It’s one of the most common
arguments, and one of the most hypocritical.
Mind you, there is a legitimate
argument to be made there. But it isn’t that atheists are automatically evil or
even that atheists are automatically worse people than theists. You can argue that
these events prove that being an atheist does not, in and of itself, make you a
good person. I’d even agree with that argument. There are some pretty shitty
people who are also atheists. But you cannot argue that the atrocities of the
above regimes demonstrate that atheism is evil. Or at least, if you follow one
of the Abrahamic faiths, you can’t argue it without being a massive hypocrite.
Why do I say that? Moses and Joshua,
among others.
Let’s have a little talk about
Moses, the great hero of the Israelite Exodus. Everyone is familiar with the
Exodus story, I think, up to Moses getting the Ten Commandments and the whole
smashing the tablets after the golden calf episode. People seem to go a little
vague on what happens after that point in the story, probably because preachers
don’t seem to like bringing it up in sermons a lot. You see, according to the
Bible Moses didn’t just smash his tablets after the golden calf thing. He also
ordered the execution of three thousand Israelites over it. You can check it
out in Exodus, Chapter 30.
Later, as the Israelites were
crossing through the wilderness, they tried to cross the lands of the kingdom Arad.
The king sent out his army to stop them, and a battle ensued. In retaliation,
Moses had his followers attack every city in Arad and murder every man, woman,
and child. He then proceeded to do the same to the Amorites, Jazerites, and the
kingdom of Og. This is all in Numbers, Chapters 20-21. Later in their
wanderings, the Israelites settle for a time among the Midianites, who take
them in and start intermarrying. But when Moses hears that some of the
Israelites have started worshipping the Midianite gods, he gives orders to
attack and kill all the Midianites.
His people kill the Midianite men, but take the women and children captive;
Moses was having none of that shit, and orders all the women and male children
killed while the virgin girl children are to be kept as captives/slaves (and
let’s not be naïve about what that entailed). That’s Numbers, Chapters 25-31.
So to recap: according to the Bible,
Moses is responsible for at least five separate genocides.
How about Joshua? Well, you know
that famous song we’re all taught in Sunday school? “Joshua Fought the Battle
of Jericho?” That happy, upbeat piece of children’s fluff about blowing horns
and knocking down walls? Do you know what happened to all the people inside
those walls? The men, the women, and the children? Joshua ordered them all
killed, of course. You know what horrible act of aggression the people of
Jericho had committed against him before the battle that justified it? Nothing.
They were living on land he thought his god had promised to him, so he
slaughtered them all. That’s it. In fact, that’s pretty much the story of the
entire invasion of Canaan: Joshua and his army of Israelites committing one
genocide after another, while enslaving anyone they didn’t kill. See the Book
of Joshua, Chapters… well, pretty much all of them.
And if you think it’s a numbers
game, that the atrocities of the twentieth century were worse because they
involved more people, bear in mind that both of those men issued mandates to
kill everyone. The only factor that
limited the number of deaths was the number of people available to kill. There was
no moral limit imposed.
Now here’s where the rubber meets
the road. I, as an atheist, will tell you unequivocally that I believe Stalin
and Pol Pot to be monsters. It’s debatable whether Hitler was an atheist –
publicly he was Catholic and used loads of Christian rhetoric in exhorting his
followers to commit atrocities, but apparently he was privately contemptuous of
mainstream Christianity. But regardless of what his religious views were, I’ll
tell you he was a monster as well. These men are not atheist heroes. The only
regard their roles in history should be given is to learn how to make sure men
like them never wield the kind of power they did ever again.
Can you tell me the same about Moses
and Joshua?
If you follow an Abrahamic faith, I
don’t think you can. Because, you see, according to your holy books they were
acting on God’s orders. They are presented as heroes, as being among the best
men who have ever lived. They are held up as men who exhibit the kind of faith –
the kind that perceives and carries out God’s wishes no matter what they are
and how much they contradict our sense of what is good or right – to be the
sort of faith all believers should aspire to.
But if you’re honest with yourself, continuing
to celebrate Moses and Joshua means you’re a hypocrite if you berate atheists
for the fact that atheist regimes have committed genocides. Because you don’t actually disapprove of genocide. You’re
fine with it. You excuse it. You laud
it. You teach young children to sing nauseatingly sweet songs of praise for
genocide and the people who commit it, so
long as they do it for the right reasons. You don’t object to the
atrocities committed by those regimes, you just disagree with their reasons for
committing them.
I won’t defend the atrocities
committed by any atheist regime, nor will I defend their reasons for committing
them. I don’t know a single atheist who would. That doesn’t mean they don’t
exist, but it’s not the norm and I would oppose such people. Just because they
were on “my team,” on the one singular issue of whether a god exists does not
obligate me to their defense when they do that which I cannot abide.
People don’t commit atrocities because
of what they don’t believe in; they commit them because of what they do believe
in. Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, they did what they did because they believed their
visions for society were greater than the human lives they would have to grind
under in order to fulfill them. Moses, Joshua, Muhammad, they also believed
they were serving something greater than the lives they had to destroy in that
service. That’s something they all had in common with each other, not a feature
that distinguishes them from each other. In that respect, they are very much
the same. Let’s not pretend otherwise.
Ultimately, it shouldn't be a blame game. We should all, atheists and theists alike, be trying together to make sure nobody does these kinds of things again.
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