I’ve written several posts in response to version 2 of the Stalin Argument. Version 1 is often stated this way: “Don’t talk to me about Christian excesses. Look at the deaths from atheist regimes in the twentieth century! Stalin alone is responsible for millions of deaths.”

John Mark Reynolds has given this a fun new V2.0 twist by looking forward to what atheists might do when society’s back is turned. Here’s my paraphrase: “While atheists as individuals might be nice enough, they’ve invariably created murderous regimes when given the chance. They can’t be trusted with power!”

Reynolds’ post has given me a chance to respond to the popular Stalin Argument. I’ll conclude my critique of his latest (read part 1).

Is religion ever part of the problem?

Reynolds assures us that anti-theists (atheists who “actively dislike and work against religion”) can’t be trusted with power, while Christians are no problem.

The universal problem has not been official state religion, but official state irreligion.

Nope. Official state religion has indeed been a problem.

In response to my previous post on Reynolds’ claims, some commenters were quick to point out incidents where religion has much to apologize for. Some of these examples are small and some are huge. In some, religion was the driving force, while others simply highlight atrocities done by religious people who should’ve known better.

• Christian: Hutu genocide of Tutsi in Rwanda, up to 1 million dead
• Catholic: Leopold of Belgium ran the Congo Free State as his personal plantation, killing up to 15 million
• Muslim: Armenian genocide, up to 2 million
• Christian: witch burning (mostly in the Holy Roman Empire), about 35,000
• Shinto/Buddhist: Japanese atrocities against civilians in Korea and China
• Christian: European settlers to Australia, South Africa, and the Americas killed indigenous people
• Catholic: extermination of Cathars in France
• Hindu: Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka
• Christian: pogroms against Jews and the Holocaust, for which Martin Luther’s anti-Semitic writings must take some blame
• The Taiping Rebellion in China killed 20+ million in the mid-1800s (the Taipings wanted to convert China to their version of Christianity)
• Catholics vs. Protestants: French Wars of Religion in the late 1500s killed up to 4 million
• Catholics vs. Protestants: the Thirty Years’ War in the early 1600s killed up to two percent of the world’s population. By contrast, if we say that Stalin was responsible for 10 million deaths, that would be just 0.4 percent of the world population of 1950.
• Catholic vs. Muslim: the Crusades also killed up to two percent of the world’s population
• The Nazi Holocaust of Jews was driven by German anti-Semitism encouraged by Luther
• And more

Reynolds would respond to this list by saying that he never claimed that Christians were perfect. But if we agree that Christian moral principles can be subordinated by an unethical agenda (land grab, religious hysteria, racism or tribalism, or whatever), then acknowledge that atheism can also be hijacked in the same way.

Others respond with elaborate forms of the tu quoque fallacy: Christians have done it too. Well, so we have, but we have also not done it which puts us well ahead of anti-theists in the use of power.

Make it an apples-to-apples comparison. Bring out the atheist regimes that were not dictatorships.

Can’t do it? Then we’re back to dictatorship as the obvious cause of the problem.

Atheists today are simply living off morality taught by Christianity

As a tiny group in most nations, [atheism] tends to live off the cultural patrimony of the majority (or the historic majority). For example, Western Europe has a larger group of atheists [than in the United States], but the society they live in came of Christian social movements at the end of the Second World War.

Christianity has driven positive social change. A century ago, social change was everywhere in America, and Christians were leaders in women’s suffrage, the treatment of immigrants, prison and asylum reform, temperance and prohibition, racial inequality, child labor and compulsory elementary school education, women’s education, protection of women from workplace exploitation, equal pay for equal work, communism and utopian societies, unions and the labor movement, pure food laws, and more.

Today, Christians make more news by their resistance to social change, but we must give credit where it’s due. Christians have done a lot to improve society. But it’s not like they taught us information found only in their holy books. Each of these social improvements is a rejection of the complementary principle in an Old Testament theocracy. Most of this improvement wasn’t driven by Christianity but by people who simply happened to be Christian.

Atheism vs. secularism

Small, persecuted religious groups have often fled to form new groups. Small religious groups, like the Quakers, develop cohesive beliefs and establish communities. Some of these have been mostly good and some have been mostly bad. Atheism has not managed to do so.

How about the Puritans? They were a cohesive community, but they were also an intolerant Christian theocracy. Contrast them with American society today, which isn’t an atheist society but rather a secular one. One of the greatest gifts the United States has made to the world is the example of the first society governed by a secular constitution.

