those of David Aikman, Michael Burleigh, Donald Treadgold, or for that matter the views of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who summed up what he saw as the core problem of Marxism by saying, "Men have forgotten God."  

However "bright" Hitchens may have been, insights based on inadequate knowledge most often lead one into error. 


#3 Christianity is not in its "death throes."  There are more followers of Jesus today than at any time in the past.  As the church has declined across one crowded peninsula, it has spread rapidly through the world's most populated and second most-populated continents, and even broken out finally in some strongholds of Islam.

#4  The Inquisition?  Small potatoes.  Joseph Stalin used to kill about as many innocent people before lunch some days, as all the inquisitors combined, killed over several centuries.

#5 The Crusaders are why we are writing in English, not Arabic, and using computers, not toilet paper in outhouses behind mud huts, so our masters don't see and whip us, or take our children away to serve as slaves.  I don't apologize for the fact that the West finally responded to four hundred years of Muslim imperialism: I am grateful.  (While, of course, recognizing the sins of some Crusaders, including both pogroms and at least one outbreak of cannibalism.)

#6 "Faith-wielding misanthropes?"  Sherlock apparently refers here to the myth, taken on blind faith by all New Atheists worthy of the name, that Christian "faith" is meant to be irrational.

#7 One does not "often" hear the claim that Adolf Hitler was an atheist, at least not from informed Christians.  This is not entirely a straw man, but most Christians who write on the subject seem to know better, as most educated atheists know better than to call Hitler a Christian.

"Given the obstinate nature of religious faith and the willful ignorance it cultivates in the mind of the believer, (8) I am quite certain that this article will not be the final nail in this rancid and rotting coffin.(9)  Having said this, I do hope it will contribute to the arsenal required by those who value reason, facts and evidence (10), in their struggle against the fallacies perpetually flaunted by those who do not value the truth above their own egocentric delusions, delusions inspired by an unquenchable thirst for security, no matter how frighteningly false its foundation." (11)
"Before addressing the primary weaknesses of the atheist atrocities fallacy itself, I would like to attend to each of these three homicidal stooges (12); Stalin, Pol Pot and Hitler, who are constantly trotted out to defend a religious worldview. (13) I will lend Hitler the most time, as the claim that he was an atheist represents a most egregious violation of the truth." (14)

(8) Sherlock here confirms my suspicion mentioned above that he buys into the ignorant New Atheist doctrine that Christianity recommends "blind faith."  We refuted that error in True Reason, and indeed I already refuted it in Jesus and the Religions of Man and The Truth Behind the New Atheism.  It is what Larry Hurtado calls a "zombie argument."

(9) "Rancid and rotting coffin."  Nice alliteration.  But coffins, being made of wood, rot without becoming rancid -- it is the corpse inside that gives offense to the nostrils as it decomposes, like rank historical cliches such as the "Blind Faith Meme."

(10) Because, of course, Christians like Augustine, Aquinas, Occam, Kepler, Pascal, Newton, Descartes, Locke, and the whole pious crowd that largely invented modern science, placed no value whatever on "reason, facts and evidence."  It is hard to decide whether the Trumpian self-praise or the gratuitous implicit slur against so many of the world's greatest thinkers is the more obnoxious and ridiculous over-generalization, here.

(11) Let me again give Sherlock credit at this point for cadence and alliteration, however falsely the affected facts may be fixed onto the face of genuine and verifiable phenomena.   He alliterates like a southern preacher, though as you see, the letter "f" comes easy.

(12) Stooges?  In what sense?  Whatever else one may say of Stalin, Pol Pot, and Hitler, all three do seem to have been fully in command of their horrid movements.

(13) These villains are trotted out to attack an atheistic worldview, not so much to defend a so-called religious one.

(14) It is suspicious that Sherlock focuses so intensely on Hitler, since the man is seldom called an atheist. (I have never done so.)  It is also suspicious that Sherlock fails to mention Mao Zedong, who may have killed more innocent people than any of the others (he ruled a larger country).  Not to mention Marx or Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Khrushchev, Beria, Brezhnev, Ho Chi Minh, the ever-lovable Kim clan in North Korea, Enver Hofha, Abimael Guzman, the Castros, or the rest of the bloody crew that ruled Eastern Europe.  But more on the chasms in Sherlock's historical consciousness later.

So Michael packs fourteen errors into three short opening paragraphs, some of them egregious.  Way to go, Sherlock.  But he's only getting warmed up.

Now let's look at the three examples Sherlock attempts to refute.


Was Pol Pot a Buddhist?

Sherlock thinks so:
"Pol Pot, possibly not even an atheist, but almost certainly a Buddhist, believed in the teachings of the Buddha, no matter how perverted his interpretations may or may not have been . . . Not only was Pol Pot a Theravada Buddhist, but the soil in which his atrocities were sewn was also very Buddhist.
"In Alexander Laban Hinton’s book, Why Did They Kill?: Cambodia in the Shadow of Genocide,’ Hinton drew attention to the role that the belief in karma played in Pol Pot’s Cambodia, particularly with regards to the cementation of a docilely accepted social hierarchy, not too dissimilar from Stalin’s ready-made Russian religious tyranny, as well as highlighting the Buddhist origins of Pol Pot’s ideological initiatives.
"Hinton remarks:
"This [Pol Pot’s regime’s] line of thinking about revolutionary consciousness directly parallels Buddhist thought, with the “Party line” and “collective stand” being substituted for dhamma…One could certainly push this argument further , contending that the Khmer Rouge attempted to assume the monk’s traditional role as moral instructor (teaching their new brand of “mindfulness”) and that DK regime’s glorification of asceticism, detachment, the elimination of attachment and desire, renunciation (of material goods and personal behaviors, sentiments, and attitudes), and purity paralleled prominent Buddhist themes…  [30]
"I have only presented a small snippet of the available evidence that points to religion’s role in Pol Pot’s crimes, and there is not one single piece of solid evidence that Pol Pot was an atheist, so let us once and for all dispense with that speculative piece of religious propaganda."
The fact that Sherlock thinks he has presented any evidence at all that Pol Pot was a Buddhist in these paragraphs, ought to embarrass the Australian teachers who educated him.  (Whereas the "work" of Raphael Lataster ought to make the whole continent cringe: Sherlock can, at least, write.)  "Pol Pot was a Theraveda Buddhist" is a mere assertion, not "evidence."  The fact that communist Cambodia accepted a hierarchy is not evidence that it was "really" Buddhist, either -- after all, the alternative to listening to party bosses was death.  Wolves are not Theraveda Buddhists, I don't think, yet they also accept hierarchy: that's part of our biological hard-drive, not the unique feature of one religion.  That one can find further parallels between Kmer Rouge thought and Theraveda Buddhistm, such as the concept of "consciousness" (not unique to Asian Marxism, or Marxism at all -- Jung mentioned the idea, did he not?), or that the Kmer Rouge retained teachers (who doesn't?), or even asceticism (here America is the outlier, in having cast this perennial and universal notion aside so completely), is not evidence that Pol Pot was a Buddhist, either.  Military service BY DEFINITION involves renunciation of pleasures.  (And notice that Hinton offers four or five synonyms for asceticism --"detachment" as well as "the elimination of attachment," for instance, as if the two didn't mean the same thing -- apparently hoping the reader will mistake semantically varied repetition for a cup of evidence that runneth over.) 

But Sherlock gives not the faintest hint of any real evidence that Pol Pot was a Buddhist who "believed in the teachings of the Buddha," in all this.   Not one word from Pol Pot about the Four Noble Truths, about the Eightfold Path to Enlightenment, about reincarnation, about the Buddhas -- not a word.  
In fact, Pol Pot was a communist and an atheist.  He may have taken up a few of the cultural trappings of Buddhism, which had after all been the dominant faith of his country for many centuries.  But as Loyola professor of Religious Studies Catherine Wessinger notes (my emphasis):

"Democratic Kampuchea was officially an atheist state, and the persecution of religion by the Kmer Rouge was matched in severity only by the persecution of religion in the communist states of Albania and North Korea, so there were not any direct historical continuities of Buddhism into the Democratic Kampuchea era."  

