Next time some dumbass throws the old "Hitler, Stalin and Mao were atheists!" chestnut...

[backscatter712]

Sam Harris has the best rebuttal yet to the old assertion that "Atheists must be bad because Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were atheists, and they murdered millions of people!"

http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/10-myths-and-10-truths-about-atheism1/

2) Atheism is responsible for the greatest crimes in human history.

People of faith often claim that the crimes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were the inevitable product of unbelief. The problem with fascism and communism, however, is not that they are too critical of religion; the problem is that they are too much like religions. Such regimes are dogmatic to the core and generally give rise to personality cults that are indistinguishable from cults of religious hero worship. Auschwitz, the gulag and the killing fields were not examples of what happens when human beings reject religious dogma; they are examples of political, racial and nationalistic dogma run amok. There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.

[humblebum]

1. Yes, I do agree that organized atheism is approaching the

status of religion or cultism for some people. And no Hitler was probably not an atheist.

[Sinistrous]

11. Cute. Except that neither the OP nor Sam Harris said it was, and

you, except for the gaping chasm of wiggle room you left yourself, you would have a hard time defending that banal assertion.

[LeftishBrit]

12. So is whether you use a Mac or a PC; or whether you support the Chelsea or Sunderland football team

E.g. my mother was once in a train that was violently attacked over the latter issue.

Some people will turn anything into a sort of religion, and be bigoted against anyone who doesn't agree with them on any of a wide variety of issues.

But atheists, even vocal atheists, are not all involved in an evil plot; and most vocal atheists are not part of any organized group, and as far as there is such a thing as 'organized atheism' it is at least as factionalized as 'organized religion'. And voting for Ed Miliband, Julia Gillard, or any other known atheist candidate (I can't even think of an American equivalent as apparently there is none) in a democracy is *not* putting your country at risk of Stalinism or some other dictatorial suppression of religion!

[cleanhippie]

14. The verdict is in on your premise...

After the complete shellacking you were given by The Magistrate, I would have thought you would retreat to your lair to lick your wounds. You seem to be giving the impression now that you have quite the masochistic side to you.

:rofl:

[humblebum]

15. And what "complete shellacking" would that be, my friend?

If you are referring to his attempt at revisionist history in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, it is better termed a self-shellacking.

[cleanhippie]

16. You are free to continue to persist in your delusion, but you were shown that your arugument was

And your fall-back rationalization of "where you see contradiction, I see confirmation" is nothing but


But at least your posts are always good for a few :rofl:



Try not to forget, mister humblebum, your words are posted for all the world to see. Forever.


Have a nice day! :hi:

[humblebum]

17. So I guess that you are in agreement that Khruschev was much worse than Stalin,

and that organized atheism was never very prominent in the Soviet Union? Not a shred of evidence but that's your story and you're stickin' to it. Good luck with that in any open forum history debate.

[cleanhippie]

18. There is the problem you refuse to face, bum, you like to GUESS too much.

[humblebum]

20. There is NO guessing needed. You have already stated your position. nt

[cleanhippie]

21. I have never stated anything resembling what you claimed I did, but feel free to fabricate away.

Careful, bum, your dishonesty is showing.

[humblebum]

22. Um? You took sides in an argument that didn't involve you, therefore

you share that opinion.

[cleanhippie]

23. I took no side, but offered my opinion of the exchange between you and The Magistrate.

And you were given a thorough shellacking, as I still see the welts on you.

Don't worry, the sting will subside, but will you have learned anything from the lesson?

[humblebum]

24. Certainly. I learned that falsehood is accepted as fact without question by you

and that denial is your primary way of coping.

[cleanhippie]

28. Speaking of denial...

Perhaps a consultation with a mirror is in order for you.

[humblebum]

33. By your agreement with the mentioned exchange, you have clearly

established that organized atheism was and is a threat to freedom of thought and expression - the very thing that it claims not to be.

[cleanhippie]

34. Clearly!

Like I said earlier, you are always good for a




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[The Magistrate]

29. Actually, Sir, the Last Couple Of Romps With This Fellow Have Been Most Instructive

Within the last few days, he has unburdened himself of two very useful statements.

First, he has acknowledged that religion originated in superstitious ignorance and mental illness. Naturally, this opens the way for inquiry concerning just when religion ceased to be such a deeply flawed practice, and became the means by which the universe could be described with transcendent accuracy, far superior to anything which could be achieved by people who limit their minds by excluding the supernatural from consideration.

