If the level of discussion is going to be, “Hitler had his own interpretation of Christianity, you have yours” then I’m going to go with, “Pol Pot treated people like he thought a good atheist should do, though I do hope your own interpretation of atheism assigns them more worth than that.”
As for Hitchens, it is entirely predictable that he would say of an atheist state, when it acts in a monstrous way, that it is just doing so because it is acting religiously. That level of argument is laughable from a bad faith actor.
Hitchens was so unscientific in his personal approach to life that in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, he chain smoked himself to an early grave.
I thought atheists were supposed to be people of science and reason? Why did he throw his life away when all the science pointed him in another direction?
You can wriggle all you like about Hitler. He was definitely not an atheist, and pretty much all his life he declared himself to be Christian and used the bible as the source text for a lot of his actions. It’s pretty much unarguable. I know you feel he twisted the doctrines of the faith to suit his agenda, but that’s the problem. Those doctrine are incredibly easy to twist. They are open to interpretation and selective reading.
The trouble with trying to flip that logic onto Atheism is that there is no holy book of atheism. No doctrine. No code. There is nothing to misinterpret or twist.
But what you do have, every time a despotic state is flagged as an example of atheism gone wrong, is an example of a leader setting themselves or their regime up and a de facto living god. Stalin’s Russia. China. Pol Pot. North Korea. Imperial Japan.
‘These state were Atheist’, the religious apologist cries. And I’ll keep saying no they fucking weren’t. Not while they were demanding absolute devotional worship of their leader and in many cases promoting supernatural beliefs about them. They had absolutely nothing to do with atheism. They didn’t reject god. Their gods were sitting on the throne ruling as a supreme being.
Something the German Catholic church tries to hide / cover up (amongst many other things) is their support for Hitler, both previous to and during the war. The lack of condemnation of him during this period by the Church leaders is shameful.
Special prayers were even written and said for him on his birthday.
Religion for me is the biggest scam ever perpetrated.
First agreement Hitler signed was with the Catholic church for an easier run at the election. But then the Catholic church is easier to criticise than Boris and Trump’s lovechild.
The discussion is a shitshow. Am I seriously hearing the atheist viewpoint correctly on this?
Hitler was a good Christian man though a little misguided in his doctrinal application?
Atheist regimes that commit atrocities only do so because they are quasi religious?
This is the sort of arrogance I was talking about. It’s bad faith in the extreme.
I am willing to concede that ALL people - whether religious or not, have it in them to commit evil acts. It is because that is part of the human condition. Atheism has no answer to that.
You are are the only person getting riled about this. You seen to think you are the only one allowed to interpret Christian dogma? And you call others arrogant?
On Hitler, you are starting from the position that Christian dogma is objectively good, so because Hitler was awful, he couldn’t be a Christian. That’s your faulty reasoning.
Whether you like it or not, Hitler self identified as a Christian throughout his life and drew enough inspiration from its texts to commit horrific crimes. You were wrong in your original assertion that he was atheist, and now you’re getting angry.
And yes, you are spot on about ‘atheist regimes’. No regime that demands the religious deification of its leader as a living god can be said to be ‘atheist’. It’s absurd to think so. It’s literally the opposite of atheism.
Atheism doesn’t need to have an answer to that because it doesn’t claim to be a belief system. There is no holy book or doctrine. Atheism is literally just the position that claims about god have not met their burden of proof. That’s all.
That is the definition of atheism. Insufficient evidence to justify a belief in god. The same reason we don’t believe in unicorns and the flying spaghetti monster.
I’m actually an anti-theist. I actively hope that god doesn’t exist.
Doesn’t that suggest then that in the absence of religion in the way we know it, there will still be other things to take the vacuum of what people devote themselves fanatically to?
Certainly. Take the Abrahamic god as an example. Murderous, homophobic, tyrannical, considers infinite punishment to be a suitable punishment for a finite crime, utterly obsessed with being praised, jealous and utterly incapable of basic forward planning and guilty of playing the world’s longest game of hide and seek. You want to sit on a cloud playing a harp with the creature that allows childhood cancer and designed a fly that blinds people? Justify wasps. Or would you rather spend eternity in agony?
I’ll take exactly the same feeling I had before I was born.
Yes I get the irony of posting that.