Monday 27 May 2019
‘Religion’ of Atheism
In a rebuttal against radical historical doubters in reference to the alleged non-existence of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, he cites, ‘Seeing Islam as Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam‘ by Robert Hoyland.
Friday 24 May 2019
THE CANNIBALISM AND BLOODBATHS OF THE CRUSADES (1095-1291)
By: Dr. Abdullah Mohammad Sindi*
(Ph.D. International Relations)
(Ph.D. International Relations)
I. Introduction
It is in these lawless and dangerous times when Prophet Mohammad is
being viciously attacked as a “terrorist” in Western caricatures, and
when Arabs and Muslims are being reviled throughout the West as
“terrorists”, “fanatics”, “fascists”, and “intolerant”, that it becomes
necessary (lest we forget) to recall the past Western Christian
terrorism of the Crusades against the Arabs. This well-documented record
of the cannibalistic and barbaric Crusaders, which is well known in the
Arab world, is rather obscure to most Westerners because it is either
conveniently concealed or deeply buried in some unnoticed specialized
books.
When US President George W. Bush (who speaks to God) said in 2001 - in response to the terrorist attacks of 9-11 - that the US was waging a “Crusade” on Arab and Muslim “terrorism”, he was actually conjuring up the old nightmarish horrors of the Western terrorist Crusades against the Arabs. However, because of widespread angry reactions across the Arab and Muslim worlds to Bush’s use of the word “Crusade”, the American Government was forced to replace it with the word “war”. Regardless, the current American illegal and brutal wars on Afghanistan and Iraq are indeed very similar to the past Western terrorist Crusades. Apparently when it comes to Western dealings with Arabs and Muslims the old saying still stands: the more things change, the more they remain the same.
When US President George W. Bush (who speaks to God) said in 2001 - in response to the terrorist attacks of 9-11 - that the US was waging a “Crusade” on Arab and Muslim “terrorism”, he was actually conjuring up the old nightmarish horrors of the Western terrorist Crusades against the Arabs. However, because of widespread angry reactions across the Arab and Muslim worlds to Bush’s use of the word “Crusade”, the American Government was forced to replace it with the word “war”. Regardless, the current American illegal and brutal wars on Afghanistan and Iraq are indeed very similar to the past Western terrorist Crusades. Apparently when it comes to Western dealings with Arabs and Muslims the old saying still stands: the more things change, the more they remain the same.
II. The Crusades: A General Overview
Of all the religious wars in human history waged by any religion, at any
place, and at any time, none have been bloodier, more genocidal, more
barbaric, and more protracted than the 200-year "holy wars" by the
Western Crusades against the Arabs and Islam. The Western Crusaders
horrifically soaked Asia Minor and the Eastern Arab Mediterranean coast
with Arab blood (both Muslim and Jewish). The objective of the Crusades
was simple, to destroy the Arabs (whether Muslim or Jew) in the Holy
Land of Palestine and its environs "…on the ground that they had no
right to inhabit their part of the earth, while for a Christian the
whole world is his country." [1]
Unlike Muslims (Arab and non-Arab) who have always tolerated Christians and Jews (Arab and non-Arab), married into them, and lived and worked with them side by side in peace as "People of the Book" in all Arab and Muslim lands as well as in old Arab Andalusia (Spain and Portugal), the Christian West has had no desire to coexist with Islam and the Arabs. Also, unlike Muslims who revere Moses and Jesus as God’s prophets, most Christians and Jews in the “tolerant” West have no respect for Prophet Mohammad and are rudely contemptuous of him and Islam. In fact ever since its birth and its subsequent widespread expansion, Islam has been looked upon in the West as a mortal danger, both moral and military, to be strongly opposed or even destroyed. In his classic exposé of Christian violence worldwide, A History of Christianity, the Western Christian scholar Paul Johnson rejects the Western propaganda about Islam’s “violent” expansion by stating that: "The success of Islam sprang essentially from the failure of Christian theologians to solve the problem of the Trinity and Christ's nature." [2]
Nevertheless, the Western Crusades' insane bloodbaths against the Arabs were triggered by the decisive defeat of the Byzantine army in 1071 at the hands of the Turkish Seljuk (Abbasid) army. Fearing that all of Asia Minor would be quickly overrun by the Abbasids, the defeated Byzantine emperor, Alexius I, quickly appealed to his Christian rivals and opponents in Western Europe, i.e., Pope Urban II and his other "fellow" Christian rulers, to come to the aid of Constantinople by undertaking a "pilgrimage" or Crusade to "free" Jerusalem and the rest of Palestine from Arab and Muslim rule.