Or as the Asian Studies Center at Michigan State University explains:

 It is estimated that of more than 65,000 monks and nuns living in 1969, less than 3000 survived the civil war and genocide of the 1970's. Estimates of the death toll during the Khmer Rouge Regime are that about 1.7 million people (of a 1975 population of 7 million) were killed or died of starvation. Buddhism was a special target of the Khmer Rouge; in addition to killing the monks and nuns, most of the 3,369 temples in existence in 1970 were destroyed, as were Christian churches and Islamic mosques. Monastery buildings which were not destroyed were used for storage, prisons, or torture chambers. By 1979, Buddhism in Cambodia was virtually destroyed.

What do you think?  Murdering someone is often considered good evidence that one does not like that man or woman, isn't it?  If you close all the Buddhist temples and kill nineteen out of twenty monks, can't that be taken as solid evidence that Pol Pot was something other than a believing Buddhist?  Maybe even that he disliked Buddhism?  Or is that crazy talk?

But no, Sherlock tells us, against all this, that Pol Pot was a zealous Theraveda Buddhist.  The sheer historical ignorance it takes to make that claim about the founder of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, who learned his ideology from communists in Paris, was supported by Mao's China, murdered 95% of the Buddhist monks in his country, and destroyed the religion to which he allegedly belonged, without offering a speck of anything but the most subjective and vague evidence ("parallelmania") to support it, is astounding.

Meanwhile, the name Mao Zedong is not so much as mentioned in Sherlock's article.  But Mao invented and perfected the innovative doctrine of encircling the cities with the countryside.  During the Cultural Revolution (which started in 1966), Mao persecuted teachers, and sent young people out of the cities to work in the farms.  That's exactly the strategy that the Kmer Rouge followed, only with even greater violence.  Coincidence?  Sherlock does not even raise the question.  It is as if he had never heard of Chairman Mao.  (Whose mother, let me add, was a Mahayana, not Theraveda Buddhist.  But what her son become, was probably more her husband's fault, by Mao's own account.   And that of Mao Zedong himself, who was an atheist.)


Was Joseph Stalin an (honorary) Christian?  

Sherlock's attempt to protect atheism from the bad name of Joseph Stalin is just as ridiculous.  Since errors fly thick and fast here, let me revert to my earlier form of quoting his remarks at length, while marking points for rebuttal below.
"Of these three characters, Stalin was the only confirmed atheist, yet Hitchens thoroughly dealt with the religious nature of Stalin’s dictatorship in a manner that has left religious apologists without sufficient reply.(1)  Notwithstanding the fact that Stalin was raised as a Christian under the religious influence of his mother, who enrolled him in seminary school (2), and that Stalin later took it upon himself to study for the priesthood (3), as Hitchens and others have pointed out, Stalin merely stepped into a ready-made religious tyranny (4), constructed by the Russian Orthodox Church and paved with the teachings of St. Paul (5).
Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves.                                           Romans 13:1-2
(1) Since Sherlock shows no sign of having read my, or Aikman's, rebuttal, "apologists can't reply to Hitchen's smashing of their lame position" is just an empty boast.  
(2) Christians provided the only available education.  "Stalin went to a Christian school, so Christianity is to blame for Stalinism" involves some pretty grotesque historical shortcuts.  Should we then blame Secular Humanists for Fred Phelps, since he apparently went to public schools at times?  Christian teachers have educated billions, without making all their students Christians.     
(3) Stalin was given a scholarship, but became an atheist as a first-year student.  (Paul Vitz suggests his poor relationship with his drunken father might have had something to do with that.)
(4) "Stalin stepped into a ready-made religious tyranny?"  Baloney.  The Bolsheviks completely remade society, from the top down.  Old institutions were abolished, as clean a sweep as the world had seldom seen.  Leninism, then Stalinism, were vastly more cruel than late Tsarist Russia, as Solzhenitsyn, for one, often pointed out in his examination of how prisoners were treated.  In fact, late Tsarist Russia had been liberalizing for some time: the Bolsheviks' competitors were far more liberal than they were, and Peter Stolypin instituted needed reforms that showed real promise, in a period in which Russia was modernizing quickly.  The period before World War I was one of rapid economic progress and an artistic golden age.    

And in that era, said Solzhenitsyn:

"By the time of the Revolution, faith had virtually disappeared in Russian educated circles; and amongst the uneducated, its health was threatened."


The Bolsheviks used the sickle of Enlightenment materialism to cut the blossom of a developing Russian culture, and the hammer of Marxist ruthlessness to pound the garden in which it grew into a parking lot for Uncle Joe's tank.  Far from "stepping into" ready-made "religious tyranny," Stalin actually took over from Vladimir Lenin, an ardent atheist bigot who had already murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people.  Sherlock never even mentions Lenin either, strangely enough.  The sheer historical ignorance of the man, or his willingness to take remarkable historical shortcuts, is astounding.  
(5) Stalin learned political subservience from St. Paul?  This is a bizarre claim, indeed.   Joseph Stalin became a political revolutionary in seminary, read Lenin, then sought to overthrow all existing social and political structures through violent revolution.  That means shooting, stabbing, or bombing the authorities.  And St. Paul is to blame for that, because he told Christians to obey the government and pay taxes?  Sherlock does not seem to realize that after Joseph Stalin studied in seminary, he became an atheist and a COMMUNIST REVOLUTIONARY. 
Of course, as I explain in Jesus and the Religions of Man, once a revolution occurs, power-hungry revolutionaries will come to desire obedient subjects.  That is a constant of human history: one can find the same trend in ancient Greece.  Read Polybius, for instance.  Or George Orwell's Animal Farm.  
So was Christianity to blame for the fact that the Russians submitted to an atheistic regime?  If you want to try that line, then how about crediting Christianity in America for resisting communism so vigorously?  (Which it did.)
In fact, Christianity inspired resistance to Marxist revolution and oppression around the world.  (Which is probably one reason the present crop of communists in China is so anti-Christian.)  Lech Walensa, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and Pope John Paul II were just three of the heroes who helped overthrow communist tyranny.  It was atheists in America (like Joy Davidman, who would become C. S. Lewis' wife!) who converted to communism, far more often than Christians.  In fact, to this day, some four fifths of atheists in the world were tutored in unbelief by obediently listening to top-down communist propaganda.  (One meets them all around China -- many of my students!)

So if Sherlock's claim refers to Joseph Stalin, it is bizarre.  If it refers to Russian peasants, it is historically uninformed and ignores far too many facts.   
We trek on through the thicket of errors, a well-greased and sharpened machete now stationed permanently in our right hands.  
"Such teachings were the inspirational well from which the Russian Orthodox Church drew their justifications to support this new Tsar, causing the more sensible fringe of the Church to flee to the United States in contravention of St. Paul’s teachings.(6)
"Here then, the central premise of Hitchens’ argument is worthy of reiteration.  Had Stalin inherited a purely rational secular edifice,(7) one established upon the ethos espoused by the likes of Lucretius, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Einstein (8) and other free thinking and rational secularists, then the apologist’s argument would hold slightly more weight, but such wasn’t the case.  Stalin merely tore the existing religious labels off the Christian Inquisition,(9) the enforcement of Christian orthodoxy, the Crusades, the praising of the priesthood, (10) messianism, and Edenic ideas of a terrestrial religious-styled utopia,(11) and re-branded them with the red of communism.  Had this Christian machine not been in place, then it is more than likely Stalin wouldn’t have had the vehicle he needed to succeed in causing so much suffering in the name of his godless religion (12), Communism.
(6) St. Paul told Russians not to emigrate to the US?  What version of the Bible is Sherlock reading?  Oddly, though, Samuel Adams found in those same Scriptures abundant justification to help establish the US: the highly religious country that proved the "fortress of democracy" and freedom in the 20th Century, again and again.  
(7) Sherlock is conflating ideas ("secular") with values ("rational").  This is a hidden form of the True Scotsman fallacy.  The Soviets were "irrational" (from Sherlock's point of view), so they don't count as pure secularists.  But Sherlock argues that atheism does not come with values attached.  That's a sword that cuts both ways: if it allows atheism to escape all culpability for crimes, it also denies atheism credit for good works.  
(8) Einstein wasn't old enough to influence the Russian Revolution, so the wish that Stalin had learned from Einstein is a little odd.  Also, his friends asked Einstein to condemn Stalin's genocide, but he usually seemed reluctant to do so in very forceful terms, unlike Hitler's genocide.  
(9) "Stalin merely tore the existing religious labels off the Christian inquisition?"  What nonsense.  The inquisition occurred in France and Spain, most of a millennia earlier, and didn't resemble communist persecutions except in the fact that they were persecutions.  (Which occur in every society.)  This is just hand-waving assertion, without any real attempt to support a historical claim with historical evidence and a logical train of reasoning. 
(10) Joseph Stalin praised the priesthood?  He joined the communist party, which was Lenin's instrument of oppression and control that killed and imprisoned priests.  The communists were not monks, or much like them.  And if we're going to talk about the communist party, shouldn't we at least mention Vladimir Lenin, who established it?   
(11) Marx wanted to set up an earthly paradise, or at least a "dictatorship of the proletariat."  By contrast, Jesus said "My kingdom is not of this world."  Marx, in his focus on the City of Man, was a disciple of Plato, not Jesus. 

