Criticism of Atheism - Atheism and Politics

Atheism and Politics

See also: Persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union and Religious views of Adolf Hitler

Pope Benedict XVI has spoken out against atheism, stating in 2010:

As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the 20th century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a "reductive vision of the person and his destiny"

Some totalitarian regimes, like the USSR and the North Korean government, had atheistic and antitheistic beliefs. However, Richard Dawkins pointed out that Hitler was a Roman Catholic, that Hitler made public speeches affirming his belief in Christianity, and that the statehood of the Holy See is "founded on a Faustian deal in which Benito Mussolini handed over 1.2 square miles of central Rome in exchange for church support of his fascist regime", and he also pointed out that:

Hitler certainly was not an atheist. In 1933 he claimed to have "stamped atheism out", having banned most of Germany's atheist organisations, including the German Freethinkers League whose building was then turned into an information bureau for church affairs.

In Nazi Germany it was Hitler's intention to instate Ludwig Müller, a strong supporter of the Nazi party since the 1920s, as the Reichsbishop of the German Evangelical Church. As part of the Nazi Gleichschaltung, the Nazi regime's plan was to "coordinate" all 28 separate Protestant regional church bodies into a single and unitary Reich Church (German: Reichskirche). Müller wanted to serve as the Reich's bishop (German: Reichsbischof) of this newly formed entity.

Some researches suggest that atheists are more numerous in peaceful nations than they are in turbulent or warlike ones, but causality of this trend is not clear and there are many outliers. However, opponents of this view cite examples such as the Bolsheviks (in Soviet Russia) who were inspired by "an ideological creed which professed that all religion would atrophy ... resolved to eradicate Christianity as such". In 1918 "en Orthodox hierarchs were summarily shot" and "hildren were deprived of any religious education outside the home." Increasingly draconian measures were employed. In addition to direct state persecution, the League of the Militant Godless was founded in 1925, churches were closed and vandalized and "by 1938 eighty bishops had lost their lives, while thousands of clerics were sent to labour camps."

In 1967, Enver Hoxha's regime conducted a campaign to extinguish religious life in Albania; by year's end over two thousand religious buildings were closed or converted to other uses, and religious leaders were imprisoned and executed. Albania was declared to be the world's first atheist country by its leaders, and Article 37 of the Albanian constitution of 1976 stated that "The State recognises no religion, and supports and carries out atheistic propaganda in order to implant a scientific materialistic world outlook in people."

Evangelical Christian writer Dinesh D'Souza writes that "The crimes of atheism have generally been perpetrated through a hubristic ideology that sees man, not God, as the creator of values. Using the latest techniques of science and technology, man seeks to displace God and create a secular utopia here on earth." He also contends:

And who can deny that Stalin and Mao, not to mention Pol Pot and a host of others, all committed atrocities in the name of a Communist ideology that was explicitly atheistic? Who can dispute that they did their bloody deeds by claiming to be establishing a 'new man' and a religion-free utopia? These were mass murders performed with atheism as a central part of their ideological inspiration, they were not mass murders done by people who simply happened to be atheist.

In response to this line of criticism, Sam Harris wrote:

The problem with fascism and communism, however, is not that they are too critical of religion; the problem is that they are too much like religions. Such regimes are dogmatic to the core and generally give rise to personality cults that are indistinguishable from cults of religious hero worship. Auschwitz, the gulag and the killing fields were not examples of what happens when human beings reject religious dogma; they are examples of political, racial and nationalistic dogma run amok. There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.

Richard Dawkins has stated that Stalin's atrocities were influenced not by atheism but by dogmatic Marxism, and concludes that while Stalin and Mao happened to be atheists, they did not do their deeds in the name of atheism. On other occasions, Dawkins has replied to the argument that Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin were antireligious with the response that Hitler and Stalin also grew moustaches, in an effort to show the argument as fallacious. Instead, Dawkins argues in The God Delusion that "What matters is not whether Hitler and Stalin were atheists, but whether atheism systematically influences people to do bad things. There is not the smallest evidence that it does." D'Souza responds that an individual need not explicitly invoke atheism in committing atrocities if it is already implied in his worldview, as is the case in Marxism.