Emperor Alexius' appeal provided Pope Urban II with his lifetime opportunity to gain more recognition and power for the papal authority and for its role in legitimizing the temporal actions of the West European kings. Presiding over an urgent Church Council meeting, at Piacenza, Italy, in March 1095, Pope Urban II - with the Byzantine ambassador sitting next to him - called upon all the Western European followers of Christ to do "God's will” by carrying arms to "liberate the Holy Land" and cleanse it from the desecration of the Arab and Muslim "infidels." The Pope's call to fight the Arabs was ironic because, as scholar Francis Peters observed "God may indeed have wished it, but there is certainly no evidence that the Christians of Jerusalem did, or that anything extraordinary was occurring to pilgrims there to prompt such a response at that moment in history." [3] Although Christian and Jewish pilgrims (Arab and non-Arab) were burdened by taxes; they were never barred or even restricted from their religious shrines in Jerusalem either by Muslim Arab or Turkish authorities, even during the few severe sporadic civil disturbances in Palestine. In fact, Arabs (Muslims, Jews, and Christians) as well as non-Arabs (also Muslims, Jews, and Christians) have all lived together in Palestine in peace under Islamic rule since the dawn of Islam.
In reality, however, the veritable rationale behind launching the Crusades went beyond religious impulses, which were mostly the concern of the common people. Western kings, knights, feudal lords, and merchants were driven primarily by political, military, and commercial ambitions as well as by the prospects of new lands and riches that would accompany the establishment of European colonies in the Arab world.
Nevertheless, to start a new general European massive movement, like the Crusades, the leadership of a central figure was needed. Pope Urban II was the only central figure at the time in the entire West with an authority that transcended all of Western Europe's national boundaries. On November 25, 1095, Pope Urban II delivered in Clermont, France, what was perhaps the single most effective speech in Western history - one that has influenced the West up to the present time. Not only did the Pope appeal to the Western masses through religious motives, but he also used what came to be known as the typical Western ideological argument in support of a colonialist and imperialist policy that eventually led Europe in later generations to brutally colonize the entire non-European world. In this historic speech, Pope Urban II reminded the Europeans that their lands were suffering from widespread economic problems:
"For this land which you inhabit, shut in on all sides by the seas and surrounded by the mountain peaks, is too narrow for your large population; nor does it abound in wealth, and it furnishes scarcely food enough for its cultivators. Hence it is that you murder and devour one another, that you wage war, and that very many among you perish in civil strife." [4]
The Pope then quickly pointed out that the Arab land of Palestine to which they would be going for their Crusade "floweth with milk and honey ... like another paradise of delights." [5] Pope Urban II then passionately exhorted the faithful Westerners: "Set out on the road to the Holy Sepulcher, take that land from the wicked people and make it your own!" [6] After the Pope ended his fiery speech, the entire large European crowd responded jubilantly with a loud roar: "Dieu le veult!" (God wills it!).