(12) "Godless religion?"  Isn't that a contradiction in terms?  I thought religion was to be defined as involving belief in supernatural beings or gods?  Actually Sherlock doesn't define religion.  Perhaps that is because sometimes, he needs it to mean "belief in supernatural gods."  At other times, as here, he needs it to mean "strongly held fundamental beliefs about reality, whatever they may be," or as Paul Tillich called it, an "ultimate concern."  

I prefer this latter definition, precisely because of the kind of shell game that atheists like Sherlock try to play.  Communism insisted that there is no God in heaven.  But socially, communist ideology and leaders often played roles similar to those played by Messiahs, gurus and divinities, and the ideologies they inspired.  In short, Sherlock is guilty of equivocation, of playing on two meanings of "religion" to confuse his readers.  On the usual atheist definition of religion, "godless religion" is a contradiction in terms.  But if our goal is to somehow blame religion for an atheist mass movement, then we expand the meaning of the word "religion" so that it can justify so patently bizarre an accusation.  
"To quote Hitchens:
"For Joseph Stalin, who had trained to be a priest in a seminary in Georgia, the whole thing was ultimately a question of power. (12) “How many divisions,” he famously and stupidly inquired, “has the pope?” (The true answer to his boorish sarcasm was, “More than you think.”) Stalin then pedantically repeated the papal routine of making science conform to dogma (13), by insisting that the shaman and charlatan Trofim Lysenko had disclosed the key to genetics and promised extra harvests of specially inspired vegetables. (Millions of innocents died of gnawing internal pain as a consequence of this “revelation.”) This Caesar unto whom all things were dutifully rendered took care, as his regime became a more nationalist and statist one, to maintain at least a puppet church (14) that could attach its traditional appeal to his. 
(13) Speaking of power, it's odd that the name of Friedrich Nietzsche never comes up in Sherlocks' exposition, either.  Hasn't he heard of that famous atheist, either?  Nietzsche famously blamed Christianity for being too weak, for not busting skulls with sufficient vigor.  
Jesus was famous for giving up power, and dying on the cross.  Nietzsche hated that weakness.  So to whom should we trace Stalin's attitude, if we don't ascribe it to human nature?  

Marx and Engels (two other key historical figures whom Sherlock oddly never mentions) wrote that communism "abolishes all morality," as well as "all religion."  This connection between abolishing religion and morality, then, is not one which Christians impose on the communists, it is one the communists very deliberately and emphatically made themselves.     
(14) Science under the popes was, in fact, generally remarkable free, despite a few obvious contrary examples.  (Which is why we always hear of Galileo's spell of house arrest.)  For a more balanced view, see, for instance, James Hannam's The Genesis of Science, or Allan Chapman's Slaying the Dragons: Destroying Myths in the History of Science and Faith.
(15) Stalin didn't "maintain" the Church, he constrained it, by theft, murder, torture, mass enslavement, propaganda, and persecution.  The Church didn't need Stalin's help!  But after Hitler invaded, Stalin realized he might need the help of the Church, and backed off temporarily.  
How perverse to portray a lull in persecution as if it demonstrated the guilt of the harassed, tortured, and murdered victims who welcomed that lull!  (Not that there were no genuine quislings, of course -- Wurmbrand writes incisively on that.)

So Was Atheism to Blame for Stalin? 
Sherlock is adamant in denying any relationship between the tens of millions of murders committed in or by the Soviet Union, and the atheist component of the official communist ideology.  In fact, RELIGION (here meaning "supernatural" religion) was to blame!   
"Hitchens was not alone in seeing the parallels between Russia’s old supernatural religion and its new secular one.
"In Emilio Gentile’s ‘Politics as Religion,’ Gentile describes the sacralizing of Stalin’s regime in the following words:
"The sacralization of the party opened the way to the sacralization of Stalin when he became the supreme leader.  After 1929, the political religion of Russia mainly concentrated on the deification of Stalin, who until his death in 1953 dominated the party and Soviet system like a tyrannical and merciless deity. 
"That vast and seemingly bottomless “reservoir of religious credulity,” as Hitchens so eloquently phrased it, which served to subdue the servile Soviets for hundreds of years beneath the yoke of an equally brutal supernatural religion, was the very fountain of boundless unthinking acquiescence that Stalin, having adorned himself in the Tsar’s clothes, utilized to send countless innocent Russians to their deaths.  Where would Stalin have found such docile servitude, servitude that fed the flames of his secular religious tyranny, had Lucretius, Thomas Paine, Albert Einstein or Thomas Jefferson bestowed upon these poor religious Russians, their intellectual legacy?  To answer in a word, nowhere."

Being historically ignorant, and not apparently having read Tolstoy or Dostoevsky (though this is hard to believe of Hitchens), these gentlemen are apparently unaware of the rich vein of  "Enlightenment" thinking that permeated the Russian intelligentsia long before Vladimir Lenin and others brought the holy books of Marx and Engels to Russia.   To this day, in a Chinese textbook my students use, the Chinese communists present their beliefs as a fusion of Greek humanism, western Enlightenment thought, and parallel Chinese strands of post-religious Enlightenment thinking, as I showed in this First Things article.  

Thomas Jefferson was not an atheist, why does Sherlock bring him up?  Neither were Einstein or Paine.  Sherlock appears to be conflating "atheism" with "liberal democratic thinking," here, which is part of his variation on the No True Scotsman theme, smuggling in moral values he associates with atheism, and denying the atheist labels to those who fall short of those values.  


But the confusion Sherlock maintains about the impact of atheism becomes "clear" when he brings up Stalin again in the "logical fallacies" section of his piece. 

"False Analogy Fallacy
"This fallacy depends upon the existence of an often minor analogous factor, in this case, the belief in god versus a lack of belief in god, god being the analogous component, and extrapolating from this minor analogy, conditions that are alleged to affect both positions, when the truth of the matter happens to be, the two (religion and atheism) are not analogous at all. [34]
"For apologists to overcome the existence of this fallacy, they must show that atheism is a religion, but the very definition of atheism circumvents any such attempt.  Atheism, although encompassing varying degrees of disbelief, is not a system of beliefs, but an unsystematic absence of god-belief, that is all.  It has no doctrines, traditions and most importantly, no beliefs.  Unless there is some secret atheist bible from which Stalin drew inspiration for his crimes, there is absolutely no reason to suggest that his lack of belief in a supernatural deity had anything to do with his messianic and maniacal behavior."
The problems and contradictions here are many: but also the opportunity to finally understand what "religion" is, and how it relates to "atheism." 

(1) Sherlock has just been telling us that Stalinism was a "godless religion."  Has he forgotten?  Because now, when convenient, he seems to think there are no godless religions.  


(2) Most dictionaries do not define atheism as an "unsystematic absence of god-belief."  Many more properly define atheism as the positive rejection of belief in God.  (Not gods, which may be merely ghosts, spirits or proto-Marvel superheroes.)  And it is hard to see how atheism could be merely an absence of belief.  Babies are not "atheists" in any normal sense of the word.  Rocks are not atheists.  People who have never thought about the subject are not atheists.  


(3) Even a lack of belief can be deadly, though.  If an airplane pilot lacks a belief in gravity, all hands may perish.  So Sherlock's argument fails.  It may well be that Stalin lacked some key belief -- "communism abolishes all morality, all religion" -- which resulted in or encouraged his cruel acts.  How hard is that to understand?  And again, it wasn't just Stalin who tortured, murdered, and destroyed priceless works of human heritage: the Communist Holocaust was a cross-cultural, several generational collaborative effort in mayhem.