Second, he has stated that most everyone arrested in Communist purges actually were enemies of the regime. If this is the case, then the arrests were justifiable self-defense; the sort of thing any government would be justified in carrying out against revolutionary and treasonous activity within its borders, and people really should stop complaining about them.

[cleanhippie]

32. Magistrate, you cannot possibly believe any of that to be true, do you?

While you and I may recognize those two points, do you really think OUR recognition of that will change ANYTHING he posts in relation to future conversation on the topic?

Maybe you are a bit more optimistic than I, but my experiences with him lead me to conclude that a leopard cannot change his spots.

[The Magistrate]

36. He Has Stated Those Things, Sir, Himself

He may not have been quite aware what he was giving away, because the statements were made for immediate tactical purposes in course of debate, and seeing wholes, and bearing them in mind always, is not the fellow's strong suit, but he did give them away, and in plain English. It is my habit, when someone hands me a weapon, to use it....

[cleanhippie]

45. And under normal circumstances, I would agree wholeheartedly.

But in this case, the person himself, when confronted with his own words in a similar situation, in plain English, has stated, and I quote...


"Where you see contradiction, I see confirmation."



But I wish you luck, sir, in your endeavor to bring a ray of enlightenment to the (willfully) ignorant. Yours is a noble, if not futile, cause.


Cheers, and thank you!

[humblebum]

37. Oh great. Now you are trying to justify tyranny and despotism in addition

to validating my statement about the inherent dangers of organized atheism.

[The Magistrate]

38. Not Me, Sir: You Said Yourself The Arrests Were For Cause

You will have to carry on on your own, though (something you are doubtless used to doing), as my grandson has exercised his claim on the machine to play Roblox....

"The floggings will continue...that is all...."

[humblebum]

39. You mean to tell me that you have been feigning your shocking

ignorance of historical fact? I must say, you are good at that.

[humblebum]

47. This is going to be good.

"First, he has acknowledged that religion originated in superstitious ignorance and mental illness"

"Second, he has stated that most everyone arrested in Communist purges actually were enemies of the regime."

[Deep13]

26. More importantly, Germans were not atheistic.

Hitler and the rest of the party-state dictators where just one guy each. You can't blame the atrocities of nation states on elites alone.

[The Magistrate]

30. An Excellent Point, Sir

[humblebum]

40. Where did I say Germans were atheistic? I certainly don't consider Hitler

to have been atheist. As a matter of fact, I not evensure what you are referring to.

[Deep13]

41. Didn't say you did.

Was expanding on your point.

Switch to decaf.

[humblebum]

42. Gotcha. That is a good point. However, after the war, any

German who was or became a card-carrying marxist-leninist Communist was officially atheist. It was required as a pre-condition of admittance to the Party.

[darkstar3]

2. The willfully blind will never see. Do you see?

[backscatter712]

3. Just planting seeds... Maybe some of them will sprout. n/t

[Deep13]

27. Yup, the mental blinders have been gone for some time. nt

[rug]

4. Actually, no.

If the definition of atheism, most cited here, is simply the lack of belief in god, then Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were certainly atheists. Hitler's megalomania was a god unto itself.

Harris is simply stating their deeds were neither driven by nor the result of atheism.

People, religious or not, very often act contrary to their beliefs.

[darkstar3]

5. I fail to see how what you say disagrees in any way with the OP,

and so your usage of the word "no" is confusing. Of course Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot were atheists. To say otherwise would invoke the NTS fallacy. The argument in the OP is that you can't paint atheism and today's current atheists with these crimes due to the fact that it didn't serve as any kind of motivation. This is a point that's been made here time and again, but some people love to beat the dead horse of Stalin.

[rug]

6. I don't disagree with the OP but the headline is clumsy.

"The old 'Hitler, Stalin and Mao were atheists!' chestnut" implies they eere not.

[backscatter712]

8. Harris's point is that Stalin, Hitler, Mao & Pol Pot used the same dogmatism that infests religion.

The philosophy I practice rejects that sort of dogma. I don't worship deities, be they Jehovah, Jesus, Allah or Zeus, and I don't worship, blindly follow, or lionize dictators like Hitler, Stalin, Mao or Kim Jong Il.

I don't need a big daddy figure telling me what to do or how to think.