In fact, the Western Crusaders were the first great wave of European colonialism since the fall of the Roman Empire in 476. The Crusades took the form of a series of brutal military invasions in the name of "Christianity" to the heart of Arab and Muslim lands in order to brutally colonize Arab Palestine and kill its people. There were at least nine major Western Crusades and many smaller ones launched against the Arabs between 1095 and 1290: The First (1095-1099); the Second (1147-1149); the Third (1189-1192); the Fourth (1198-1204); the Children's Crusade (1212); the Fifth (1217-1221); the Sixth (1228-1229); the Seventh (1248-1254); the Eighth (1270); and the Ninth (1290). Other ill-starred Western military expeditions against the Arabs continued up to the 15th century. Actually, Europe's hatred and fear of Arab and Muslim power were so intense that the idea of the Crusade persisted well into the 17th century, and the conviction that war might be just and legitimate has since become more deeply engraved in the conscience of the West.
Unlike Muslims (Arab and non-Arab) who have always tolerated Christians and Jews (Arab and non-Arab), married into them, and lived and worked with them side by side in peace as "People of the Book" in all Arab and Muslim lands as well as in old Arab Andalusia (Spain and Portugal), the Christian West has had no desire to coexist with Islam and the Arabs. Also, unlike Muslims who revere Moses and Jesus as God’s prophets, most Christians and Jews in the “tolerant” West have no respect for Prophet Mohammad and are rudely contemptuous of him and Islam. In fact ever since its birth and its subsequent widespread expansion, Islam has been looked upon in the West as a mortal danger, both moral and military, to be strongly opposed or even destroyed. In his classic exposé of Christian violence worldwide, A History of Christianity, the Western Christian scholar Paul Johnson rejects the Western propaganda about Islam’s “violent” expansion by stating that: "The success of Islam sprang essentially from the failure of Christian theologians to solve the problem of the Trinity and Christ's nature." [2]
Nevertheless, the Western Crusades' insane bloodbaths against the Arabs were triggered by the decisive defeat of the Byzantine army in 1071 at the hands of the Turkish Seljuk (Abbasid) army. Fearing that all of Asia Minor would be quickly overrun by the Abbasids, the defeated Byzantine emperor, Alexius I, quickly appealed to his Christian rivals and opponents in Western Europe, i.e., Pope Urban II and his other "fellow" Christian rulers, to come to the aid of Constantinople by undertaking a "pilgrimage" or Crusade to "free" Jerusalem and the rest of Palestine from Arab and Muslim rule.
Emperor Alexius' appeal provided Pope Urban II with his lifetime opportunity to gain more recognition and power for the papal authority and for its role in legitimizing the temporal actions of the West European kings. Presiding over an urgent Church Council meeting, at Piacenza, Italy, in March 1095, Pope Urban II - with the Byzantine ambassador sitting next to him - called upon all the Western European followers of Christ to do "God's will” by carrying arms to "liberate the Holy Land" and cleanse it from the desecration of the Arab and Muslim "infidels." The Pope's call to fight the Arabs was ironic because, as scholar Francis Peters observed "God may indeed have wished it, but there is certainly no evidence that the Christians of Jerusalem did, or that anything extraordinary was occurring to pilgrims there to prompt such a response at that moment in history." [3] Although Christian and Jewish pilgrims (Arab and non-Arab) were burdened by taxes; they were never barred or even restricted from their religious shrines in Jerusalem either by Muslim Arab or Turkish authorities, even during the few severe sporadic civil disturbances in Palestine. In fact, Arabs (Muslims, Jews, and Christians) as well as non-Arabs (also Muslims, Jews, and Christians) have all lived together in Palestine in peace under Islamic rule since the dawn of Islam.
In reality, however, the veritable rationale behind launching the Crusades went beyond religious impulses, which were mostly the concern of the common people. Western kings, knights, feudal lords, and merchants were driven primarily by political, military, and commercial ambitions as well as by the prospects of new lands and riches that would accompany the establishment of European colonies in the Arab world.
