doesitmatter wrote:
I don't think that A-theism is a belief system, is it? Doesn't the word simply mean 'without theism'?
This agrees with what I've been taught. However, some life philosophies such as Secular Humanism and Free Thought are often adopted by atheists. I personally have not studied either of those "systems" philosophically, and I am unable to find any single list of principles to which all Humanists adhere. However, I find myself feeling very much at home with both Secular Humanists and with Free Thinkers. Often, the same people identify as both.
The core value of Humanism seems to be that "You can do whatever you like so long as you don't hurt yourself or others." The concept of Free Thought seems to be not to subject one's thinking to authority, but to arrive at one's own conclusions via a critical evaluation of all the facts. Since both of these are the natural outcome of human development as social and intelligent beings, it stands to reason that no huge volumes of literature are required in order for people to organize around the concepts.
Sometimes, I think a new type of atheism is coming in with the internet much in the same way that a new type of Christianity came in with the printing press--both due to the fact that information is much more easily dispensed and shared with the new medium than was previously possible. 9/11, which occurred at the exact time that the internet and personal computers were taking off, had a very definite impact on this New Atheism. Whether an inside or outside job, the attack on the United States on September 11, 2001 proved to religious--and nonreligious--people around the world that no almighty power existed that was capable or willing to stop the attacks on God's Chosen People in their Promised Homeland.
Just the other day I came across yet another post on a forum somewhere by one more person for whom this failure on God's part to come through for his people had a life-altering impact. If memory serves me correctly, every single one of The Four Horsemen of the New Atheists (Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennet, and Sam Harris) has said either in print or on video camera that his most recent book(s) was written as a response to 9/11.
Those attacks did not impact me in this specific way. I still identified as a Christian of sorts at the time, but I had never had a very strong confidence in God's willingness to listen to anyone's prayers. He had utterly failed me in this. All that I expected of God was for him to manifest his existence, prove that he created the universe, and explain to me exactly how the dead body of Jesus could save anyone's soul from hell. I still held some hope that he might come through on these items. The 9/11 attacks had no impact whatsoever on this hope. What 9/11 did to me was disillusion me on the goodness of humanity.
As time went on, it became clear to me that it was fundamentalist religionists who most strongly--as a group--supported this war from the American side. Despite the very strong anti-Americanism in this part of the world, getting the Muslim side of the story is extremely difficult from my position as a Canadian but a few hour's drive from the Canadian-American international border. However, I've seen one of Dawkins's movies in which he interviews a Muslim imam or whatever--a leader of Islam in some capacity; I think this was in a Muslim country. The guy blasts Dawkins for not dressing Western women decently and threateningly predicts that until Western men dress their women decently things will not be well for them. Dawkins protests that the women dress themselves. The imam doesn't listen to this and plows right ahead with his condemnation of the West. The same movie also shows the same imam in a setting of tender and loving devotion.
I know that fundamentalist Christians are quite capable of the very same thing--they've got two faces and two voices. It's tender love and adoration for their god and for those who agree with them, and nothing but hate and condemnation for anyone who openly disagrees with them--most specifically atheists who dare live happily and unashamed of their atheism. This would include Richard Dawkins, author of the God Delusion. Whatever, it is clear that 9/11 would not have worked if there were no young men willing to forgo life in exchange for a short-cut to heaven. In Islam, apparently, suicide is not understood as the sin that it is in Christianity.
So the Muslims killed the Christians and the Christians retaliated.
Religion kills. It always has and apparently it always will.
Religion is evil.
Some people point to evil totalitarian 20th-century leaders who killed millions of people, and on those grounds condemn atheism. As you rightly point out, doesitmatter, atheism is not a belief system and for this reason, no one can kill in the name of atheism. Hitler killed in the name of pure blood, to make room for the Pure Race in the Homeland. Pol Pot killed for similar reasons. This was merely a continuation of age-old tribalism. Today's society wishes to see itself as having progressed beyond such barbarism. Hitler was a totalitarian imperialist, a concept whose time was past. The victors get to tell the story. Hitler lost the war and does not get to tell the story. However, I've watched enough movies to get some idea what the story might sound like, what the world could look like, if he had won. It was not atheism that drove him; it was some other human passion.
The same goes for Joseph Stalin, the Man of Steel. Not least of the human passions driving these men was fear and suspicion of their own top generals--the fear that their own powerful men would turn against them. To prevent this, they killed them. Both Hitler and Pol Pot saw their own men defecting. Stalin and Pol Pot killed their own men out of fear and suspicion. Pol Pot and Hitler are both suspected of killing themselves in the end, due to losing their respective wars. All three were cruel, power-hungry, totalitarian national leaders of the 20th century who looked outside organized religion for their ideas and are, for this reason, often used by enemies of atheists as examples of what atheism does to people.
Obviously, that is ridiculous. None of these men were proponents of atheism
per se. Nor were they philosophers or preachers of any kind. They were political leaders or social engineers--or just plain greedy, power-hungry men who happened to be at the right place in the right time to get the power for which they lusted. Similar things could be said of the men who instituted Christianity by rhetoric, the edge of the sword, at gun point--and whatever other means necessary--throughout the world. Among these were the Apostle Paul, the Emperor Constantine, Czar Peter the Great, and various kings of Europe, popes of Rome, and American evangelists.
If one examines the ideals employed by those three 20th-century leaders, one will see that it was
political ideologies as opposed to
life philosophies. For example, here are the English subtitles of a few brief excepts of Hitler's closing speech at the Sixth Party of Congress (taken from
Triumph of the Will):
We carry the best blood and we know this.... [I ]t is not enough to simply declare: “I believe,” but rather to vow: “I will fight!”
The Party....will remain unchangeable in its doctrine, hard as steel in its organisation, supple and adaptable in its tactics. In its entity, however, it will be like a religious order...At one time, our opponents found ways through bans and persecutions, to weed out the weaker elements of our movement.
...Only when we in the Party, using all our strength, have achieved the highest National Socialist ideals, only then will the Party be an eternal and indestructible pillar of the German people and the Reich....
There you've got it. Hitler was making his political ideology into a religion,
not the other way around.
Some people claim that communism is atheist by nature. I suggest these people examine their Bibles more closely, as well as Christian church history. Communes have been part of Christianity and church life since the very beginning. Communism is none other than adapting the idea of having "all things common" (Acts 2:44-45) to the national level. In the same way that Peter killed (via the Holy Spirit, according to Scripture (Acts 5:1-11)) those who did not turn over all their possessions to the communist party, so did Stalin and Pol Pot. Hitler never tried for Communism; all he tried for was totalitarian imperialism. He succeeded for twelve terrible years.
I read about Stalin ten years ago and forget which books I read. Re Hitler, I watched a lot of videos this winter, and Stalin also figures in them. Here are a few of the major ones:
Some of the videos I watched were in German with no English subtitles.
The article I read on Pol Pot is
here.
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