(4) In fact, as Richard Wurmbrand relates, communist torturers and jailers often goaded Christians with the absence of God.  As even George Orwell's anti-hero, Big Brother's little torturing brother, O'Brien, says to Winston Smith in the torture chamber: "Do you believe in God?"  ("No.")  "Then what will stop us?"  For O'Brien, the absence of God was highly significant -- as Dostoevsky put it, "If there is no God, then everything is permitted."  That was precisely O'Brien's logic, and that of Wurmbrand's tormentors.

(5) In a sense it is true that atheism in itself has no "doctrines, traditions or beliefs," aside from "There is no God."  In the same way, theism has no "doctrines, traditions or beliefs" aside from "There is a God."  Religions (in Tillich's sense) are developed systems of belief and practice in which theism or atheism may be a single element.  Therefore Communism, Secular Humanism, and Christianity, may all be seen as religions.  One can compare atheism to theism, or Communism or Secular Humanism to Christianity.  One cannot compare atheism per se to Christianity, not because atheism does not impact how people act for good or evil (it does, as atheists often testify!), but because it is only one element in more developed religions or (if you don't like that word) ideologies. 
(6) What is truly shocking, and bizarre, in Sherlock's comments here, is this strange sentence, which displays no hint of historical understanding whatsoever:

"Unless there is some secret atheist bible from which Stalin drew inspiration for his crimes, there is absolutely no reason to suggest that his lack of belief in a supernatural deity had anything to do with his messianic and maniacal behavior."

"Secret atheist Bible?"   How can anyone who dares write on the subject, fail at this point to even mention the vast cataract of published secular propaganda that formed, informed, and transformed the Marxist-Leninist movement around the world, including in Russia?  Communism was an Enlightenment project.  As David Aikman shows in consummate detail, Karl Marx was deeply inspired by the stories of Faust and Prometheus, as interpreted for modern Europeans, for instance by the English poet, Percy Shelley.  Marx even quoted Prometheus, "In a word, I detest all gods!"

Secret atheist Bible?  Well no, there was not one atheist Bible, any more than there is just one theist holy book.  But the Enlightenment movement was a highly bookish one, and it could not be any clearer (Aikman shows this in great detail) that early communism drew inspiration from numerous strains of Enlightenment writing -- Feurbach, Hegel, Bauer, Tylor, and so on.  (Marx was also influenced by seedy friends he met at the University of Berlin, and Engels of course by Marx.)  

That the communists' virulent rejection of God "had to do with" their "maniacal behavior" is, again, crystal clear from their own writings.  It is not a Christian apologist who linked "communism abolishes all religion" to "communism abolishes all morality" -- these assertions lie smack dab in the center of the most famous communist book ever written, The Communist Manifesto, penned by Marx and Engels.  

Is it really so absurd to suppose Joseph Stalin read that book, and was influenced by it?  

What is absurd is that Sherlock does not seem to have heard of the book, or its authors.  

True, as I showed nineteen years ago in Jesus and the Religions of Man (in a chapter that the historian Dr. Donald Treadgold, founder of the Slavic Review, read and affirmed), communist morality was complex and self-contradictory.  I argued that communism did not only fail to actually abolish morality, in truth it instituted not one but three separate new moral systems.  My argument in that book describes the reality of communist experience, and the contradictions between Marxism and human experience pretty well, I think.  (The book has gotten great reviews.)  

The Hitchens-Sherlock take on the same subject strikes me as ill-informed, adolescent, apologetic twaddle.  If one goes by this article, Sherlock has, apparently, never heard of Karl Marx, still less The Communist Manifesto.  Nor has the term "dialectical materialism" passed his ears.  Of course he has not witnessed the "graveyards and transports" of Christians who died having "cast a light like a candle" around them in the Gulag, as Solzhentisyn put it.  (Having met such Christians, it was in the Gulag that Solzhenitsyn turned back to Christ.  I have eaten with some who endured those tortures, too.)  

Sherlock thinks, or wants to believe, that Joseph Stalin was some sort of anomaly, an aberration, who having gone to a seminary, somehow imbibed both revolutionary fervor and the doctrine of political quiessence in the face of tyranny at one and the same time, from Saint Paul.  (Whose teachings, in fact, he rejected in his first year, and which talk a lot about love.)  He wants to think that atheism must always be held innocent, because it is a mere absence of belief, which can never harm anyone ("I'm not a killer, I merely lack a belief in maintaining life?"), but that at the same time Stalin's real fault was he didn't read "atheists" like Jefferson, Einstein and Paine.  (Who were not atheists, actually.)  Sherlock has never heard, it seems, of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Castro, the Kims, Hofha, Guzman, Ho Chi Minh, Mao, or Xi Jinping, nor of the French Revolution, or the Marxists in Mexico.  

I refuted much of this nonsense in Jesus and the Religions of Man in 2000, already.  This is why being an apologist provides life-long job security: so many who say they care deeply about facts and evidence, never seem to learn them.  So the hydra presents new and ever-more silly faces to the Christian knight, and the job of chopping them off never ends.  

I was going to end by debunking Sherlock's false claims about Hitler (no, he was not a Christian, nor an atheist, though he was deeply influenced by atheist thinkers), but I've run out of both time and, I suspect, the reader's patience. 

A poster below notes that Richard Weikart is coming out with a book on Hitler's religion later this year.  Good news!  Weikart is an historian who teaches at California State, and has studied this issue for many years.  I expect his book will help settle the matter. (Later note: he kindly sent me a copy, and yes, it rather does.)  

But let me also note how weak Sherlock's main argument on Hitler's supposed faith is.  (Aside from the fact that he again excludes contrary evidence, no doubt because he has not read enough to know of it.)   

"X says Y, so Y" is an Argument from Authority.  Some arguments from authority are strong, many are weak.  Generally speaking, "X says he believes Y" is a fairly strong argument from authority.  If a man doesn't know what he really believes, then who does?   And we generally do people the courtesy of accepting their self-descriptions (even, absurdly, "I am a woman!" to a person whose plumbing is male).  

But when "X=Adolf Hitler," the argument "X says Y, so Y" loses its force, to put it mildly.  Hitler was known to OCCASIONALLY disassemble for political reasons.  And certainly, Hitler had strong motive to lie about being a Christian, running for office in a political climate in which the communists had pretty much cornered the market on atheists (many of whom, in the Germany of the time, were Jews).  (Weikart describes Hitler's political calculations, and how they differed from those of more radical, or less patient, anti-Christians in his movement.)  That Hitler WAS lying, is obvious, if you read Mein Kampf and the story of the Third Reich in general, as told for instance by Michael Burleigh in Sacred Causes.  He despised Christianity: forgiving enemies, for instance, was just not his cup of tea.  It is also possible that Hitler only had a vague notion of what Christianity was. 

Michael Sherlock is a talented ranter.  If only he would desert the ranks of New Atheists who are waging war upon History, and then begin to straighten out the kinks in his logic, he might learn a few things, and ultimately come to believe something worth ranting about.   

34 comments:

sparrish said...

A very good post. I just have couple of comments.

Richard Weikart is publishing a book on Hitler's religion in November. I spoke with him a couple of years ago, and he told me that Hitler is best thought of as a pantheist. He thought the laws of nature were god. He rejected the concept of a personal God. His beliefs were really a form of naturalism with a religious feeling toward the universe. This concept of an immanent impersonal "god" was widespread in Germany. So, I think that in one respect, (where to be a god one has to be a personal being), Hitler can be fairly described as an atheist. Hitler was born a catholic and never officially left the church. So in one respect--church membership--he could be considered a Christian, though he was not a believing or practicing Christian. If one reads the Table Talk, or Goebbels' diaries, one can see he hated Christianity.

Be that as it may, it's a very good post. The historical ignorance in our society is awful. Have you seen Stark's new book "Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History?" Chapter 9 is especially relevant here. (I'm not a catholic.)

BTW, the email follow up comments for the post gives my wife's email, and I don't know how to change it.

David B Marshall said...

Thanks, Sparrish. Weikart's book will be welcome: Vox Dei did one a few years ago, which made some good points, but I'm sure Weikart's will be more authoritative.

I haven't seen Stark's book, either. He's a machine. Well over 80 now; I try not to pester him, because I know he is on a mission.

Mention of Hitler reminds me of a point I wanted to make, which I will add at the end.

sparrish said...

David,

Here are some first hand quotation of what Hitler thought of God. To me, it is a sort of pantheism, or naturalism with a nature worshipping tinge. You might find these helpful.

