Not at all. Fortunately most atheists are inconsistent. Unlike Camus and Sartre they donāt take their belief in a Godless universe to its logical conclusion but even they became humanists because they realised reductivism is an untenable conclusion. Garbage!
Theists keep asserting that someone who does not believe in a god is somehow naturally prone to becoming an inhuman sociopath, or even psychopath. This is a view, by and large, based on the view in many Judaeo-Christian traditions that we live in a fallen world, where humansā basic impulse is to be selfish and destructive.
Since I donāt accept the āFallā, but rather assert that humans, like all social animals, create rules of conduct (morals and ethics if you will) as part of their very nature, there is no need for supreme lawgivers. Itās in our DNA to cooperate.
And we are hardly the only animals that do this. Dogs and apes require nothing more than their essential and instinctual nature as social organisms to use, to some extent unconsciously, rules of conduct to assure the survival of the pack or tribe. In fact, Iād say a good deal of what makes humans get along with each other is instinctual and unconscious; we pick up sensory queues from other members of our species, we naturally fall into dominance hierarchies, and so forth.
If you really observe the so-called āatheistā states, you will find that for the most part those societies function like other human societies. It strikes me that theists who try to attack atheists by claiming we are all closet Pol Pots miss a few critical facts.
First of all, those who achieve positions of power in any kind of society are often not terribly representative of their populaces. They have certain traits, quite often some degree of sociopathic and narcissistic tendencies, which, sadly, your average human being responds to by submitting themselves. Even democracies are filled with people of power, whether they espouse a particular religious belief or none at all, who seem both able to impose their will on those they rule. Letās face it, people like strong leaders, and strong leaders tend to be pretty darned amoral people.
Second of all, thereās little evidence that belief in God makes people better. Whatever Hitlerās religious beliefs, the fact is that the large majority of the membership of the Nazi Party were not atheists, but were Lutherans and Catholics. Germany was and still is a strongly Christian nation. Once people, whatever their religious beliefs, surrender themselves to a strong leader and a strong ideological principle, they are capable of astonishingly vile acts. God, I am afraid, is no guarantor of moral conduct, even if he is, as so many here claim, He is the font of moral law.
Another observation I have about religion as a tool to unite, channel and control is the fact that the atheist states of the 20th century quickly produced their own quasi-religions; cults of personality. Look at how the Soviet propaganda described Lenin and Stalin, and in particular Stalin. He was portrayed as a superman, the rightful leader because he possessed some fantastical level of wisdom, knowledge and moral strength. The Soviet propagandists made him into what I would consider to be a Pharaoh; a demi-god possessed of powers far beyond that of a normal man.
The same applies to Hitler, to Mao, to Pol Pot, and the Kims in North Korea. All of those regimes had propagandists who understood the societies which they ruled, and also keenly understood that humans powerfully respond to certain archetypes. Maoās swimming across the Yangzi is a powerful example. Here is an aging man who had largely been sidelined after calamitous decisions that had costs tens of millions of lives, and he regained the initiative by an act that made him out to be a Nietzschian Ćbermensch. The ancient archetype of the King, blessed with strength beyond those of mortal man, which both religious and a-religious states had invoked since time immemorial, proved even in the 20th century so powerful as to allow Mao to cast aside his rivals, spur on the Cultural Revolution, and seize power in China for a second time.
The long and the short, from my point of view, and looking at the myriad atrocities large and small committed by human beings since the beginning of recorded history, is that belief in God or gods does little if anything to make people act better. The first genocide of the 20th century was conducted by a Muslim state where the ruler was also at least nominally the religious leader of his people.