Nevertheless, to start a new general European massive movement, like the Crusades, the leadership of a central figure was needed. Pope Urban II was the only central figure at the time in the entire West with an authority that transcended all of Western Europe's national boundaries. On November 25, 1095, Pope Urban II delivered in Clermont, France, what was perhaps the single most effective speech in Western history - one that has influenced the West up to the present time. Not only did the Pope appeal to the Western masses through religious motives, but he also used what came to be known as the typical Western ideological argument in support of a colonialist and imperialist policy that eventually led Europe in later generations to brutally colonize the entire non-European world. In this historic speech, Pope Urban II reminded the Europeans that their lands were suffering from widespread economic problems:
"For this land which you inhabit, shut in on all sides by the seas and surrounded by the mountain peaks, is too narrow for your large population; nor does it abound in wealth, and it furnishes scarcely food enough for its cultivators. Hence it is that you murder and devour one another, that you wage war, and that very many among you perish in civil strife." [4]
The Pope then quickly pointed out that the Arab land of Palestine to which they would be going for their Crusade "floweth with milk and honey ... like another paradise of delights." [5] Pope Urban II then passionately exhorted the faithful Westerners: "Set out on the road to the Holy Sepulcher, take that land from the wicked people and make it your own!" [6] After the Pope ended his fiery speech, the entire large European crowd responded jubilantly with a loud roar: "Dieu le veult!" (God wills it!).
In fact, the Western Crusaders were the first great wave of European colonialism since the fall of the Roman Empire in 476. The Crusades took the form of a series of brutal military invasions in the name of "Christianity" to the heart of Arab and Muslim lands in order to brutally colonize Arab Palestine and kill its people. There were at least nine major Western Crusades and many smaller ones launched against the Arabs between 1095 and 1290: The First (1095-1099); the Second (1147-1149); the Third (1189-1192); the Fourth (1198-1204); the Children's Crusade (1212); the Fifth (1217-1221); the Sixth (1228-1229); the Seventh (1248-1254); the Eighth (1270); and the Ninth (1290). Other ill-starred Western military expeditions against the Arabs continued up to the 15th century. Actually, Europe's hatred and fear of Arab and Muslim power were so intense that the idea of the Crusade persisted well into the 17th century, and the conviction that war might be just and legitimate has since become more deeply engraved in the conscience of the West.
Thursday 16 May 2019
Does Islam explain reality better than Atheism?
The debate video is now up of the debate held at Oxford comparing the
claims of Islam and the claims of Atheism, and assessing which better
explains reality.
The debate was hosted by Oxford University on 6th May 2019.
Atheist’s denial of God meant that they couldn’t provide an ultimate explanation of reality without falling into self-contradictions.
The speakers were Mohammed Hijab , Abdullah al Andalusi debating against Atheist speakers, Alex O’Connor, an international speaker and popular YouTuber “Cosmic Skeptic”, and writer for the New Humanist Journal, and Psychiatrist, Dr Colin Brewer.
The debate was hosted by Oxford University on 6th May 2019.
Atheist’s denial of God meant that they couldn’t provide an ultimate explanation of reality without falling into self-contradictions.
The speakers were Mohammed Hijab , Abdullah al Andalusi debating against Atheist speakers, Alex O’Connor, an international speaker and popular YouTuber “Cosmic Skeptic”, and writer for the New Humanist Journal, and Psychiatrist, Dr Colin Brewer.
Saturday 11 May 2019
Atheist Myth: “No One Has Ever Killed in the Name of Atheism”
Even if we were to ignore the obvious crimes against humanity that
atheistic communists have committed, atheism would be condemned simply
by examining the devastation of the French Revolution.
Another link related to Atheism (In case the Atheists attack your religion).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_atheism
https://evangelicalsnow.wordpress.com/2012/06/21/no-one-kills-in-the-name-of-atheism/
http://www.thomism.org/atheism/atheist_murderers.html
https://billmuehlenberg.com/2014/02/08/atheism-government-and-killing/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Militant_Atheists
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Catholic_victims_of_Soviet_persecutions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_in_the_Eastern_Bloc
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_in_the_Soviet_Union
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecutions_of_the_Catholic_Church_and_Pius_XII
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Jehovah%27s_Witnesses#Soviet_Union
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Muslims#USSR
https://www.conservapedia.com/Atheism_and_violence
Source
Several points:
1. This is a silly, if not also a thoroughly common, argument. If the negative actions of any and all theists reflect badly upon all theists, all forms of religion and all religionists then it follows that the negative actions of any and all atheists reflect badly upon all atheists, all forms of irreligion and all irreligionists. This logical fallacy is called “Guilt by Association.”