[rug]

10. Good for you.

[Deep13]

35. What?

The three you mentioned may or may not have been atheists. Stalin was actually educated in an Orthodox seminary to prepare him for the priesthood. He certainly learned his lesson about how to control people. And he was not above turning to the R.O. church for help when it suited him. Stalin and the red army were of course principally responsible for stopping the Nazis. As bad as Stalin was, much of the damage he caused his own people was through mismanagement rather than intentional violence. I know less about Moa and Pol Pot, but I am not willing to concede the point which out finding out. Kim Jung Il interestingly claims legitimacy through his dead father who supposedly rules through the present boss. Hitler's megalomania is not a god since it is not a supernatural, controlling power. Of course, Mussolini ruled as a RC leader of an RC people. Likewise, the RC church actively and openly supported Mussolini and also supported the Nazis, though to a lesser degree given the streak of paganism that ran through Nazi ideology and also because much of Germany was Protestant. No only did the church help Nazis escape to Argentina after the war, but to this day not high-ranking Nazi official has been excommunicated except for one (I forget which) because he married a Protestant. And the present pope took an oath of loyalty to Adolph Hitler in WW2 which to my knowledge he has never recanted. Granted, I wouldn't normally hold that against a teenager living in nazi Germany, but the RC church considers oaths to be pretty serious matters.

What is significant are the beliefs of the people who obeyed them. The Jewish holocaust was the direct result of centuries of church-approaved hatred of Jews as Christ-killers. Under the Kaiser, the Tsar and the Chinese Emperor, the ruler was, if not a god, then someone who was standing in for god making disobedience or even questioning of authority to be a sin. This mind set did not go away because those rulers had been overthrown. The same unquestioning obedience the working classes gave to the Tsar, they then gave to Stalin or Hitler or Mao.

Anyway, as Harris explains, atheism is not atheism. The so-called new atheists and most atheistic philosophers through time are skeptics who have arrived at atheism through examination of evidence. For the communist dictators, atheism was an article of faith for their revolutionary dogma. That's the real reason it isn't the same. As always, the answer is not as important as how one arrives at it. "I believe there is no god because my parents, teachers and national leader told me that to be a good communist I have to think that way." Well, THAT's no good. That's fallacy of authority. The same fallacy that causes most people to believe in the tenants of their religions. "I (believe/don't believe) in god because after examining the evidence I have to conclude he (is/is not) real." That's how to decide.

[rug]

43. There's really no credible dispute that Stalin was an atheist.

Dimitry V. Pospielovsky. A History of Soviet Atheism in Theory and Practice, and the Believer, vol 2: Soviet Anti-Religious Campaigns and Persecutions, St Martin's Press, New York (1988) p. 89

Nor Mao.

Xie, Zhibin, Religious diversity and public religion in China, p.145, Ashgate Publishing 2006

(Nixon was a Quaker)



Nor Pol Pot.

Constitution of Democratic Kampuchea (1975–1979)

So what?

Perversions are committed despite, rarely for, ideologies or beliefs.

[Deep13]

46. So which doctrine are you saying has been perverted?

and being anticlerical and anti-ecclesiastical doesn't necessarily make one an atheist. Look what Henry the VIII did during the reformation with church officials, adherents, prerogatives and property. Anyway, you are probably right about Stalin, I just don't think it is as clear cut as one would assume given his background. Of course he would not be the first person to lose his religion during a religious education.

[pnorman]

7. The Most Famous Christian of the 20th Century?

http://www.somareview.com/mostfamouschristian.cfm

[rug]

9. And Mein Kampf was the inevitable product of belief.

[The Magistrate]

31. Wide Acceptance Of Its Comments On Jews, Sir, Owed Much To Christian Teaching

[rug]

44. As did ubernationalism.

Squeeze as you may, the peg is a poor fit.

[msongs]

13. Hitler was NOT an atheist. he firmly believed his scheme was god's will and he was god's agent nt

[backscatter712]

25. It doesn't really matter - his cult of personality became Germany's de facto religion.

We can go back and forth all day as to whether Hitler was a Christian, or pretending to be one to score political points. Either way, the end result is the same - the Nazi political cult that took over Germany, got the world into WWII, sent millions of Jews and other minorities to their deaths in the camps, etc.

[rrneck]

19. If it feels like a religion, it's a religion. nt