As for his imaginary atheistic society, what does that even mean? “I have no god belief” provides no guidance for how to build a healthy and fair society. It’s not supposed to. By contrast, Christianity has much to say about society and morality, and lots of that is crap.

Atheists and even anti-theists like me don’t want an atheist dictatorship. If there are Western anti-theists chafing at the prohibitions against killing Christians or imposing atheism, I’ve never heard of a single one. A secular government suits them just fine. We’re happy to simply point out the flaws of Christianity in the secular public square.

I am proud of the fact that despite its shortcomings, the United States which has always been overwhelmingly Christian has a decent track record of tolerating atheist dissent.

Thank the founding fathers. America has been tolerant despite Christianity, not because of it. Christians make news in this country when they want to exceed the bounds imposed by the Constitution—injecting religious messages in schools, teaching Creationism in the science classroom, putting up “In God We Trust” in government buildings and Christian displays on public property, praying before government meetings, and otherwise expecting special treatment for their religious beliefs in the state-supported public square.

And what’s “tolerating atheist dissent” supposed to mean? The assumption is that Christianity is the default, and everyone else is a dissenter? Nope—read the Constitution.

It would be comforting if my anti-theist friends would at least admit there is no happy human experience with anti-theist governance.

It would be comforting if my religious friends would at least admit that this dictatorial anti-theism bogeyman is unwanted by both Christians and atheists. No one is calling for a Stalinist dictatorship. The closest we get in America today are tiny voices calling for Dominionism (Christian theocracy) and Sharia law (Muslim theocracy). The status quo in the West, where a secular society rejects both religion and anti-theism in the public square, is the best thing for everyone.

Conclusion

I agree that anti-theism was important to Lenin, Stalin, and Mao. They were dictators! Dictators can’t have the population confused about whom to give allegiance to, so they eliminate Christianity as a competing source of power. Atheism in their hands was a tool, not a goal. Reynolds has claimed otherwise but given us no reason to reject this obvious cause-and-effect relationship.

I want the First Amendment guarantees of speech, religion, press, and assembly defended for you just as strongly as I want them defended for me. If you can’t speak freely, I can’t expect to, either.

The secular government we have in the West today is the best for all. We must govern with reason rather than faith. We have yet to see a society that suffered from an excess of reason. I’m an anti-theist in that I would like to see religion gone from the world and I’m outraged at Christian excesses, but prohibiting religion or persecuting believers isn’t the way to go.

I don’t want religion made illegal. Instead, I want to see society to grow out of its need for religion.

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 5/6/15.)

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Christian blogger John Mark Reynolds wrote a provocative post titled, “Hoping Atheists (Or at Least Anti-Theists) Do Not Kill Us This Time.” This apparently is what atheists do in his mind. Once they get power, they turn into Stalin.

I responded. Fellow atheist blogger Keith Parsons responded. And Reynolds came back with “Anti-Theists are Sure They Will Not Kill You This Time.” Let’s take a look at this rebuttal.

First off, anti-theists are all from the same mold.

Reynolds states his central thesis over and over.

In all human history any anti-theists who have formed a mass political movement and gained power have been that horrific.

(I was thinking of running for dog catcher in the next election, but my world-controlling agenda would probably work against me, so perhaps not . . .)

Reynolds is determined to poison the well. Stalin, Richard Dawkins, Bob Seidensticker—anti-theists are all the same when they get power, so Christian voters must beware!

Second, atheists in America will never amount to anything.

Next, he undercuts his argument by assuring atheists that there’s no point in even trying to attain power.

There is no evidence that American anti-theists will ever develop a mass movement of anti-theists capable of exercising power. . . .

Atheism worldwide is a shrinking community. In the United States it is growing, but from a tiny base.

Reynolds is surprisingly out of touch given that the unexpected and remarkable rise of the Nones (those unaffiliated with any church, which includes atheists) is one of the top religious news stories of the decade. Nones in America have risen from 6% in 1990 to 23% today and are now the largest “faith” group, edging out Evangelicals and Catholics. (Granted, most of the Nones are spiritual, not atheists, but atheism has increased dramatically as well.) Europe leads the way, where atheism is often uncontroversial.

As for worldwide trends, a recent Pew Research study projects that by 2050, the big worldview loser due to adherents switching out of that belief will be Christianity, with a net loss of 66 million worldwide. A nearly equal number will be switching into the Unaffiliated category (chart).

I have no fear of organized American atheists or anti-theists.

One wonders then why the inflammatory title of the initial piece, “Hoping [Anti-Theists] Do Not Kill Us This Time.”

There is no example of a state with atheists in power as atheists that did not persecute the religious.

