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Is atheism the answer? Part 3
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In continuing this series, I decided to let the dust settle a bit, as I took a break to work on other projects. To recap my previous essays on this subject, Part 1 of "Is atheism the answer?" made the case that atheism is a necessary aspect of the healthy human thought process and that such atheistic thinking is logical under various circumstances. In Part 2 of this series, I provided a basic definition of atheism as "without a god," which in essence means that atheism is not precisely a worldview or ideology in and of itself, and thus does not serve—as many people opine—as a belief system that is against God. From the comments here and elsewhere, proceeding with this series requires me to address the oft-heard contention that atheism contributes to immorality and has allowed for tremendous atrocity, including genocide. I have already briefly explored in another article the claim that religion causes immorality, but does its apparent opposite, atheism, do the same? Are certain wars and criminal actions the direct result of not believing in God?
Abused by religion?
In my work exploring the origins of religion and exposing its deleterious aspects, I have come across the suggestion many times that I and other critics are "just reacting" against religion because we have been "hurt" or "abused" by it. In my case, I have always been quite fascinated by religion and was never in an abusive situation personally, because I was raised in a very mild form of Protestantism. That being said, although my church and family did not engage in them directly or abuse me specifically with them, general attitudes in the public at large produced by the religion du jour in my location—Christianity—definitely did affect me.
These negative, religiously produced attitudes include that human beings are "bad" because they are "born in sin," that they are only redeemable through Jesus Christ, and that females in particular are inferior, especially because Eve ate the "apple" in the Garden of Eden. We were also permeated with the notion that our human bodies are "naughty" and "nasty"—especially the female body—because sex is "dirty," and people always want to have it, and so on. Again, this negative mentality born of religious dogma certainly did affect me, as it did practically everyone I knew in my area growing up. Also again, my formative years were spent in a very secular time and place, when and where people hardly spoke about religion, church, Jesus, God, etc. These attitudes nevertheless pervaded writings and populated the airwaves, especially TV and radio, even though there were very few stations and no one I knew was listening specifically to Christian programming, which we barely heard of at that time. On TV, there were the Big 3 networks and PBS, and on radio, Rock and Roll.
Thus, I was never hurt directly by the particular church I attended, and my critique of religion is not based on any personal abuse in that regard. However, my criticism does address the abusive attitude of religion towards humanity as a whole, and this mistreatment must be evident even to defenders of faith, as it is they who most vocally point to it as a cause of complaints about religion in the first place. Atheists too like to hold up the clever assessment by non-believing writer and scientist Isaac Asimov that reading the Bible itself creates atheists, for example.
Atheism as the result of abuse?
Is atheism often the result of a reaction against human abuse by religion? So it seems to be, at least in significant part, as opined by both theists and atheists. Therefore, it is to this debasement of humanity in general by religion that we may look for the cause of much turmoil, including that of the past century, which is held up as a black mark against atheism because of such figures as Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot. A common argument against atheism is that these individuals were all atheists who wrought horrendous atrocities against vast numbers of people. While this latter contention of these individuals committing infamy is certainly true and should never be forgotten or whitewashed, is it accurate to say they were all atheists or were motivated by atheism, such that it is to be blamed? Was their lack of belief in a God behind their actions, which led to the deaths many millions?
Infamous atheists?
As I write in my book The Gospel According to Acharya S (a tongue-in-cheek title):
Theists hold up Communism and Nazism, along with the regime of the Cambodian tyrant Pol Pot, as evidence of murderous "atheist" tyrannies that have caused the deaths of tens of millions. While it may be true that Communism portrayed itself as "godless," it did not wage war in the name of atheism, nor were its founders and leaders raised as atheists. They were, in fact, preponderantly Jewish and Christian. Communist Manifesto writer Karl Marx was born a Jew, the grandson of two rabbis, and was converted to Christianity at age 6. Leon Trotsky, whose real name was Lev Bronstein, was born and raised a Jew but later declared himself "an internationalist."
Josef Stalin and his daughter Svetlana (1935)
Josef Stalin's "very religious" mother named him after St. Joseph, and wanted him to become a priest. Stalin himself supposedly claimed that his father had been a priest, and he was purportedly "damaged by violence" while being "raised in a poor priest-ridden household." As a youth, Stalin spent five years in a Greek Orthodox seminary, after which he purportedly renounced his religion. In his later years, Stalin apparently embraced Christianity once more. As Stalin biographer Edvard Radinsky remarks, "During his mysterious retreat [of June 1941] the ex-seminarist had decided to involve the aid of the God he had rejected." Radinsky likewise chronicles a number of religious comrades in Stalin's immediate circle. It is evident that, whether for good or bad, religion played a significant role in Stalin's life.
Adolf Hitler was raised a Catholic, and in a speech in 1922 he remarked, "My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Saviour as a fighter..." In his autobiography Mein Kampf (1.2), Hitler stated:
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.
Throughout his life, Hitler invoked God and "the Lord," demonstrating his religious, not atheistic, nature.
Pol Pot was raised a Buddhist and Catholic. In this regard, Dr. Ian Harris, a Reader in Religious Studies at the University College of St. Martin, relates: "In one of his early writings Pol Pot wrote approvingly that the 'democratic regime will bring back the Buddhist moralism because our great leader Buddha was the first to have taught [democracy].'" Although in comparison to the Abrahamic religions its history is far less violent, Buddhism has not been entirely devoid of atrocity in its spread and practice.
If we are to insist—as many people have done, including numerous theists and atheists alike—that religious human abuse is the cause of atheistic reaction against religion, we need look no further, it would seem, than to Josef Stalin's religiously abusive childhood to discover from where much of his rage appeared to emanate. His atheistic reaction therefore would be caused by religion. Hitler, who was also fascinated by mysticism, could not be deemed an "atheist" by any scientific standard, and Pol Pot also was not raised an atheist in a vacuum devoid of religion but was obviously affected and motivated by it.
If atheism is frequently but a reaction against human abuse by religion, then in itself such disbelief may not be the cause of malfeasance. But, we must ask again, is atheism the answer to the world's problems? And if not, what is? Is there a perspective that does not blindly believe yet also does not merely dismiss religious beliefs and spirituality, but accepts and approaches them as part of the human experience?
See Part 4 of "Is atheism the answer?"
Sources & Further Reading
Is atheism the answer? Part 1
Is atheism the answer? Part 2
The Gospel According to Acharya S
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