In the Table Talk, Hitler is cited as saying “Fundamentally in everyone there is the feeling for this all-mighty, which we call God (that is to say, the dominion of natural laws throughout the whole universe).” 6.

Martin Bormann, Hitler's right hand man for the final few years of the Nazi regime, wrote, "When we National Socialists speak of a belief in God, we do not understand by God, like naive Christians and their spiritual opportunists, a human-type being, who sits around somewhere in space... The force of natural law, with which all these innumerable planets move in the universe, we call the Almighty or God." From Bormann's Circular on the Relationship of National Socialism and Christianity, in J. S. Conway, The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 384.

Traudl Junge, Hitler's private secretary for the final few years wrote, "He [Hitler] was not a member of any church, and thought the Christian religions were outdated, hypocritical institutions that lured people into them. The laws of nature were his religion." Until the Final Hour edited by Melissa Muller, (New York: Arcade Publishing 2002) 108.

David B Marshall said...

Table Talk is questioned. I don't know what the state of the debate is currently.

sparrish said...

The Table Talk has been questioned, but all of the historians I have read (Kershaw and Evans for example)seem to take it for granted. At any rate, both Bormann and Junge say the same thing.

Here is a quote from Stark in "Bearing False Witness," p. 201, though he himself is quoting Alexander Yakolov, the who chaired a Russian committee after the fall of the Soviet Union investigating such matters.

"Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev was mutilated, castrated, and shot, and his corpse was left naked for the public to desecrate. Metropolitan Veniamin of St. Petersburg, in line to succeed the patriarch, was turned into a pillar of ice,; he was doused with cold water in the freezing cold. Bishop Germogen of Tobolsk...was strapped alive to the paddlewheel of a steamboat and mangled by the rotating blades. Archbishop Andronnnik of Perm...was buried alive. Archbishop Vasily was crucified and burned."

About 200,000 clergy were murdered, To quote again about what was done to priests, monks, and nuns, "[T]hey were crucified on the central doors of iconostases, thrown into cauldrons of boiling tar, scalped, strangled with priestly stoles, given Communion with melted lead, and drowned in holes in the ice." Over 20,000,000 Russians were murdered at least partly because of their religion.

A lot of atheists are really God haters, and express their hatred by torturing and killing religious people.

I apologize for taking so much space, but the willful ignorance, and sheer intellectual dishonesty of much of contemporary atheism needs to be addressed. I thank you for doing so.

Truth Unites... and Divides said...

Please look at this argument about Chairman Mao:

"Mao Zedong, an intellectually consistent atheist"

It helps to support your rebuttals. Thanks for writing a terrific article.

David B Marshall said...

Thanks. Mao was a nasty person, indeed. I hate to see how he continues to be worshiped blindly by naive young (and old) Chinese who don't know any better.

Patrick said...

As Randal Rauser would say, can you show that the violence done by these (we'll say for the sake of argument) atheists was done by atheism simpliciter?

Even though the violence was done by (we'll say for the sake of argument) atheists can you show that they didn't do it for power or greed, that they did it to promote atheism? After all, they had other things in common besides atheism. They were males, for example, and meat-eaters. How did you rule out other factors and came to the conclusion that it was done because of their atheism?

David B Marshall said...

"For the sake of the argument?" No. For the sake of historical fact, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Kims, etc, were all God-hating radical atheists who wanted to destroy "religion" and did their best to do so. If you can't admit that, you're playing games.

Both Aikman and I demonstrate the key role atheism played in the foundation of Marxism-Leninism. But they hardly denied it: they called their philosophy "dialectical materialism," not “dialectical barbecuing” or “dialectical male-bonding,” and wrote in their most famous manifesto about how communism “abolishes all religion,” not “all women” or “all vegetarians.” And indeed, women were probably less persecuted than men, and their propaganda teams were called “The League of Militant Atheists” not “The League of Militant Hamburger Flippers.” Not to mention those millions of murdered believers, and tens of thousands of pillaged churches, which seem to evoke sincerity, at least.

Do get real. A concern for reality is something both of our philosophies are supposed to share.

Patrick said...

From Wikipedia

Regarding the league:
most of the peasantry was unimpressed, and even the party apparatus considered the League to be meddling and inefficient

If you read the article they banned religion not for the sake of atheism but to consolidate their political power. They also banned other political parties for the same reason. They wanted the power to be in the party. They were eliminating competitors and promoting their own political power - not promoting atheism for its own sake.

Speaking of reality if you believe what you said about atheism then you should have no problem accepting this, too.

David B Marshall said...

I cite a doctoral dissertation written under the guidance of the head of the History Department at one of the world's great universities, and founder of The Slavic Review, and you cite Wikipedia in response?

Like I said. Get real.

As for the relation between "power" and "atheism," as if the two were supposed to be in conflict, or unrelated, read "Where did Marx Go Wrong" in Jesus and the Religions of Man. Even Orwell recognized the connection, as did Karl Marx.

Patrick said...

If atheism is so evil then, mass murders and all, how do you explain secular societies where there are no mass murders such as Sweden and the Netherlands? Much of Western Europe is secular yet no mass murders are going on. Even in Russia, a secular society according to you, there are no millions of people currently being killed. Shouldn't those things still be going on?

David B Marshall said...

Patrick: I didn't say "Atheism is evil." But the low murder rate and social disfunction rate in Scandinavia pre-dated the trend towards both secularism and Big Government. See my article on this site on Hans Hague, and the transcript of my debate with Phil Zuckerman.

To say "A was a contributing factor to X" does not entail either that X or something like X cannot happen without A, or that A always causes X or X Prime.

Unknown said...

Don't Blame Stalin's Atrocities on Atheism, Don't Blame Terrorists Atrocities on Islam, Don't blame Crusades on Christianity, Don't Blame The Israeli Government/Army on Judaism.... If Stalin was Christian would He of still done what He did....Who knows?

BIG said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
David B Marshall said...

Unknown: Are you saying that religions or ideologies can have no impact on how people act? Despite all the evidence that they do?

Robert said...

Good article. Just one suggestion: for me, at least, vituperation makes your writing less persuasive. Toning it down would have made this article even stronger.

David B Marshall said...

Thanks, Robert. Sometimes I do say things more forcefully or sarcastically than is helpful, I do need to be careful. Appreciate your warning.

Ralf said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ralf said...

I do agree on some of your statements David but also disagree on so many things. Based on my understanding is that we as humans decide and act accordingly based on our past experiences, ideologies, and beliefs. Atheism could have most probably influenced Stalin, Mao, and PolPot's decisions and actions but wouldn't that also applies to the inquistiors, witchcraft hunters and all Christian people who committed atrocities in the name of their religious beliefs throughout history? Like take the actions of Christiana and other Religious monarchs/leaders involved in these historical events which has religious themes as one of the cause of it happening.
Also notice the number of casualties.
• The Crusades: 6000000
• Thirty Years War: 11500000
• French Wars of Religion: 4000000
• Second Sudanese Civil War: 2000000
• Lebanese Civil War: 250,000
• Muslim Conquests of India: 80000000
• Congolese Genocide (King Leopold II): 13000000
• Armenian Genocide: 1500000 • Rwandan Genocide: 800,000
• Eighty Years' War: 1000000 Nigerian Civil War: 1000000
• Great Peasants' Revolt: 250,000
• First Sudanese Civil War: 1000000
• Jewish Diaspora (Not Including the Holocaust): 1000000
• The Holocaust (Jewish and Homosexual Deaths): 6500000
• Islamic Terrorism Since 2000: 150,000
• Iraq War: 500,000 • US Western Expansion (Justified by "Manifest Destiny"):20,000,000
• Atlantic Slave Trade (Justified by Christianity): 14000000
• Aztec Human Sacrifice: 80,000
• AIDS deaths in Africa largely due to opposition to condoms: 30000000
• Spanish Inquisition: 5,000

TOTAL: 195035000 deaths in the name of religion.

Not to include the unkown numbers of catholic and other Christian abused victims through their residential schools and churches as an attempt to assimilate natives from different countries around the world to adopt christian/european culture just like the recent Canada residential school scandal.

Do you think Christians who had committed atrocities throughout history was never influenced by their Christian beliefs and dogma to commit atrocious acts?

Also what's your response to this part of Sherlock's blog:

(To finish, let me now surrender and admit defeat. You look puzzled. Please lend me just one more moment to explain my surrender.