There are zero atheists in Congress who are out, simply because people like you have made them unelectable. This proves only the Machiavellian success of your efforts, not that atheists are evil leaders.

Thank you for fighting the good fight to ensure that only people who believe like you can get elected, despite the clear guarantee in Article VI of the U.S. Constitution that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust.”

What causes a Stalin?

Reynolds doubles down on his theory of how atheist dictatorships form.

At least some anti-theists picked their politics to match their anti-theistic worldview. Stalin became an atheist first and then picked a political view to match his anti-theistic atheism.

So first Stalin became an atheist (and—who knows?—maybe also a stamp collector and a knitter). Then he fell in with Communists. Finally, he became a brutal dictator who indirectly killed millions. Are you saying that it was the stamp collecting that triggered those deaths? Or maybe the knitting?

If not the stamp collecting or the knitting, why the atheism? By showing priority, Reynolds has done nothing to show cause and effect.

Some critics have responded that “yes anti-theism came first” but that anti-theism did not play a causal role in the selection of socialism and the persecution of the religious. This seems implausible. It is very hard to establish that anything causes anything else, but if developing an anti-religious view is not an important motivation in the persecution of religious people, I am not sure what a motive would be!

It’s implausible that you’re mistaken? Your theory is hard to establish? What kind of research is this? Did you click Publish when this article was only in draft form?

Yes, someone who persecutes Christians would have an anti-religious view, but would someone with an anti-religious view (like Stalin) necessarily persecute Christians? I have an anti-religious view, depending on your definition, and I don’t persecute Christians. The overwhelming majority of atheists in the U. S., if magically made Dictator, wouldn’t dream of persecuting Christians.

This theory fails because we have nothing to argue that Stalin’s atheism and not the needs of his government drove the persecution of Christians.

And what fraction of Stalin’s victims were Christian? Once the Communist government put pressure on the church, the number of citizens that could have been killed for being Christian dropped.

To show that religion and atheism were simply tools for Stalin, note that Stalin allowed churches to revive during World War II to encourage patriotism. He also supported a (Muslim) Uyghur revolt in China’s northwest to harass the anti-Communist Nationalist government.

But don’t worry about Christians with power!

Reynolds is kept up nights worrying about atheists, but “there is not a parallel worry about Christianity,” he assures us.

No nation on earth with a Christian state church that bans atheism or sends atheists to labor camps.

Make it a Christian dictatorship, then get back to me. Look at Muslim theocracies today—atheism is a capital crime in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, and ten other countries. The lesson isn’t hard: religion or atheism in a democracy is peaceful, while in a dictatorship it’s not. It’s the dictatorship that’s the problem.

And Reynolds has no leg to stand when he frets about atheist genocide when his own Bible makes clear that God was delighted to use genocide when necessary.

Here’s a fun detour: Reynolds was provost of Houston Baptist University, which is affiliated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas, which in turn partners with the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). The SBC split off in 1845 as the explicitly pro-slavery Baptist denomination and only apologized for its support of slavery, segregation, and white supremacy in 1995. Given Southern Baptists’ track record, should we insist on assurances that any who get into power won’t try to reinstate any of these racist policies? We could rework Reynolds’ own line: “Christians Racial minorities are not paranoid to worry and would be foolish not to do so.”

To Reynolds or anyone else who is outraged by this suggestion and comes up with responses why it makes no sense, I suggest they apply those responses to Reynolds’ argument, which is no stronger (h/t commenter wtfwjtd).

Back to Reynolds:

Nobody has denied that every atheist regime in the world has been horrible.

Hmm. That’s a good point. And how many countries are we talking about—two hundred? Three hundred?

Oh—so it’s only three countries, you say? And every one of them a dictatorship. Your study suffers from too small a sample size. It also suffers from the lack of atheist countries that are not dictatorships to see if (dare I say it?) the dictatorship is the problem.

Concluded in part 2.

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 5/4/15.)

Image from Wikipedia, CC license

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You must’ve heard the popular Christian argument that the atrocities committed by atheists like Stalin during the twentieth century eclipse Christian overexuberance throughout history. That includes the Crusades, the Inquisition, witch burning, and pogroms. A recent blog post takes this idea and projects it forward: “Hoping Atheists (Or at Least Anti-Theists) Do Not Kill Us This Time” by fellow Patheos blogger John Mark Reynolds.

But Dr. Reynolds isn’t tiptoeing to avoid triggering the atheist avalanche. No, he’s publicly calling atheists to account.

