Atheism Is Innocent

Posted by Cristian on Mar 03 2007 under Religion | 6,318 Views |

It is often an argument of those who object to Atheism that the worst man-made catastrophes to have befallen the world in the 20th century, Nazism and Communism, have been the direct result of Atheism. Intermittently, Pol Pot, Slobodan Milosevic, Mao Zedong and others accompany Hitler and Stalin on the objectors’ list of evil Atheists, as if to issue a more damaging remonstration, but for our purposes we’ll stick to Adolf and Joseph, since they are much more accessible to most of us. One would think that when somebody makes the accusation that tens of millions died because of Atheism, they’d bring some solid proof of correlation. Fortunately, the missing link between Atheism and the atrocities imputed to it is pretty visible to anyone honest who’d care to take a closer look. To start, Hitler and Stalin had in common more than the Napoleon complex. They both aspired to the same career when they were young, and it wasn’t firefighting, it wasn’t being a doctor, nor was it being Motley Crue’s drummer. It’s too fucking easy: they wanted to be preachers.

The main reason why the actions of totalitarian regimes cannot be ascribed to Atheism is that their fault was not that they were too secular, but that they were too much like religions. The first person to demonstrate that any society in history has suffered directly because of too much reason should get a Nobel. Granted, many societies have suffered somewhat, in that their enemies have managed to motivate their constituents better by manipulating them emotionally, rendering them more fanatic and therefore more dangerous to the more reasonable society on the other side. But that’s obviously a distinct topic, with only an indirect bearing on my case.

Let’s look at Hitler and Nazism first. It’s interesting to note that Hitler was never excommunicated by his church. In fact, of the 5,025 men and women convicted of war crimes between 1945 and 1949, not one was ever kicked out of Mystic Club. Killing defenseless people by the millions does not even appear to be a wrist-slapping matter for Management, but supporting a friend through an abortion is grounds for automatic revocation of your God license. But this may be only a sinister coincidence. And so may be the fact that Kristallnacht happened on Martin Luther’s birthday. I know, I know, we all agree that Martin Luther was a barking-mad antisemitic cocksucker, and it’s not fair to bring him into this. But when you consider that that night’s events followed with accuracy the blueprint he came up with in 1543 in a treatise called The Jews and Their Lies, he does become a legitimate topic. In it, he expounded his ideas about how Jews should be “dealt with” — while calling them “poisonous envenomed worms” — and it appears that the Nazi leaders responsible for the barbarity of that day were good at following directions. Sounds too conspiratorial? Possibly, but it’s just the facts. Getting back to Hitler, it would be dishonest to deny that his views were at least partially informed by religious doctrine. Those who insist that that is not the case probably missed two books that are crucial to this case: The Bible and Mein Kampf. There’s less inconsistency there than one might expect. This is a quote from Hitler that might cause some to reconsider their opinion on his alleged atheism:

Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.

Many others like this one can be found in Mein Kampf and throughout his speeches. But even if one were as disingenuous as to ascribe the totality of Hitler’s public religious talk to his shameless populism, one would still have to account for the insiders’ observations. Goebbels, for instance, wrote in his journal:

The Führer is deeply religious, but deeply anti-Christian. He regards Christianity as a symptom of decay.

Whatever. I have the feeling that Hitler remained a faithful subscriber to Christianity throughout his life, albeit a more personalized version of it. But he was at least religious, I think we can agree. And even if we can’t, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that Hitlerism itself was very similar to any run-of-the-mill religious doctrine: murky, demonstrably false and, most damningly, stemming from unreason. The same thing can be safely said about Stalinism, and that is the main reason that it too can be thrown out as an argument against Atheism. After all Atheism is meaningless without the rejection in bulk of unreason.

Stalinism is defined as follows:

The principles of communism associated with Joseph Stalin, characterized esp. by the extreme suppression of dissident political or ideological views, the concentration of power in one person, and an aggressive international policy.

How reasonable does that sound? The parallel most worthy of note between Hitler and Stalin is that they both replaced the old dogma of inconvenient religion, with one more suitable to their purposes, with sets of ideas devoid of the inconveniences of religion, but filled with its advantages. It is ultimately not just the difference between religion and Atheism, but also the one between dogma and reason which designates people as Theists or Atheists.

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