It is written:
“Only fools think there is no God. People like that are evil and do terrible things. They never do what is right.” (Psalm 14:1 ERV)
Harris (and other atheists) often argue that the God of the Bible is immoral for allowing atrocities and tragedies in the world of man, such as the brutality of mankind. Their arguments can be logically and philosophically answered; yet they are a classic example of throwing a stone in a glass house.
For example, consider the following.
First (as noted in previous articles), one cannot call any action “evil” or “immoral” without first acknowledging the existence of a universal standard of morality, which points undeniably to the existence of God. In the act of trying to disprove the existence of God through the problem of evil, pain and suffering, atheists actually prove His existence!
Second, atheism itself leads only to the continuation of wickedness and immorality in the world of man! As evidence of this, simply look at some examples of how the mindset of Darwinism impacts societies which embrace atheistic evolution.
For example, consider the Holocaust.
“There is conclusive evidence that evolution was a major factor in the philosophy of those who steered Nazism to its destructive destiny. Arthur Keith had no doubts about this: ‘To see evolutionary measures and tribal morality being applied rigorously to the affairs of a great modern nation, we must turn again to Germany of 1942. We see Hitler devoutly convinced that evolution produces the only real basis for a national policy.’38 Later he added, ‘The German Führer, as I have consistently maintained, is an evolutionist; he has consciously sought to make the practices of Germany conform to the theory of evolution.’39 Hitler confirmed this: ‘He who would live must fight, and he who does not wish to fight in this world where permanent struggle is the law of life has not the right to exist.’40 All the Nazi leaders were committed evolutionists, with Heinrich Himmler, head of the secret police, the ruthless Gestapo, claiming that ‘The law of nature must take its course in the survival of the fittest.’41 Darwin would have been horrified to see his ideas used as a justification for calculated brutality, but in Hitler’s mind evolutionary thinking provided scientific justification for even the most appalling of his actions. As Purdue University biologist (and evolutionist) Edward Simon admits, ‘I don’t claim that Darwin and his theory of evolution brought on the holocaust, but I cannot deny that the theory of evolution, and the atheism it engendered, led to the moral climate that made a holocaust possible.’ “. (John Blanchard, Does God Believe In Atheists? 2593-2607 (Kindle Edition); Carlisle, PA; EP Books USA)
In fact, if you want to do a brief summary of the people who have been influenced by atheist regimes in our world, Dinesh D’Souza has done some excellent research for us.
“In this chapter, I want to focus on the really big crimes that have been committed by atheist groups and governments. In the past hundred years or so, the most powerful atheist regimes—Communist Russia, Communist China, and Nazi Germany—have wiped out people in astronomical numbers. Stalin was responsible for around twenty million deaths, produced through mass slayings, forced labor camps, show trials followed by firing squads, population relocation and starvation, and so on. Jung Chang and Jon Halliday’s authoritative recent study Mao: The Unknown Story attributes to Mao Zedong’s regime a staggering seventy million deaths.4 Some China scholars think Chang and Halliday’s numbers are a bit high, but the authors present convincing evidence that Mao’s atheist regime was the most murderous in world history. Stalin’s and Mao’s killings—unlike those of, say, the Crusades or the Thirty Years’ War—were done in peacetime and were performed on their fellow countrymen. Hitler comes in a distant third with around ten million murders, six million of them Jews. So far, I haven’t even counted the assassinations and slayings ordered by other Soviet dictators like Lenin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and so on. Nor have I included a host of “lesser” atheist tyrants: Pol Pot, Enver Hoxha, Nicolae Ceauşescu, Fidel Castro, Kim Jong-il. Even these “minor league” despots killed a lot of people. Consider Pol Pot, who was the leader of the Khmer Rouge, the Communist Party faction that ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. Within this four-year period Pol Pot and his revolutionary ideologues engaged in systematic mass relocations and killings that eliminated approximately one-fifth of the Cambodian population, an estimated 1.5 million to 2 million people. In fact, Pol Pot killed a larger percentage of his countrymen than Stalin and Mao killed of theirs.5 Even so, focusing only on the big three—Stalin, Hitler, and Mao—we have to recognize that atheist regimes have in a single century murdered more than one hundred million people…Religion-inspired killing simply cannot compete with the murders perpetrated by atheist regimes….Communism calls for the elimination of the exploiting class, it extols violence as a way to social progress, and it calls for using any means necessary to achieve the atheist utopia. Not only was Marx an atheist, but atheism was also a central part of the Marxist doctrine. Atheism became a central component of the Soviet Union’s official ideology, it is still the official doctrine of China, and Stalin and Mao enforced atheist policies by systematically closing churches and murdering priests and religious believers. All Communist regimes have been strongly anti-religious, suggesting that their atheism is intrinsic rather than incidental to their ideology….The atheist regimes, by their actions, confirm the truth of Dostoevsky’s dictum: if God is not, everything is permitted. Whatever the cause for why atheist regimes do what they do, the indisputable fact is that all the religions of the world put together have in three thousand years not managed to kill anywhere near the number of people killed in the name of atheism in the past few decades. It’s time to abandon the mindlessly repeated mantra that religious belief has been the main source of human conflict and violence. Atheism, not religion, is responsible for the worst mass murders of history.” (Dinesh D’Souza, What’s So Great About Christianity? 213-220 (Kindle Edition, emphasis added, M.T.): Washington, DC; Regnery Publishing Inc.)
Our atheists friends cannot claim some kind of superior morality to Christianity. The logical consequences of their worldview, coupled with the brutal mass murders of the atheist regimes just in the last few decades, have proven this point beyond doubt.
Leave a Reply