Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history

Vivificat! - News, Opinions, Commentary, from a Personal Catholic Perspective ^ | 21 November 2006 | Dinesh D'Souza

[Conservative til I die]

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.

Funny, that's not what was said in the article. You're distorting the point.

[Conservative til I die]

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.

Good or evil, I wouldn't say that exploding one's self is cowardly. Demented, twisted, and evil, yes. But not wimpy exactly.

Any reason you're employing the ad hominem tactic here?

[Conservative til I die]

Blaming atheism for any particular nutcase regime is as absurd as blaming theism for the inquisition or the genocide of the native American’s.

I could be ignorant but I've never heard the religious argument applied to teh Indians. I thought it was purely about greed and territory.

[Conservative til I die]

Rather than recognize how even Christians can run amuck through genocide, he is hanging his hat on the size of their slaughter in the new word. Whether it be 5 million killed from a world population a fraction today's size or 100 million, widely pointing blame for our problems at all those who believe in one less God than you is nonsense.

You are projecting what atheists do to theists. The atheists are the ones that enjoy bean counting the corpses in order to prove they're more right. If you want to do that, then don't be surprised when your "facts" get corrected. It's not "excusing" 25 or 400 or 30,000 deaths. But those #s simply don't add up to the 100 or 200 million butchered by some of the scum ideology atheism has brought us in the last century alone.

[padre35]

Rather than recognize how even Christians can run amuck through genocide, he is hanging his hat on the size of their slaughter in the new word. Whether it be 5 million killed from a world population a fraction today's size or 100 million, widely pointing blame for our problems at all those who believe in one less God than you is nonsense.

You made an allegation, when asked for proof, you said to "knock yourself out"

I responded with facts that cast doubt on your "100 million" figure.Now you either owe a counter response or admit that your number was wrong.

Sloppy facts lead to stunted ideas, one slanted in the wrong direction.

[elfman2]

" I could be ignorant but I've never heard the religious argument applied to teh Indians. I thought it was purely about greed and territory."

Greed and territory probably underlay every genocide. This was just one rationalized by Christians.

[elfman2]

"You are projecting what atheists do to theists. The atheists are the ones that enjoy bean counting the corpses in order to prove they're more right. If you want to do that, then don't be surprised when your "facts" get corrected. It's not "excusing" 25 or 400 or 30,000 deaths. But those #s simply don't add up to the 100 or 200 million butchered by some of the scum ideology atheism has brought us in the last century alone. "

First, a few fanatical Christians started the bean counting here to support their condemnation of atheists.

Second, not even touching on Middle East theistic slaughters of millions, tens of millions of slave deaths by theists, persecution of Jews and 150k European witch killings by theists and God knows what else, the genocide of Native Americans was in the 10s of millions. Here’s a good balanced summary: The genocide debate

Third, atheism is not an ideology. Theism is not an ideology, they are both features of ideologies. Calling atheism an ideology is like calling a 4-door a car model.

[elfman2]

" You made an allegation, when asked for proof, you said to "knock yourself out" I responded with facts that cast doubt on your "100 million" figure.Now you either owe a counter response or admit that your number was wrong. Sloppy facts lead to stunted ideas, one slanted in the wrong direction."

Fair enough. My number was on the high side of the debate. Here’s a good balanced summary: The genocide debate

Nevertheless, exclusively focusing on numerical parity illustrated my point to Teófilo, that even some Christians posting on this thread don’t generally accept their ideology’s vulnerability to being twisted to support the horrific blood-baths they attribute to atheists.

[padre35]

Fair enough elfman2, especially when it is considered that Christianity basis it's claims on Jesus, who never advocated some of the things that we have.

A quick question though, with 4,000 babies being aborted a day and 30 million or so since 1974, would abortion be a atheistic genocide, or a religiously inspired one?

[onedoug]

"Thou shall not murder" is the original Hebrew.

"If I knew God I'd be Him."

Though doubtless many souls endure God's wrath for having so broken His covenant.

[The_Reader_David]

Your dry reference to the 9/11 terrorists was sufficient to tip your hand. And your subsequent post #32 shows you deserved the preemptive strike. The same question you ask there about Pol Pot et al., might be asked about the Inquisition, or the Thirty Years War: how many of those committing the atrocities were really Christian believers, and how many were cynics who didn't believe in anything except their own power?

[lonestar67]

I do think any idea can be used to justify genocide-- including Christianity. I do however think you are deliberately burying your head in the sand on this issue in terms of the propensity of such ideas to do so.

Your various retorts to individuals on this thread are misguided.