In part 1, we saw that the problem is apparently only with “anti-theist” atheists, those who “actively dislike and work against religion.” That includes me, so I’m apparently part of the problem. We also explored his argument connecting genocide with these atheists. (Spoiler: I wasn’t convinced.) Let’s continue.

Case study: today’s not-so-Christian Western Europe

Reynolds acknowledges that Western Europe is socially healthy despite being more atheistic than America, but he handwaves that that’s just because it still benefits from the imprint of Christianity.

I’ve got news for you: Christianity already had the chance to rule Europe, and we call that period the Dark Ages. (I’m imagining a filthy, emaciated peasant in France around 1200 wearing a ragged t-shirt. On the front it says, “When Christianity was in charge, all I got was this lousy t-shirt” and on the back, “. . . and the plague, smallpox, famine, Pardoners, and a life of indentured servitude as a serf.”)

Western Europe is largely atheistic, but it wasn’t always that way. The hold of Christianity was much higher a century ago. As social conditions improved over the decades, secularism increased. Some scholars have suggested the causal relationship as poor social conditions as the incubator for more religion, with Christianity the symptom of a sick society.

Social metrics like homicide, STDs, unwanted pregnancies, and so on can be used to compare countries. Atheistic and gay-friendly Western Europe does well in this comparison, and the good old U. S. of A. looks embarrassingly bad.

Yeah, but look at all Christianity gave you!

Reynolds is pretty happy with Western society, but he’s deluded about Christianity’s contribution. He imagines that Western society has as its foundation “a borrowed Christian culture.”

Atheists have such a poor track record in his mind that he suggests that, to polish their image, “Western atheists of the anti-theist sort [should] take over a nation or an area and run it for a decade or two. They should create new social norms, new art, and new constitutions.” As if these all came from Christianity!?

Consider just our legal rights, America’s fundamental principles that did not come from the Bible: democracy, secular government, separation of powers, and a limited executive; freedoms of religion, speech, press, and assembly; protection from self-incrimination and double jeopardy; speedy and public trial, trial by jury, and the right to confront witnesses; no cruel and unusual punishment; and no slavery (more here and here).

A Christian dictatorship that followed biblical principles is easy to imagine. It would look similar to today’s Muslim theocracies where atheism and apostasy are punished by death.

For creating a livable society, I’ll take the U.S. Constitution over the Ten Commandments, thank you. And I think that in a thoughtful moment, you would, too. Note also that the one hundred percent secular U.S. Constitution protects you against religious excesses just like it does me.

And now let’s poison the well

Reynolds is judge, jury, and all but executioner.

Until anti-theism shows it can stop killing people, Christians are right to worry about “anti-theist” atheists dominating the levers of power.

None of this proves that if your local Internet atheist troll took over, people would lose civil rights, freedom of religion, their children, their right to religious education, and eventually their lives in “re-education camps”, but the track record is very bad and their present tone not promising.

Christians are not paranoid to worry and would be foolish not to do so. A rising tide of anti-theism (or even anti-clericalism) has oft been a prelude to death.

When this Chicken Little attitude gets an enthusiastic hearing in some quarters, who can wonder why atheists are (depending on the poll) often the least electable? Americans are more likely to vote for a presidential candidate who has never held public office than one who is an atheist. Reynolds is doing a fine job strengthening this prejudice.

But let’s review the holes that sink his argument. Dictatorships are the problem, and there is no call within the Western atheist community for an anti-theistic dictatorship. Indeed, there have been zero people killed in the name of atheism because atheism takes no stand on issues like morality.

The U. S. has had a secular government since the ratification of the Constitution in 1788. Preserving this is the goal of every atheist I know, and this is quite different from a Stalinist dictatorship. It’s the Christians who rock the boat, not atheists eager for a dictatorship.

Western Europe is substantially less Christian and more healthy than the United States. Atheism or secularism haven’t led to bad conditions there, let alone genocide. In fact, the present religious friction in the United States is Christians asking for special privileges (such as the right to discriminate as they please) and demanding to impose their beliefs on the rest of the country by law (same-sex marriage and abortion, for example). Christian excesses are the driving force behind the anti-theism.

Reynolds concludes:

The twentieth and twenty-first century victims of state atheism cannot read “angry atheism” without a shudder and this is reasonable. Let’s start any dialog with this in mind.

So you expect me to come to the discussion with head hung in appropriate humility, burdened down with Stalin’s sins? Forget it—they’re not my sins. And if dialogue is your goal—it certainly is mine—poisoning the well like this isn’t helpful.

Dr. Reynolds replied to these posts. I respond here.

