Posted on 11/24/2006 7:42:55 PM PST by Teófilo
Dinesh D'Souza. "Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history." Christian Science Monitor (November 21, 2006).
Expressed permission granted by Mr. D'Souza to republish this article in Vivificat! via e-mail to me dated 11/23/2006. I also translated this work into Spanish with Mr. D'Souza's permission, and it is now available at the sister blog.
Original lay out and credits due to the Catholic Education Resource Center.
THE AUTHOR
Dinesh D'Souza is the Robert and Karen Rishwain Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. D'Souza has been called one of the "top young public-policy makers in the country" by Investor’s Business Daily. His areas of research include the economy and society, civil rights and affirmative action, cultural issues and politics, and higher education. He is the author of: Letters to a Young Conservative, What's So Great about America, Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus; The End of Racism; Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader; and, most recently, The Virtue of Prosperity: Finding Values in an Age of Techno-Affluence. Dinesh D'Souza's new book The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11 will be published in January by Doubleday. Visit his website here.
PING!
And no, I'm not a Christian-basher, or religion-basher. But it's darkly amusing to read how basically no one, no country, no faith, no institution is responsible for anything ever done in its name. Soon we'll be hearing how Islam isn't responsible for the current rising tide of anti-western/anti-Chrisitan feeling, but atheism is behind that, too.
Strong beliefs are responsible for a lot of good things, which those faiths' adherents claim responsibility for; strong beliefs are responsible for a lot of bad things, too, and it's not always "someone else's" fault.
Oh, and this is an interesting point of view coming from the guy who on Bill Maher's promoted the idea that the 9/11 terrorists weren't cowards.
MAHER: Not true.
D'SOUZA: Not true. Look at what they did. First of all, you have a whole bunch of guys who are willing to give their life. None of them backed out. All of them slammed themselves into pieces of concrete.
MAHER: Exactly.
D'SOUZA: These are warriors. And we have to realize that the principles of our way of life are in conflict with people in the world. And so -- I mean, I'm all for understanding the sociological causes of this, but we should not blame the victim. Americans shouldn't blame themselves because other people want to bomb them.
from Politically Incorrect, September 2001
So I guess the terrorists were atheists?
Not just a nice try-- plain facts.
the 20th century was the most secular century ever. It was easily the bloodiest as well.
Stalin and Mao killed over 100 million.
Atheism and Communism intertwined for a bloodlust that has gotten far too little examination.
Nietszche's Uberman left behind some bloody footprints in the previous century. I hope they never return.
Whose revisionist history, the author's or yours?
I don't see why people who strongly hold religious beliefs should be upset by the atheist argument against religion: that it causes wars. Of course religious beliefs cause wars - they are the only wars worth fighting! Most religious beliefs go the heart of life - the very home, the shrine, the hearth, the deeply-held core of family life. When that core is attacked by whatever, then it has to be defended - one is fighting for one's heart. If a religion does not cause wars, it ain't a religion worth fighting for.
Modern wars of last century which have caused so much bloodshed were wars about ideas which were supposed to replace religious beliefs. Unfortunately, modern ideologies, all of them, including "liberal democracy", were made by people who increasingly have given up any moral restraints on state and warrior behaviour. The nature of the total state and war has changed the nature of war - that is why they are so bad. And ironically, are the very wars which were less worth fighting for than defending one's religious beliefs.
Blaming atheism for any particular nutcase regime is as absurd as blaming theism for the inquisition or the genocide of the native American’s. Around 100 million were killed in a much less populated world, arguably making "it" the bloodiest period. Neither theists nor atheists ideologies are immune to their share of freaks.
One thing all those genocidal crack pots probably have in common is fanaticism like that posted here, imagining some other broad ideological classification is the root source of all their problems and no sacrifice of others is too high a price to pay to rid the world of it.
It is a stock debating trick to conceptually divide the world into categories to suit one's argument, and then deny one's opponent the right to use the same trick.
Those purporting a moral superiority for atheism do this by first lumping all religions together, then creating a distinction within atheism so that the state atheism of the Soviet Union, Red China, and other Marxist states with oceans of human blood to their discredit somehow don't count, or in the more refined version of the trick count as 'religiously motivate' murderers, since 'Marxism became a religion'.
What they are really arguing for the the purported moral superiority of the refined, urbane, cultured atheists who populate university tea rooms and art galleries in Soho, who have never had their hands on the reigns of power to be in a place to enforce their will on a populace, and ultimately their own moral superiority.
Of course, urbane, cultured social democratic atheism, too, has the blood of millions on its hands: between abortion and the excess malaria deaths due to the DDT ban, it may even have killed more than Soviet Communism.
I think a more telling division, as regards the effect on human affairs, is the division between those who have a moral, religious, or philosophical basis for never defining away the surpassing worth of any human being, and those who do not, whether it is the Biblical anthropology of "come let Us make Man in Our image and likeness," supplemented with either Hillel's or Christ's version of the 'golden rule', or the Buddhist compassion for all beings or some other such basis.
Christians, Jews, Buddhists, and the odd philosophically self-consistent pro-life libertarian atheist, all end up on the right side of that divide. The human-sacrificing Aztecs and Canaanites, the Nazis, Communists, abortion-loving secular 'humanists', and Muslims end up on the wrong side.
As an Orthodox Christian, I have no interest whatsover in defending religion qua religion. Indeed, Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos, whom I greatly respect and admire, has ventured that Orthodox Christianity is not, in fact, a religion--as in religion, Man reaches out for God (or the transcendant), while in Holy Orthodoxy, the activity runs in the opposite direction. If I really must defend some broader turf than the Orthodox Church in a debate about the merits of 'religion', I will take my stand with the first group of my dichotomy, and will claim an equal right to decide what is a relevant distinction to that claimed by atheists who want to lump the martyrs who submitted to death in imitation of Christ with their pagan and Muslim persecutors, while ignoring their atheist persecutors culpability.
Recommend you Google the word "democide" - might prove to be quite enlightening.
I think humans will find any excuse to have a war, that's our nature. The real trick is to make sure your side is always the winning side.
Oh, the irony..........
Period.
It has also killed more in its name the last 100 years than all the others since the beginning of mankind.
The Russian madness, China, Korea, Cambodia, Viet Nam, Cuba, misc. assorted other marxist states......an amazing total. Just staggering.
Islam is a ways behind, but wanting to catch up fast.
Kinda like the author of this article does?
Read the headline, and then lecture ME about "lumping" together.
Asserting it doesn't make it so.
Islam is a ways behind, but wanting to catch up fast.
On this we can agree.
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