Nietszche laid the groundwork to some seriously messed up ideologies including Marxism and Darwinism. His notion of Uberman to crush the bogus slave religion of Christianity is grounds for an excellent class action suit on behalf of the hundreds of millions killed by his bogus intellectual rants. The 20th century strongman that he unleashed in his Uber philosophy made it the perfect intellectual ingredient for genocide.

Christianity has two key ingredients that make it a bad mix. First it supposes that every conceived human being is a child of God. Secondly it supposes that the guilt of every person has been erased by one single act. These two premises combine to make genocidal slaughters difficult to intellectually maintain.

I want to throw in two cents on the Indian genocide question of North America. The scholarship on this stuff is terrible. I offer Ward Churchill as the case study in academic lying. Furthermore, nothing is ever said of how endemic genocide was as a practice on the North American continent prior to European arrival. What happen to the Asian landbridge inhabitants? I have an idea-- their central american partners met them coming North and said, lets have a genocide. What is odd is that he European tribes on this continent seem to have brought the genocidal cycle to a close. There are more than 500 registered native american tribes in the US and it is the fastest growing ethnicity in the US.

[elfman2]

Being that baby, fetus, embryo and zygote have specific meanings, I doubt we’d agree that 40 million babies were aborted since the 70s. And since even theists don’t agree on when the right to life begins and since they have their share of abortions, I’d say whatever responsibility exists is shared.

[lonestar67]

Oh my goodness I have to comment on your endorsement of the Wikipedia entry as "balanced." Now your hand is tipped.

It is fascinating to me that people can actually believe that the Europeans used bioweapons on native americans but cannot believe that Saddam had and used chemical weapons. This is the kind of balanced analysis we get from academics.

Truth out-- the "native americans" which is a bogus name to begin with-- were committing genocide on a far grander scale than their European counterparts. All of the key arguments for this entry rest on population reports that are pulled out of the rear ends of academics like Churchill. Without the advent of western medicine indigenous groups of North America were perpetually at risk of catastrophic diseases such as cholera. The effort to pretend that the 'ecological natives' had achieved some sort of utopian eternal life prior to European arrival is ridiculous. Everyone on earth was dying of genocidal plagues prior to antibiotics.

Thanks be to Western medicine that these plagues can be stopped. Maybe now the ecological crowd will give malaria a well deserved rest in the genocide business as well. I woould not count on the Wikipedia crowd to help out on this matter though.


Churchill always lies-- even about his own ancestry.

[elfman2]

You’re not going to get an argument from me that the philosophy of Nietszche is many times less stable than that of Jesus (even with 10-20 million slaves killed over two centuries by Christians.) Nietszche was an interesting writer, but without a consistent metaphysical and epistemological foundation like Rand.

And for what it’s worth, those Native American on Native American genocides presumably fall into the theist bucket.

[padre35]

Being that baby, fetus, embryo and zygote have specific meanings, I doubt we’d agree that 40 million babies were aborted since the 70s. And since even theists don’t agree on when the right to life begins and since they have their share of abortions, I’d say whatever responsibility exists is shared.

Really? Even the Roman Catholic church agrees that life begins at conception.

We may not agree, but the truth just smiles.

[elfman2]

" Oh my goodness I have to comment on your endorsement of the Wikipedia entry as "balanced." Now your hand is tipped."

It looks balanced to me. If you disagree with that summary, edit it. If you find anything credible to add, odds are that it’ll get accepted. There’s a healthy debate on it here , but nothing looks to be censored.

Wikipedia certainly has a bias, especially on gay issues, but so do all information sources.

[Cvengr]

IMHO, the D-Souza is woefully ignorant regarding a relationship with God through faith in Christ.

Organized religion implemented by man without faith through Christ, including many 'Christian' denominations which may have backslidden and substituted a worldly or tehological system in place of God's system is one of the greatest human goods void of divine good throughout huan history.

That human good void of divine good has been parlayed into evil by the Adversary. Satan, however cannot control sin. Atheism and much religion, especially in the form of 'comparative religions' are all susceptible to either being taken to heights of legalism or lasciviousness.

Socialism, indeed is one of the world's most corrupt systems in that it promotes antichristian activism. Atheism might not be the devil's tool in that atheists are no more controlled by Satan than by God in His allowance of their freewill.

[elfman2]

"Really? Even the Roman Catholic church agrees that life begins at conception."

Yesterday you were condemning atheism because of its supposed propensity toward genocide. Now you’re “redeploying” to position conservative Catholics against the genocidal propensities among all other ideologies, theistic and atheistic?

Really, I have nothing but respect for your noble defense of your values. I just think you’re radically miss targeting atheists in general as your opposition.

[elfman2]

"We may not agree, but the truth just smiles."

We both agree on that. Good night.