How come religion is always criticized for being "violent" and "oppressive" but atheism is never criticized despite it also being used for violence an

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Look at communism, for example, which is based off of historical and dialectical materialism which is atheistic. The Soviet Union enacted quite violent persecution of religion, between 12-20 million Orthodox Christians were murdered by the Soviet Union simply for their religious beliefs. Catholicism was also suppressed in communist Poland. China today persecutes Christians, there are numerous underground Churches, and it also has deliberately targeted Muslim Uyghurs and has put them into concentration camps. The CCP is official atheist and actually seeks to proselytize their atheism, they have been deliberately targeting Buddhists as well and have tried to get them to become atheists. Communist nations force atheism onto their citizens, they don’t have freedom of religion. Also, look at the French Revolution, when Catholic clergy were severely persecuted and a mock cult to “Reason” was set up, it was an atheistic revolution.
 
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Just comes down to one side pushing a narrative, and in a lot of cultures right now it’s popular to be atheist, agnostic or secular.
 
It is wise not to say something is ‘never criticised’ and then demolish your argument by criticising it.
 
How am I making any kind of argument here? I’m simply asking a question. Yes I did criticize, that doesn’t mean that atheism is criticized as much though.
 
While both religious and atheistic themes have been used in quests for power, there is a fundamental difference especially in your examples. Let’s step outside of Christianity for a second. There are groups of purportedly Islamic followers who’s interpretation of their faith leads to killing others, especially those who refuse to convert.
OTOH, various communist regimes were also killed and punished many (to put it mildly). However, I see the forced atheism of these regimes as a power play to stamp out competing loyalties. Keep in mind us humans aren’t that far removed from a time where matters of faith were also matters of loyalty to state.

So, too many of us non believers, doing things “in the name of atheism” is nonsensical. Instead I see the CCP, former USSR, etc as taking a bizarrely bloody path to crushing competing power groups. You can’t pretend that the Vatican doesn’t at least appear to wield a threatening level of control. (The JFK Catholic concern, the ongoing chins issue, etc)
 
Joseph Stalin’s atheistic regime killed tens of millions of people. Nietzsche promoted anarchy and nihilism. Atheism does not have a logical reason for morality. If we are all dust, why bother with it?
 
Answer: because the people saying it are atheists. That’s basically it.

It’s like how Christians bring up how secularism can be immoral and so on, even though there are other non secular forces that are evil too.

It all depends on who’s saying it. Nobody is going to criticise their own out of nowhere. And unfortunately, atheist support is more accepted that religious support.
 
Partly, it’s because the general public is not aware of how seriously atheist regimes take their atheism. They perceive it as a secondary part of the program.

Furthermore it is often not realised how atheistical Nazi Germany was.
 
Maximian said:
Furthermore it is often not realised how atheistical Nazi Germany was.
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With Nazi Germany engraving “Gott mitt uns” on their soldier’s belt buckles and restricting admission to the SS only to men who had a religious faith, I fail to see how exactly atheism was a primary part of the Nazi program.

And back to the topic: There are very few genuinely good criticisms from either side. Look at this thread alone - all that’s been said is a few rants how atheists are equal to Stalin or Hitler. Makes about as much sense as the ramblings that christians caused the Crusades or the Dark Ages.
 
It’s probably because people never officially kill ‘in the name of atheism’, while some religious people have done that in the past, such as Muslim extremists to pick an example that is most recent.

I do find it funny that so many people (atheists of course) honestly believe that if there were no religion, the world would be a peaceful place and there would be no war. Yeah right. That view is so far from being true, I can’t believe how many times I have heard it.
 
Gott mit uns was the motto of the Prussian and then German Army from the time of the Great Elector and continued to be used as a matter of habit.

National Socialism foresaw the religious and cultural impulses of the nation being subordinated to and absobed by the national will. In other words the objective was the abolition of all religion through a new devotion to the racial imperative.

The nazis realised this would take time but they began by creating a new German Church. This was to be the vehicle through which the christian religion would be subordinated.

We see something a little similar in China, through the creation of the Catholic Patriotic Association.

Now, all this is very much on topic, because one reason why Atheist regimes escape criticism is because their atheism is not recognized
 
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I think it’s more of a problem of; that people do things for reasons and then use religion to justify it. Whereas atheists just do it and then use whatever mental gymnastics to justify it logically.

So it’s not that atheists are worse they just don’t use God as an excuse.
 
Maximian said:
Now, all this is very much on topic, because one reason why Atheist regimes escape criticism is because their atheism is not recognized
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But again they aren’t terrible because they’re atheist.
 
BohemianBrother said:
and restricting admission to the SS only to men who had a religious faith,
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Where did you get that? I have been an avid student of military history, especially Nazi Germany history, and I have never heard of that claim before. While most German soldiers (including SS men) were nominally Christians, the “religion” promoted by Himmler was a warped form of German nationalist occultism. He thought that this would awake the " warrior spirit " in his men as they sacked Russia much as the Vikings had done a thousand years earlier.

For example, let us look at marriage in the SS. Himmler favored a “marriage consecration” (Eheweihe) rather than a church wedding. This was one of many pseudo-Germanic Teutonic rituals that Himmler wanted to replace traditional Christian rituals. So no, the SS were not followers of or believers in traditional Christianity and they didn’t need to have a religious faith to be admitted into the ranks.
 
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Interesting question!

I think because atheism is considered an absence so things can not be attributed to it, while religion is considered something to which things can be attributed.

Also, those who criticize religion for violence and wars seem to expect (wish?) all religious people to be utter pacifists, so
  1. any violence or war is criticized without regard to its justice,
  2. all religions are lumped together even tho they respond differently (the Quakers and Amish must be upset about this!), and
  3. it is never brought up that some of these events are the result of people acting against their religion.
And the same people do not credit religion for the good it has done!
 
I almost couldn’t find any information on it, so I am not sure if it is even true. The only reference I’ve got is from wikipedia. It lists a source, so you can check it, if you have the time.


You’re totally right with Himmler and his fascination for neopaganism, and that is one of the reasons why I generally oppose using Nazi Germany as an example of an atheist totalitarian state. The nazis were famous for their horrible bending of science, philosophy and religion to fit their ideological views. I wouldn’t say naziism is inherently atheist, it is primarily a very very confused ideology.
 
Yes, you’re right with all that, but I don’t necessarily agree with the conclusion. A lot of the Nazis were fascinated with neopaganism, occultism, theism, deformed forms of ‘christianity’, etc. So I wouldn’t say their objective was the abolition of all religion, but remolding it into something compatible with their ideology. It is a stretch to call that atheism, and so it is a weak argument.

That is a very different situation from China, which is still influenced by the Communist ideology that very clearly preaches materialistic atheism.
 
Atheism was never enforced until the 1900s, whereas oppressive theocracies have existed for over a millennium.

As such, there’s far more knowledge of the theocratic side.

ICXC NIKA
 
Germany was a study in contrasts, especially concerning religion. By and large they were a very religious people as a whole (Lutheran and Catholic) with the regular German Army continuing to have it’s chaplains. It was Nazi ideology that swept up many people who started to look at Hitler as their “savior”. There is a great book available about the Catholic Bishop of Muenster, Cardinal August Graf von Galen and his interactions with the Nazi regime.
 
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