Atheism killed millions? Doubtful
In an opinion piece in the Christian Science Monitor, Dinesh D’Souza argues that — to quote the headline — “Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history.”
His logic: That although events like the Inquisition and the Crusades killed a lot of people,
they are minuscule compared with the death tolls produced by the atheist despotisms of the 20th century. In the name of creating their version of a religion-free utopia, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong produced the kind of mass slaughter that no Inquisitor could possibly match.
It’s time for a quick strike by the logic police.
D’Souza is flat-out wrong in his assertion for an obvious reason. While far more people have been killed for non-religious reasons (e.g., in WW II), no one was claiming a religious reason for killing them.
In the Inquisition and the Crusades, however, religious extremists killed (or ordered killed) other people because those other people didn’t share the same religious views.
D’Souza makes an unfounded logical leap. If someone is killed for a reason other than religion, he attributes that death to Atheism. So the people Bonnie and Clyde killed were victims of Atheism, by his view.
But Bonnie and Clyde didn’t kill anyone because those people weren’t Atheists. They killed the people to take their money. In contrast, the people killed by order of the Church were murdered in the name of religion.
D’Souza is effectively saying that, if religion is not a motive in a killing, he will arbitrarily assign the motive to Atheism. Thus, “Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history.”
Sorry, sir, it doesn’t work that way.
JazePentz says:
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t religion supposed to teach people how to live peaceful, meaningful lives? Even the Koran doesn’t condone violence like some of these Muslim extremists are brainwashed to think. I know more people who are peaceful who are atheists then I do who are of any particular religous faith. Religons are always trying to push their beliefs on others. I used to be a devout Christian and one of the things that I could never understand was that if God gave all people “free will,” then why would he supposedly want Christians to take it away by trying to convert other people to Christianity? It is a pretty big contradiction. People need to understand that your religous beliefs should be important to you and you alone. It is no business of anyone else. Fighting over it is ridiculous. It is history repeating itself in the worst of ways. Fighting and killing are not the answer.