2. Communism is definitely a religion as the Catholic Church has claimed for more than a century. It’s an atheistic religion. It’s a religion created by atheists, celebrated by atheists and defended by atheists. It comes with its own prophets and prophecies, sacred items, soteriology, hierotopy, pseudo-spirituality, pseudo-morality, pilgrimages, temples, theophany, soteriology, cultic practices, sacred texts and exegetical commentary.
3. Even if we were to ignore the obvious crimes against humanity that atheists involved in the global communist movement in the past century have committed, we can condemn all atheists and atheism simply by examining the one million dead at the hands of “rational,” “enlightened” atheist French Revolutionaries. Historians call the Vendean Martyrs in March 1793 the modern-era’s first genocide. The atheist French Revolutionary Army ordered the conscription of 300,000 citizens of Vendée. Having already had all of their churches suppressed and their bishops slaughtered, this infuriated the populace which rose up in “The Catholic Army.” In response, the Revolutionary Army massacred 6,000 Vendée prisoners, many of them women, children and the elderly, after the battle of Savenay. In addition, 3,000 Vendée women were drowned at Pont-au-Baux. In addition, 5,000 Vendée priests, elderly, women and children were tied in groups in barges and drowned in the Loire River at Nantes. By July, AD 1796, nearly 500,000 Vendean Catholics were killed. All of these theists were killed at the hands of atheists. Considering this was the first cry of “public” atheism—as opposed to individuals who simply didn’t believe in God throughout Christian history—atheists have yet to explain why “compassionate” and “rational” atheists’ hands are so murderously bloody.
4. If the above statement were true, it might make the atheist case unassailable. However, anyone who has read a newspaper at any time between the 17th and 21st centuries knows this to be untrue. This is one of the atheists’ fondest lies. I’m not sure that the person about to be executed by a Marxist or Maoist atheist is assuaged in the knowledge that his evil, merciless executioner isn’t killing him because he’s an atheist but rather because he believes in an atheist philosophy and only coincidently doesn’t believe in God. Multiply this by all 152 million dead at the hands of atheists in the 20th and 21st century—a carnage which has yet to abate—makes the above claim perfectly worthless. In addition, we have more than sufficient proof that atheists killed in the name of atheism as in the case of the Soviet Union’s Society of the Militant Godless, Mao Zedong’s Red Guard, the Enlightenment’s Reign of Terror, Abimael Guzmán’s Shining Path, atheist Napoleon’s wars and Plutarco Elias Calles democide of Mexican Catholics during the Cristero Wars.
5. Atheists who make nonsensical, ahistorical and misological claims such as this one, prove they’ve never truly examined their own community’s behavior under the microscope as they enjoy doing with us. Consider instead those who have died in the name of atheistic philosophies such as marxism, socialism, communism, maoism, Nazism, fascism, totalitarianism, libertarianism, monopolistic capitalism, robber barronism, industrialization, secularism, jingoism, anarchism, social darwinism, eugenics, malthusianism, messianic scientism, nihilism, anti-humanist terrorism, individualism, narcissism, physicalism, materialism, consumerism, modernism, postmodernism, nietzscheism, Marquis de Sade’s sadism, (i.e., sadistic murders) moral relativism, hedonism, radical feminism, (i.e., abortions, infanticide, suicide, false claims of rape) radical environmentalism, (i.e., ecological terrorism) Anton LaVey’s satanism, (i.e., ritual murders) and the “Law of Attraction.” (i.e., the deaths, including suicides, caused by Peter Popoff, Sylvia Browne and other gurus”) All of these atheistic philosophies have resulted in the deaths of countless hundreds of millions of human beings. In comparison, the deaths caused by religion seem almost quaint and insignificant.
