JD Harding misses the mark (Letters SMH 8 Sept 07) [His letter asserted that no atheist had ever killed for his beliefs!]
I’ve heard of plenty of murders justified on atheistic grounds. Including fascist and communist regimes that killed believers in a number of faith: because of their belief. Total murders? Around 250 million, according to some.
Take Stalin, for instance. Once a seminarian but he tossed that over after reading Darwin convinced him that godless competition explained the world: he proceeded to be godlessly competitive. Similarly Hitler. He used the word ‘God’ for political and rhetorical purposes, but despised the idea of a deity. Mao, Pol Pot, the North Koreans were other big players in the ‘trust us, we’re atheists’ game.
This bunch, in a few decades, has between them, in pursuit of their avowedly atheistic agenda, murdered more people than all the even vaguely ‘religious’ conflicts ever!! Then add the Caesars, Napoleon, the Paris Commune, all godly? All murderous!
Even most so called religious wars were simply political wars with glib or misplaced religious references.
Now I haven’t even started on the modern holocaust of aborted babies: most I would guess, aborted because of atheist thinking or its implications. That would rack up a few tens of millions annually. OK, only half were atheistically motivated: a few fives of millions. Last century estimates I’ve read put it near a billion abortions! That’s lots of dead babies, but not, I suspect because their mothers sought prayerful lives of devotion to God.
Atheism might not always be a clearly stated religious position, but practical atheism is blood red from tip to toe. And why not? It has no reason in its implicit materialism for any strictures.
To sum it up:
"If a person doesn’t think there is a God to be accountable to, then—then what’s the point of trying to modify your behaviour to keep it within acceptable ranges? That’s how I thought anyway. I always believed the theory of evolution as truth, that we all just came from the slime. When we, when we died, you know, that was it, there is nothing…"
Jeffrey Dahmer, in an interview with Stone Phillips, Dateline NBC, Nov. 29, 1994
[Dahmer was a mass-murderer who ate his victims. He subsequently turned to Christ]
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Many atheists trot out the notion that atheists are more 'loving' and 'accepting' people. You can often hear them talking to radio commentators and running this line whenever some issue involving
'religion as an excuse for hate' is in the headlines.
These atheists fail to see the failings of some of the leaders of their belief.
It seems, however, there are some nice atheists. Friends tell me they had a creationist display at a festival recently and a young woman came along who said she was an atheist and a doctor at a public hospital. Apparently, while sceptical of my friends' presentation at first she became attentive and sat with my friends for over an hour listening and asking questions. They say she was a lovely person who went away with a lot on her mind when she left my friends.
She is one of many atheists who have been challenged by the biblical creation message as God intended it to be explained
Neil Moore
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