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 4/28/15.)

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Stalin is a popular marionette for many Christian apologists. “Don’t tell me about Christian atrocities during the Crusades or the Inquisition,” they’ll say. “The atheist regimes in the twentieth century of Stalin, Mao, and others killed far more people!”

Fellow Patheos blogger John Mark Reynolds from the Evangelical channel has a new angle on that: “Hoping Atheists (Or at Least Anti-Theists) Do Not Kill Us This Time.” Apparently, you’ve got to keep an eye on those out-of-control atheists to make sure they don’t kill us all.

The connection between atheism and genocide

Reynolds makes clear that he’s not fearful of all atheists. It’s only the anti-theists, which he defines as atheists who “actively dislike and work against religion.” That sounds like me. If you’re in the same boat (or know someone who is), come along as we find out why “these are the atheists that have proven dangerous in power and are worrisome to civil society.”

Reynolds gives three reasons for connecting anti-theists with genocide.

1. “The atheists of Russia, China, North Korea, Cambodia, [and] Albania came to their atheism and then picked a social and economic system compatible with their general worldview.”

Nope. These were dictatorships, and religion was a problem. You can’t have a proper dictatorship with the church as an alternate authority. Solution: eliminate religion. Atheism was merely a tool.

The only nations that have been officially atheistic have been uniformly horrible.

And they’ve all been dictatorships. Let’s put the blame where it belongs. This mistake is like pointing to Stalin and Hitler and saying, “It must be the mustaches! Men with mustaches have killed millions!”

Did Harry Truman kill several hundred thousand in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the name of Christianity? If not, then don’t say that Stalin killed millions in the name of atheism. Or if you do, make clear the causal connection, which Reynolds hasn’t done (h/t commenter epeeist).

2. “Atheism was used as a reason for persecution in all of these nations.”

Control was the reason for persecution in dictatorships. Atheism was just a tool, like a scalpel used to murder.

Reynolds next goes on a poorly thought out rant about morality.

• There is no check against genocide in atheism. And there is no check against genocide in chemistry, either. Neither has a moral rulebook. Atheism is the simple lack of god belief, not a worldview, and it neither advocates nor rejects genocide. Christianity, by contrast, does have a moral rulebook, and it sucks. Next, Reynolds claims that Christianity has a “built-in check on genocide,” which is completely false. God luvs him some genocide and demanded it often in the Old Testament.
• “Christians are told to love their enemies.” If you go into the Bible looking for this, you can indeed find it, but Reynolds imagines that this is an unambiguous message in the Bible. It’s not. Did you hear about the American pastor who demanded that we stone gays? Being consistent with the Bible isn’t so loving.
• “An anti-theist creates his own values.” And Christians don’t? There is nothing in the Bible about transgender people, euthanasia, or chemically induced abortions, and Christians must improvise in response to new situations just like the rest of us.
• Not all atheists are selfish, though they aren’t acting decently because of atheism. Atheists are decent for the same reason you are—how you are programmed as a Homo sapiens and the influence of your environment and society.

3. “There is a nearly perfect track record of officially atheist states killing large numbers of innocent people to this day. When atheists gain power and can impose an anti-theism, they have always started killing people.”

You’ve convinced me: dictatorships are a problem. But you have yet to show atheism as a cause of anything.

Reynolds imagines the powerless atheists saying that they would rule more sensibly than the Christians if given the chance, but “large mass movements dedicated to selfishness or to ideology ([Ayn] Rand or Communism) have [no] external authority to allow the common member of society to rebuke the leaders.” But you do? Christians imagine an objective morality that isn’t there.

Notice an important difference. Atheists are as offended by the actions of Stalin and other dictators as much as Christians. No atheist says, “Well, we do have to cut the guy a little slack. He was an atheist, after all.” Contrast that with the Bible’s mass murderers—Joshua, Moses, God. Perhaps it’s the Christians who are on the wrong side of this issue (h/t Mr. Deity).

A bad bishop can be rebuked based on professed Christian beliefs.

A bad bishop’s actions can also be supported by Christian beliefs. “Love your neighbor” and rules for slavery are both in the Bible.

A bad atheist cannot [be rebuked] since atheism has no creed or necessary beliefs beyond not believing in God, a life force, or a higher power.

Bingo! And your argument is now in a heap at your feet. Atheism is a lack of god belief; that’s it. No one has ever been killed in the name of atheism.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for Christianity.

My analysis of Reynolds’ argument is concluded in part 2.

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 4/27/15.)

Image from Wikimedia, CC license

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