6. But even if we were to never mention any of the dark secret murders of the atheist community ever again, an important question remains begging to be begged: Why is it that no one has ever been helped anyone in the name of atheism? There has never been anyone who has ever given a crust of bread or a drop of water or a stitch of clothing to anyone in the name of atheism. (Richard Dawkins admits in his The God Delusion that it’s “easier to herd cats than to get atheists to cooperate each other.” This goes a long way in explaining why atheists refuse to cooperate with each other and form charitable concerns. Christians easily cooperate with each other otherwise hospitals and schools would never get built.)
If this is incorrect, where are the army of atheists humanitarian traipsing about Africa and Asia giving hope to the poor and disadvantaged? Certainly none of the famous atheist polemicists have ever done so. Christopher Hitchens was asked on multiply occasions if he or other atheists who similarly had a poor opinion of St. Mother Teresa have actually gone to India and rolled up their sleeves to bathe lepers. I’ve asked many atheists including P.Z. Myers, Patricia Churchland and Christopher Hitchens and none have responded in the positive. Madalyn O’Hair never mentioned having done so. Mao and Stalin were busy killing tens of millions of their compatriots by engineering famines in their respective countries so it’s hard to imagine they also helped poor people. When I volunteered at Mother Teresa’s street clinics in Calcutta, I never met an atheist doing the same work but I routinely met Catholics doing so.
Regardless of their obviously false claim that atheists have dutifully avoided murdering anyone, it’s a rather worthless commentary if a community has done nothing positive for humanity. Most humans have never killed anyone but this hardly makes those most people saints or Nobel Peace Prize material. (Mother Teresa was both.) It would be a sad epigraph on an atheist’s tombstone if it read, “He never helped a single individual, but at least he never killed anyone except as a result of his indifference and apathy.” Most prison convicts and related sociopaths have similarly not killed anyone but the fact that they’re in prison proves they’ve disregarded the rights and needs of others. Only atheists put humanitarians in prison as in the case of the Soviet Union and Post-Revolutionary China, North Korea, Cuba, Cambodia and Viêt Nam.
7. Further, the fact that many atheists are glib or gratified at the horror of mass murders committed by their fellow atheists goes a long way in proving they are mere contrarians. One can’t glibly disregard the suffering of others while ignoring the fact that others (i.e., Catholics) are working towards alleviating suffering in the world and throughout it all, lying about their good works—that’s requires a special kind of evil which is hopefully extremely rare in this world.
These philosophies and the horrors they generated aside, fundamentalist atheists should rather worry about the kind of people they hope to attract to their community when they mock religion. Truly compassionate, generous, gentle, kind and forgiving people won’t be attracted to a group that mocks others. I’ve been a Catholic for a long time and I have never heard the word “atheism” or “atheist” ever mentioned in church. Having been an atheist prior to reverting to Catholicism, I can assure you that that community is obsessed by the Church finding themselves incapable, or unwilling, of discussing anything other than the most recent reason for hating us. They never talk about the wonders and glories of atheism or the joy that it engenders in their hearts. They never raise virtuous atheists as models for themselves and their children. They never organize themselves to help the unfortunate. It’s because they can’t and simply don’t want to.
Frankly, after a couple of years, I simply couldn’t take it anymore. I left atheism behind because it was snarky, sniping and moribund reveling in its bitterness and denial. It’s amazing anyone psychologically and spiritually survives the wholesale rejection of hope, logic and reality as they cherry pick data to uphold their opinions. Or, maybe, it’s because God has a special place in His heart for atheists. As G.K. Chesterton points out, God even sustains atheists in their disbelief.
1. This is a silly, if not also a thoroughly common, argument. If the negative actions of any and all theists reflect badly upon all theists, all forms of religion and all religionists then it follows that the negative actions of any and all atheists reflect badly upon all atheists, all forms of irreligion and all irreligionists. This logical fallacy is called “Guilt by Association.”
