Alonzo Fyfe, of the excellent Atheist Ethicist blog, wrote, a a few days ago, a post called The Hitler and Stalin Cliché. As Alonzo writes, that cliché
[...] is the argument that there is something fundamentally and foundationally wrong with atheism because Hitler and Stalin were atheists – and look what they did.
Alonzo’s post, in a nutshell, says the following: that it’s useless for atheists to give “history lessons” to believers, since they a) don’t really care about history or any of those pesky “facts” stuff, and b) they are already inclined to distrust atheists (they see us as “enemies of God”, “servants of Satan”, and so on). Besides, he writes, by saying “but Hitler wasn’t an atheist!”, you are, in a way, implying that, if he were, you would be responsible for it. According to Alonzo, that’s the point we should address: that atheists aren’t responsible for Stalin’s purges, much like modern Christians aren’t responsible for the Inquisition and the Crusades.
I can’t disagree with any of the above. However… I feel that Alonzo may be missing the point of what the theists’ accusations really mean.
It’s not a question of guilt by association. They’re not blaming us for Stalin’s atrocities. What they’re saying is that atheism leads to atrocities like Stalin’s. And that point, I think, really needs to be addressed.
Now, the detail we go into depends on whom we’re talking with. Talking to a believer who is honestly trying to understand atheists and atheism is completely different from defending ourselves from someone who demonizes us and accuses us (and “godlessness”) of being the cause of all the evil in the world. (In fact, arguing with the latter is probably a waste of time.)
We can say, as Alonzo indeed writes further down his post, that atheism says nothing about morality. All it means is that there is no God, therefore, pleasing a deity — or being afraid of it — shouldn’t enter into our decisions. Atheism isn’t a set of moral rules — and it isn’t meant to be. In my opinion, that needs to be explained to any honestly curious believer.
Now, if we accept the above, then when someone says that “X did something bad because of his atheism”, he or she can only mean one thing: that there was no fear of eternal punishment preventing the atheist from doing that. As I said in Without belief in an afterlife / fear of hell, how can people be moral?, that’s a pretty lousy source of morality, and only makes believers look bad, since the implication is that they would be stealing, raping, killing, and committing all other kinds of atrocities if they weren’t afraid of hell. And, so, they believe that that’s exactly what atheists do all the time, since we’re not afraid of divine punishment. That’s what they’re implying when they use Stalin as an example of “atheist morality”.
The point should not be, indeed, whether Stalin was an atheist or not, but whether his actions were in any way related to his atheism. Since atheism says nothing about morality (much like “Santa isn’t real” doesn’t), I say that they weren’t.
Interestingly, there are actually many parallels between Stalinism and Abrahamic religions, including rituals, the worship of a father figure, pictures of Stalin (or Jesus, or a cross, or…) in every home, the acceptance of a lot of irrationality as non-questionable dogma, and a deep distrust of scientists, intellectuals, and of skepticism in general. After all, a religion doesn’t really need a supernatural element… and I think I could build a case for Stalinism as a religion. But I’ll leave that for a future post. 
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Definitely the case. Stalinism even has its own holy texts (which are interpreted and re-interpreted), theology and skewed science (lots of experiments intended to prove that people can be reformed or changed).
I am a firmly believe that we should be judged as individuals, regardless of religious or non-religious affiliation. If one states that anothers belief or non-belief as the cause of their wrong doing, It implies that the individual did not have free will in their choices.
[quote comment="12619"]*I firmly believe*…..[quote]
Sorry, my typing skills are lacking :]
There’s nothing you can ever say that will ever convince the religionists. They have their superstitions and that’s it. They are entitled their beliefs, too, , which is all any of us ever really have, isn’t it? I wish we could all just get along and see the funny side of it all instead of killing for superstition and belief, or lack of.
I’m not an atheist, but I certainly respect your beliefs, theirs, my own, and whatever any of us thinks is reality. Maybe we’re ALL right. Maybe none of us are. I definitely don’t believe in a ‘God’ separate from humanity like most people like that tend to believe in though, that’s for sure. I’m more of an Eastern thinker in my thoughts on God, more Buddhist, I suppose, than anything else. We’re all a part of the whatever-it-is, and that whatever-it-is, is Love, compassion, tolerance and peace.
Hitler was also as I’m sure you know, a vegetarian.
[quote comment="12815"]Hitler was also as I’m sure you know, a vegetarian. ;-)[/quote]
So Hitler wasn’t about killing animals, but he killed the Jews, gypsies, gays, and countless others? Shows how well he thought of them.
I’m a Jew and I didn’t know that.
[quote post="235"]So Hitler wasn’t about killing animals, but he killed the Jews, gypsies, gays, and countless others? Shows how well he thought of them.[/quote]
Without wanting to go offtopic, there are many possible reasons to be a vegetarian, and that’s only one of them. For all we know, he may have done it for health reasons, or may simply not have liked the taste of meat.
Anyway, this proves Alonzo’s point: the fact that Hitler was a vegetarian doesn’t condemn vegetarians in any way.
Nice discussion, and it brings to mind a question:
Could religious people and atheists (as a group) have a civil informational conversation?
Doing so would require a realization on the part of religious people that atheists are not necessarily immoral heathens.
From the atheists, it would require the realization that not all religious people believe in a traditional “hell”, eternal punishment for non-theists, and all the other commonly discussed negative traits of some forms of religion.
-micah
The largest hurdle is in getting the religous to accept that reason, not faith, determines truth. Without this no discussion can occur at all, because there can be no common ground. When one side assumes that they can simply decree that everyone else is in error without any evidence or reason, then there is no objectivity, and no respect for others. Since this attitude is crucial to faith, such discussions either fail else result in an abandonment of faith.