Suppose the Christian apologist is correct, and atheist tyrants are worse than religious ones. What does this, from the point of view of the believer, show? What are the implications? On the one hand, you can interpret it to show that the more people believe in the Christian god, the more virtuous they will behave, despite the fact that the truth of history will laugh at such vacuous attempts to ignore its tomes of evidence to the contrary. On the other, what does it say about an all-powerful, all-knowing and all-loving god, one who allows tyrants, whether secular or religious, to murder helpless and innocent children by the millions, who turns a blind eye to the wrongful imprisonment of innocent men and women, and who starves to bare bones, the poor and meek?

Perhaps now you see that my surrender was but a Trojan horse, in which I smuggled Epicurus’ old, yet unanswered, problem of evil. I guess I could have just said that there is no way for a religious apologist to win this one. For if the atheist admits defeat, they still leave the faithful with the dissonance of evil, and as many theologians and philosophers have correctly concluded, freewill is no answer to such evil. But that is a story for another time)

Ralf said...

Also David, did you know about the history of Yahweh? For sure, knowing about the evidence of the true origin of this deity will shock you for it will completely messed up the very fundamental beliefs of every branches of the Abrahamic religions that exist today.

David B Marshall said...

Ralf: Thanks for a substantive, if I think ineffectual, response.

First of all, one should carefully consider the relationship between cause and effect in history. It is far more credible to relate Marx' theories to the Gulag, than Jesus' teachings to the Inquisition, for several reasons:

(1) Effect followed cause in decades, not a millenium+.

(2) And that impact was much larger.

(3) And can more reasonably be tied to the supposed cause. Jesus taught kindness to strangers; Marx "abolished" all morality and made excuses for murder.

Secondly, I suggest you find better sources of historical information. Your figures and assumptions are, in many cases, dubious.

(a) The Crusades were defensive battles in response to 400+ years of attack from Muslims which conquered half of Christendom. They were as justifiable as the Allied response to the Axis powers, IMO. (Which does not mean every act by every Crusader, or WWII ally, was justifiable, of course.)

(b) King Leopold II did not, I think, commit his crimes for the sake of any religion.

(c) Many of the other wars were either only nominally, or not at all, religious in nature.

(d) Anyway, I am a Christian, not a proponent of "religion." If you cite evils done by Islam or Hinduism, I may well agree.

(e) Or even Christianity. The Gospel itself predicts that people will use religion, and even truth, to do evil. It is unfortunate that this has often happened, but nothing that Jesus didn't foresee.

(f) The Holocaust killed twice as many victims as you state, almost. But homosexuals do not, contrary to common myth, seem to have been a particular target, as were Jews, Gypsies, the mentally retarded, etc.

(g) Are you defining Nazism as a religion? I'm fine with that, but it's not a religion this website endorses.

(h) The Slave Trade was NOT justified by Christianity. In fact, the Bible clearly condemns slave-traders, in I Timothy 1. And it implicitly condemns it frequently, as Harriet Beecher Stowe showed in Uncle Tom's Cabin.

(i) The Aztecs killed far more people than that.

(j) Your logic with AIDS is bizarre. You claim 30 million have died of AIDS in Africa, and seem to blame all or most of those deaths on Christianity, somehow. WHO says 32 million had died worldwide as of 2018. As a matter of fact, most Africans are not Christians. And Christianity warns against the practices that lead to AIDS. If everyone in the world followed Christian morality, no one would contract AIDS, syphilis, etc.

Nothing in the Bible tells us not to wear condoms, but it does tell us not to fool around. It is possible that Catholic teaching on condoms resulted in some people contracting AIDS. It is also certain that Christian teaching on sex has prevented some people from contracting it. (And with a thousand other misfortunates.) You're going to have to think that one through a lot more carefully.

Do Christians sometimes murder? Absolutely. And in the name of God? Sometimes. Peter tried to kill someone when Jesus was arrested. The disciples wanted fire and brimstone to descend on an unappreciative village.

My article was a response to a particular critique, not a complete historical appraisal of the impact of "religion," or even Christianity.

David B Marshall said...

"Suppose the Christian apologist is correct, and atheist tyrants are worse than religious ones . . . What does it say about an all-powerful, all-knowing and all-loving god, one who allows tyrants, whether secular or religious, to murder helpless and innocent children by the millions, who turns a blind eye to the wrongful imprisonment of innocent men and women, and who starves to bare bones, the poor and meek?"

I am not going to take up the Problem of Pain in this forum. Many others have dealt with it. Never entirely to my satisfaction. Most Christian thinkers agree that is the most difficult problem. But there is enough reason to believe in Christ that it is worth considering the solutions.

David B Marshall said...

"Also David, did you know about the history of Yahweh? For sure, knowing about the evidence of the true origin of this deity will shock you for it will completely messed up the very fundamental beliefs of every branches of the Abrahamic religions that exist today."

Obviously you haven't read much of my writing, here or my books. I think you may be shocked, when you learn about the actual origins of monotheism. You can listen to my interview of Win Corduan on-line, or look for articles here, or my books on related topics on Amazon.

Ralf said...

"First of all, one should carefully consider the relationship between cause and effect in history. It is far more credible to relate Marx' theories to the Gulag, than Jesus' teachings to the Inquisition, for several reasons:"

- oh sure, when Christian beliefs has clearly something to do with atrocities people like you would surely brush it off as if it's not to be taken seriously. What you just said is nothing but a deperate attempt to clear it's irreparable reputation. Twist all evidence and perform all mental gymnastics as you can, but nothing can change the fact that the Bible has always been used by Christians to justify all of their atrocities and that they have done so countless times ago in the name of their Deity. No matter how you twist it's meaning or make excuses of verses that encourage violence, it's very obvious that it has influenced Christian barbarity. All of these verses is one of the most obvious reason why many Christians get away with these terrible deeds. Now, I don't know how you or any Christian apologist can distort reality out of these passages.

• KILL ALL ADULTERERS (Le 20:10)
• KILL ALL WITCHES (Ex 22:18)
• KILL BLASPHEMERS (Lev 24:14)
• KILL FALSE PROPHETS (Zech 13:3)
• KILL FORTUNE TELLERS (Lev 20:27)
• KILL ANYONE WHO SINS (Ezek 18:4)
• KILL THE CURIOUS (1 Sam 6:19-20)
• KILL GAYS (Lev 20:13, ROM 1:21-32)
• KILL ALL NON-HEBREWS (Dt 20:16-17)
• KILL SONS OF SINNERS ( Isiah 14:21)
• KILL NON-BELIEVERS (2 Chron 15:12-13)
• KILL ANYONE WHO CURSES GOD (LEV 24:16)
• KILL ANY CHILD WHO HITS A PARENT (Ex 21:15)
• KILL CHILDREN WHO DISOBEYS PARENTS (Dt 21:20)
• KILL THOSE WHO WORK ON THE SABBATH (Ex 31:15)
• KILL DISOBEDIENT CHILDREN (Ex 21:17, Mk 7:10)
• KILL STRANGERS CLOSE TO A CHURCH (Num 1:48-51)
• KILL ALL MALES AFTER WINNING BATTLES (Dt 20:13)
• KILL THOSE WHO CURSES FATHER OR MOTHER (Lev 20:9)
• KILL MEN WHO HAVE SEX WITH OTHER MEN (Lev 20:13)
• KILL ANY BRIDE DISCOVERED NOT A VIRGIN (Dt 22:21)
• KILL THOSE WHO WORSHIP THE WRONG GOD (Num 25:1-9)
• KILL ANYONE WHO DOES NOT OBSERVE THE SABBATH (Ex 31:14)
• KILL EVERYBODY IN A TOWN WHO WORSHIPS THE WRONG GOD (Dt 13:13-16)
and
• KILL ANYONE WHO KILLS ANYONE(Lev 24:17)

I'm sure there are more passages like this in the Bible and I'm very sure you can create convoluted interpretations to explain it but I'm also a hundred percent sure that these verses has been used by Christians throughout history to justify their atrocities.
Now give me at least one example in the communist manifesto saying things like these in such an explicit manner then we can guarantee that Atheism did influenced those Communist tyrants.

Ralf said...

I'm sure there are more passages like this in the Bible and I'm very sure you can create convoluted interpretations to explain it but I'm also a hundred percent sure that these verses has been used by Christians throughout history to justify their atrocities.
Now give me at least one example in the communist manifesto saying things like these in such an explicit manner then we can guarantee that Atheism did influenced those Communist tyrants.