2. Communism is definitely a religion as the Catholic Church has claimed for more than a century. It’s an atheistic religion. It’s a religion created by atheists, celebrated by atheists and defended by atheists. It comes with its own prophets and prophecies, sacred items, soteriology, hierotopy, pseudo-spirituality, pseudo-morality, pilgrimages, temples, theophany, soteriology, cultic practices, sacred texts and exegetical commentary.
3. Even if we were to ignore the obvious crimes against humanity that atheists involved in the global communist movement in the past century have committed, we can condemn all atheists and atheism simply by examining the one million dead at the hands of “rational,” “enlightened” atheist French Revolutionaries. Historians call the Vendean Martyrs in March 1793 the modern-era’s first genocide. The atheist French Revolutionary Army ordered the conscription of 300,000 citizens of Vendée. Having already had all of their churches suppressed and their bishops slaughtered, this infuriated the populace which rose up in “The Catholic Army.” In response, the Revolutionary Army massacred 6,000 Vendée prisoners, many of them women, children and the elderly, after the battle of Savenay. In addition, 3,000 Vendée women were drowned at Pont-au-Baux. In addition, 5,000 Vendée priests, elderly, women and children were tied in groups in barges and drowned in the Loire River at Nantes. By July, AD 1796, nearly 500,000 Vendean Catholics were killed. All of these theists were killed at the hands of atheists. Considering this was the first cry of “public” atheism—as opposed to individuals who simply didn’t believe in God throughout Christian history—atheists have yet to explain why “compassionate” and “rational” atheists’ hands are so murderously bloody.
4. If the above statement were true, it might make the atheist case unassailable. However, anyone who has read a newspaper at any time between the 17th and 21st centuries knows this to be untrue. This is one of the atheists’ fondest lies. I’m not sure that the person about to be executed by a Marxist or Maoist atheist is assuaged in the knowledge that his evil, merciless executioner isn’t killing him because he’s an atheist but rather because he believes in an atheist philosophy and only coincidently doesn’t believe in God. Multiply this by all 152 million dead at the hands of atheists in the 20th and 21st century—a carnage which has yet to abate—makes the above claim perfectly worthless. In addition, we have more than sufficient proof that atheists killed in the name of atheism as in the case of the Soviet Union’s Society of the Militant Godless, Mao Zedong’s Red Guard, the Enlightenment’s Reign of Terror, Abimael Guzmán’s Shining Path, atheist Napoleon’s wars and Plutarco Elias Calles democide of Mexican Catholics during the Cristero Wars.
5. Atheists who make nonsensical, ahistorical and misological claims such as this one, prove they’ve never truly examined their own community’s behavior under the microscope as they enjoy doing with us. Consider instead those who have died in the name of atheistic philosophies such as marxism, socialism, communism, maoism, Nazism, fascism, totalitarianism, libertarianism, monopolistic capitalism, robber barronism, industrialization, secularism, jingoism, anarchism, social darwinism, eugenics, malthusianism, messianic scientism, nihilism, anti-humanist terrorism, individualism, narcissism, physicalism, materialism, consumerism, modernism, postmodernism, nietzscheism, Marquis de Sade’s sadism, (i.e., sadistic murders) moral relativism, hedonism, radical feminism, (i.e., abortions, infanticide, suicide, false claims of rape) radical environmentalism, (i.e., ecological terrorism) Anton LaVey’s satanism, (i.e., ritual murders) and the “Law of Attraction.” (i.e., the deaths, including suicides, caused by Peter Popoff, Sylvia Browne and other gurus”) All of these atheistic philosophies have resulted in the deaths of countless hundreds of millions of human beings. In comparison, the deaths caused by religion seem almost quaint and insignificant.
6. But even if we were to never mention any of the dark secret murders of the atheist community ever again, an important question remains begging to be begged: Why is it that no one has ever been helped anyone in the name of atheism? There has never been anyone who has ever given a crust of bread or a drop of water or a stitch of clothing to anyone in the name of atheism. (Richard Dawkins admits in his The God Delusion that it’s “easier to herd cats than to get atheists to cooperate each other.” This goes a long way in explaining why atheists refuse to cooperate with each other and form charitable concerns. Christians easily cooperate with each other otherwise hospitals and schools would never get built.)
If this is incorrect, where are the army of atheists humanitarian traipsing about Africa and Asia giving hope to the poor and disadvantaged? Certainly none of the famous atheist polemicists have ever done so. Christopher Hitchens was asked on multiply occasions if he or other atheists who similarly had a poor opinion of St. Mother Teresa have actually gone to India and rolled up their sleeves to bathe lepers. I’ve asked many atheists including P.Z. Myers, Patricia Churchland and Christopher Hitchens and none have responded in the positive. Madalyn O’Hair never mentioned having done so. Mao and Stalin were busy killing tens of millions of their compatriots by engineering famines in their respective countries so it’s hard to imagine they also helped poor people. When I volunteered at Mother Teresa’s street clinics in Calcutta, I never met an atheist doing the same work but I routinely met Catholics doing so.
Regardless of their obviously false claim that atheists have dutifully avoided murdering anyone, it’s a rather worthless commentary if a community has done nothing positive for humanity. Most humans have never killed anyone but this hardly makes those most people saints or Nobel Peace Prize material. (Mother Teresa was both.) It would be a sad epigraph on an atheist’s tombstone if it read, “He never helped a single individual, but at least he never killed anyone except as a result of his indifference and apathy.” Most prison convicts and related sociopaths have similarly not killed anyone but the fact that they’re in prison proves they’ve disregarded the rights and needs of others. Only atheists put humanitarians in prison as in the case of the Soviet Union and Post-Revolutionary China, North Korea, Cuba, Cambodia and Viêt Nam.
7. Further, the fact that many atheists are glib or gratified at the horror of mass murders committed by their fellow atheists goes a long way in proving they are mere contrarians. One can’t glibly disregard the suffering of others while ignoring the fact that others (i.e., Catholics) are working towards alleviating suffering in the world and throughout it all, lying about their good works—that’s requires a special kind of evil which is hopefully extremely rare in this world.
These philosophies and the horrors they generated aside, fundamentalist atheists should rather worry about the kind of people they hope to attract to their community when they mock religion. Truly compassionate, generous, gentle, kind and forgiving people won’t be attracted to a group that mocks others. I’ve been a Catholic for a long time and I have never heard the word “atheism” or “atheist” ever mentioned in church. Having been an atheist prior to reverting to Catholicism, I can assure you that that community is obsessed by the Church finding themselves incapable, or unwilling, of discussing anything other than the most recent reason for hating us. They never talk about the wonders and glories of atheism or the joy that it engenders in their hearts. They never raise virtuous atheists as models for themselves and their children. They never organize themselves to help the unfortunate. It’s because they can’t and simply don’t want to.
Frankly, after a couple of years, I simply couldn’t take it anymore. I left atheism behind because it was snarky, sniping and moribund reveling in its bitterness and denial. It’s amazing anyone psychologically and spiritually survives the wholesale rejection of hope, logic and reality as they cherry pick data to uphold their opinions. Or, maybe, it’s because God has a special place in His heart for atheists. As G.K. Chesterton points out, God even sustains atheists in their disbelief.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_atheism
https://evangelicalsnow.wordpress.com/2012/06/21/no-one-kills-in-the-name-of-atheism/
http://www.thomism.org/atheism/atheist_murderers.html
https://billmuehlenberg.com/2014/02/08/atheism-government-and-killing/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Militant_Atheists
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Catholic_victims_of_Soviet_persecutions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_in_the_Eastern_Bloc
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_in_the_Soviet_Union
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecutions_of_the_Catholic_Church_and_Pius_XII
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Jehovah%27s_Witnesses#Soviet_Union
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Muslims#USSR
https://www.conservapedia.com/Atheism_and_violence
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