"(1) Effect followed cause in decades, not a millenium+."
- I'm not sure what you're talking here but as far as I know, early Christians did some terrible acts against political opponents or enemies like take Hypatia story as example. I'm pretty sure you will deny that Christian beliefs has anything to do with her death right?


"(2) And that impact was much larger."
- Yeah maybe, perhaps Atheist Communist atrocities might be worse than what all the Christians did in all history, although I'm not sure with that though. Numberwise, maybe? as far as I know the highest estimate is 161,990,000 died from the commies. If we're gonna talk about cruelness or killing methods of how it's done then I don't think so.
Anyway, I wonder what was the Christian Deity doing all those time? Was he actively watching all those gruesome carnage happening? Or was he sleeping? Was he weeping or laughing? Or did he actively get involved by magically influencing the chain of events for said atrocities to happen? We'll never know, but hopefully he can give the answers to me himself and not just a mere human who think they know more about him and who always do the talking instead of him. Like, the Bible stated that he has appeared and talk to a lot of people throughout history in multiple occasions and intervine with their actions. Why can't he do that again? I'll be waiting for that to happen again. Hopefully, before I die or else I'll end up in hell just in case it exist and the Christian diety truly exist. Nobody would want to roast in hell for all eternity for sure so I hope if your deity exist then he will help me out. And he should help me out since he is described as omnibenevolent and he has unconditional love for humanity right? Or he's not or that he doesn't exist at all.


"(3) And can more reasonably be tied to the supposed cause. Jesus taught kindness to strangers; Marx "abolished" all morality and made excuses for murder."
- ok I agree with the first part however I just find it kinda funny how a sadistic, vengeful, egotistic, and megalomaniacal diety suddenly turned into this huggable and gentle diety in the second sequel of the Abrahamic story. Now on the second part though, I would like you to show me some explicit proof that "Marx abolished all morality" and "made excuses for murder" based on the communist manifesto. Show me at least one qoute or paragraph from that book that those communist tyrants followed very well in carrying out their abominable acts.

Ralf said...

"Secondly, I suggest you find better sources of historical information. Your figures and assumptions are, in many cases, dubious"
- Dubious? Oh C'mon! you can't just say something is "dubious" just because you haven't made enough research about it! but, oh well here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_and_anthropogenic_disasters_by_death_toll
https://www.google.com/amp/s/apholt.com/2019/01/30/death-estimates-for-the-crusades/amp/
I can only list one, do your own research for the rest ok.

"(a) The Crusades were defensive battles in response to 400+ years of attack from Muslims which conquered half of Christendom. They were as justifiable as the Allied response to the Axis powers, IMO. (Which does not mean every act by every Crusader, or WWII ally, was justifiable, of course.)"
- Well it's clear that it's the Christians and their deity's fault in the first place. They did nothing when the Muslims encroached on their territories and waited over a century before taking action when they're deity can easily blow away those Muslims from the holy land or just prevent such a terrible event from happening in the first place without sacrificing a single human or animal life. Now don't throw freewill on the mix when obviously Yahweh/Jesus has violated every one's freewill when he first started interacting with humans, showing, doing crazy stuff and proclaiming his undeniable presence to them in the first place smhvf. Don't tell me that those people's freewill were not affected as they drowned to death in the Great flood that killed 99% of all living things in the surface of the planet or the Pharaoh's freewill when it's obvious that the old testament version of Jesus missed up with his decisions in the first place (Ex 9:12). And don't tell me that the 12 disciple's freewill was not messed up by Jesus along with other bunch of followers said to have witnessed his magical superpowers? Now try reasoning your way out of this.


"(b) King Leopold II did not, I think, commit his crimes for the sake of any religion."
- I don't think so David. King Leopold II is a Roman Catholic and one of his desire is to take control of the Congo Free State and to spread the benefits of Christianity. You would think that Oh! just because he is a proponent of Christianity doesn't mean that his Christian beliefs has something to do with the Congolese Genocide! Probably not, but it also doesn't mean that it's completely improbable. African slavery which has been justified using the Bible might have influenced his harsh treatment to his colonial subjects which culminated in the Congolese Genocide. Here's an excerpt to Britannica.com "Presenting himself as a philanthropist eager to bring the benefits of Christianity, Western civilization, and commerce to African natives—a guise that he perpetuated for many years—Leopold hosted an international conference of explorers and geographers at the royal palace in Brussels in 1876." https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leopold-II-king-of-Belgium.

Ralf said...

"(c) Many of the other wars were either only nominally, or not at all, religious in nature."
- I couldn't agree more. But then, back to my previous question. What exactly was your deity doing all those times?


"(e) Or even Christianity. The Gospel itself predicts that people will use religion, and even truth, to do evil. It is unfortunate that this has often happened, but nothing that Jesus didn't foresee.
- Oh! so he forsee it? what did he do then?


"(f) The Holocaust killed twice as many victims as you state, almost. But homosexuals do not, contrary to common myth, seem to have been a particular target, as were Jews, Gypsies, the mentally retarded, etc.
- nope, homosexuals were one of Hitler’s target as well as the three commies, do more research.
And how about the Nanking massacre perpetuated by the emperial japanese soldiers and also the unit 731 victims. Maybe you have some idea of how they were killed.
Imagine what they've been through. Utterly disturbing and gruesome right? Now what was the Christian deity doing while all of those things are happening? He appeared to hundreds of people during his time as a human deity, transformed water into wine infront of many people, perform all crazy miracles to so many people. What did he do to prevent sickening events like this from happening which involves hundreds of millions of people?, all of those victims of world war 1 and 2 alone. What did he do!?


"(g) Are you defining Nazism as a religion? I'm fine with that, but it's not a religion this website endorses."
- No I don't see it as a religion cuz I'm not sure if they dedicated all their actions to their beliefs of a supernatural governing authority or deity. I see them more like a barbaric fascist organization dedicated for the cause of advancing Hitler’s so called "Aryan Race" at the cost of everyone else.


"(h) The Slave Trade was NOT justified by Christianity. In fact, the Bible clearly condemns slave-traders, in I Timothy 1. And it implicitly condemns it frequently, as Harriet Beecher Stowe showed in Uncle Tom's Cabin"
- This is totally ridiculous, but No! It has been used to justify it! Why can't you people accept that most if not all Christian slave owners used bible verses to justify the practice of slavery!? smh
Here's a powerful example of how American slave owners utter bible verses to compel their slaves to subjugation. Watch the reenactment from this biographical film David. Don't tell me that this particular scenario has never happened cuz I'm a 101% sure Christian slave owners uttered those passages to their abused slaves countless of times throughout the history of African slavery.
https://youtu.be/xOJW5CnICG0
Not learning from the mistakes of your forefathers will guarantee that you and your descendants will do same mistakes over and over again. Please be honest with yourself, accept and learn from those mistakes folks.

Ralf said...

"(i) The Aztecs killed far more people than that."
- If so then, perhaps it's part of your deity's plan right?


"(j) Your logic with AIDS is bizarre. You claim 30 million have died of AIDS in Africa, and seem to blame all or most of those deaths on Christianity, somehow. WHO says 32 million had died worldwide as of 2018. As a matter of fact, most Africans are not Christians. And Christianity warns against the practices that lead to AIDS. If everyone in the world followed Christian morality, no one would contract AIDS, syphilis, etc."
- Yeah and I'm pretty sure African Christian and Muslim beliefs is at fault or has a major contribution to it. And also, according to a 2018 study by the Gordon–Conwell Theological Seminary, more Christians live in Africa than any other continent, with 631 million Christians. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_Africa#:~:text=According%20to%20a%202018%20study,continent%2C%20with%20631%20million%20Christians.
" And Christianity warns against the practices that leads to AIDS. If everyone in the world followec Christian morality, no one would contract AIDS, syphilis, etc."
- You really sure about that brother? Do you think the virus will stop from spreading if people just do heterosexual acts, avoid promiscuous lifestyle and getting rid of LGBTQ community? You think somehow the virus that are currently circulating around the world right now will just magically vanish? Oh and you mentioned about Christian morality, does it include the discrimination and elimination of LGBTQ people on the planet? You know what, for such a normal and natural variety of human sexuality, you bigoted, ignorant Christians as well as followers of other Abrahamic religions are so intolerant and barbaric towards them. What have they done to you for them to deserve that level of hatred? Homosexuality exist in so many species of animals throughout the world and are you also going to exterminate them? If your Diety created every living things in this planet and their sexuality the way they are but somehow branded such creation as something abominable smh.


"Nothing in the Bible tells us not to wear condoms, but it does tell us not to fool around. It is possible that Catholic teaching on condoms resulted in some people contracting AIDS. It is also certain that Christian teaching on sex has prevented some people from contracting it. (And with a thousand other misfortunates.) You're going to have to think that one through a lot more carefully."
- Yeah I agree on the first two parts. However, your Christian Morality can't stop natural urges and bodily processes. It's like telling people to stop defecating which is utterly preposterous.


"Do Christians sometimes murder? Absolutely. And in the name of God? Sometimes. Peter tried to kill someone when Jesus was arrested. The disciples wanted fire and brimstone to descend on an unappreciative village."
- Oh sure "sometimes"? You're going to have to think that one through a lot more carefully.

Ralf said...

"My article was a response to a particular critique, not a complete historical appraisal of the impact of "religion," or even Christianity."
- Yeah I get it. No problem.


"I am not going to take up the Problem of Pain (Evil) in this forum. Many others have dealt with it. Never entirely to my satisfaction. Most Christian thinkers agree that is the most difficult problem. But there is enough reason to believe in Christ that it is worth considering the solutions."
- Yeah no problem. Let your deity handle it instead.


"Obviously you haven't read much of my writing, here or my books. I think you may be shocked, when you learn about the actual origins of monotheism. You can listen to my interview of Win Corduan on-line, or look for articles here, or my books on related topics on Amazon."
- Actually I'm utterly broke right now. Perhaps you can share the pdf to me for free then I would gladly read it.

But anyway I can share to you all the knowledge I know about the origins of yahweh to you for free. Here are the links to the different websites where I get these information from as well as youtube video links about the topic. Hopefully you will read, watch and gain some valuable informations that will help you create some rebuttals.

Websites:

https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/.premium.MAGAZINE-jewish-god-yahweh-originated-in-canaanite-vulcan-says-new-theory-1.5992072

https://www.worldhistory.org/Yahweh/

https://suchanek.name/texts/atheism/ChapterReligions.html#Abrahamic

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Yahweh

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3140943?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-yhwh-became-god-1457732366

https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvjsf3qb

https://readingreligion.org/books/invention-god

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674504974

https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/.premium.MAGAZINE-how-the-jews-invented-god-and-made-him-great-1.5392677

https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/.premium.MAGAZINE-what-yahweh-s-first-appearance-in-history-tells-us-about-early-judaism-1.6469415

https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/.premium.MAGAZINE-we-shouldn-t-take-god-s-name-in-vain-but-what-is-it-1.6546806?v=1626184614189

https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/.premium.MAGAZINE-when-the-jews-believed-in-other-gods-1.6315810

https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/.premium.MAGAZINE-for-you-were-not-slaves-in-egypt-the-memories-behind-the-exodus-myth-1.7138961

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-names-reveal-what-s-history-and-what-s-myth-in-the-bible-researcher-says-1.8904696

https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/.premium.MAGAZINE-israelites-in-biblical-dan-worshipped-idols-and-yahweh-too-1.6612851

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-face-of-yahweh-claim-sets-off-archaeological-brouhaha-1.9116368

Know the difference between El and Yahweh:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_(deity)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahweh

Ralf said...

Youtube:

https://youtu.be/c9klkMKZczA

https://youtu.be/zVnQqtYCS_M

https://youtu.be/BqhbuWkOtX8

https://youtu.be/LtDGI7Qzt88

https://youtu.be/gIweWqsmjZE

https://youtu.be/qalTJzk4kO0

https://youtu.be/ZECezMYug8c

https://youtu.be/cP-fdixB1Zc

https://youtu.be/aLtRR9RgFMg

https://youtu.be/FplUZhZTIug

https://youtu.be/MlnnWbkMlbg

https://youtu.be/yPfFx9JTQl8

You know, I just want to apologize to you David if I said anything offensive or that I sounded really sarcastic on my response but I hope that after you read and watch all the informations I have acquired so far then you will understand where I'm coming from. I really have nothing against your religion or your deity it's just that when I remember all the negative effects of your belief system and it's impact in our history and when I relate that to the positive and negative image of the Christian diety, I just can't help myself but get mad. However, I'm against getting rid of Christianity and all religion in general cuz I know that despite all the terrible things that humans did to one another in the name of their religious beliefs, I still can't deny the fact that every religion is important in shaping the modern world. It's a necessary consequences of human existence and that despite all it's disadvantages, I know it has made a lot of positive effects in so many aspects of human cultures. It's not for me to decide if whether it has done more harm or good to humanity but I know one thing's for sure. Human civilization wouldn't be the way it is today without it.

David B Marshall said...

Ralf: I don't have time for Youtubes, but I'll engage with what you say here, when I have time.

I don't need a "convoluted" argument to respond to your references to killing various offenders in Leviticus or other books of the Law in the OT. It's really quite simple.

I'm a Christian, not an Old Testament Jew. That means I'm a follower of Jesus Christ. Everything in Jewish tradition, or Chinese or Indian tradition, is judged in light of Jesus' life and teachings. That's where the word "Christ" in "Christian" comes from.

For instance, adulterors were to be stoned, according to some OT verses. (Though others show this was seldom carried out.) When a mob brought a woman caught in adultery to Jesus, what did he do? What did he say? That's more important to a Christian than naively reading OT laws.

Does "a Christian is a follower of Jesus Christ" sound "convoluted" to you?

Marx, by contrast, was a hateful megalomaniac, whose character was faithfully expressed by his later followers. Try David Aikman's doctoral dissertation, "Atheism in the Marxist Tradition," which you can get on an interlibrary loan, which may be free. You can also borrow Paul Johnson's The Intellectuals from a library.

Historians have also set the Hypatia story in context, which you should check out. "Christian" mobs are still mobs. I certainly do deny that those mobs were following the teachings of Jesus. Do you honestly think they were? Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, by contrast, did follow the spirit, and some of the teachings, of Karl Marx.









David B Marshall said...

"King Leopold II is a Roman Catholic and one of his desire is to take control of the Congo Free State and to spread the benefits of Christianity."

I doubt he was so motivated. I know he began an affair with a 16-year-old prostitute at the age of 65, maybe out of altruistic desire to spread the virtues of Christian marriage? Missionaries played a big role in exposing his evil deeds. What motivated them? Greed, obviously. What, if anything, he really thought about religion, is not clear from any source I have found so far.

Ralf said...

"I'm a Christian, not an Old Testament Jew."
- Guess where Christianity came from?" Judaism right? You cant avoid the topic of Judaism and the fact still remains that Christianity is nothing but an offshoot of Judaism, same with Islam. You can't deny the fact that the OT clings on the Christian naritive, it's part of the Christian Bible and you can't get rid of Judaism by simply sayimg " Oh iM A cHrIsTiAn,nOT A jEw!"
Remember that the whole Christian story was founded by Judaism. And remember that your Jesus deity claims to be a mortal incarnate of Yahweh, that's why the polytheistic controversy of Yahweh has a great implications on Christianity. You just can't avoid it.

"Marx, by contrast, was a hateful megalomaniac, whose character was faithfully expressed by his later followers. Try David Aikman's doctoral dissertation, "Atheism in the Marxist Tradition," which you can get on an interlibrary loan, which may be free. You can also borrow Paul Johnson's The Intellectuals from a library."
- But you haven't shown me any part of the "atheist bible" or communist manifesto that explicitly tells commies to kill people as part of their agenda to futher atheism. However, I've already presented to you some of the bloody verses in the Bible commanding followers to kill people which is supposed to be the words of your deity. And still you will deny that Christian belief has nothing to do with Christian atrocity? Yeah, Hypatia was killed by Christian mob and the belief in killing people who committed heresy has nothing to do with it right? King Leopold was no way influenced by racial prejudice and Christian beliefs on how they should treat slaves (which was clearly stated in the Bible) right? C'mon David, you're a grown man, and supposedly a historian. You should atleast be able to decern dishonest behaviours and learn to accept mistakes when it's due ok. You know, I'm trying to be respectful as much as possible but knowing how religion can make professional people adopt dishonorable behaviors is really pissing me off!