The Fallacy That Communism and Atheism are Joined at the Hip
Offline I was a little dissapointed when I interviewed my old friend about this. He brought up the same issue that I've heard so many times before and I still don't buy it.Basically, he said, and it's mirrored by so many here, that atheistic thought, when accepted at large by a given populace, leads to a totalitarian regime such as what we saw in the Soviet Union. I've sat quietly and patiently through debates where folks have tried to prove through historical quotes such things like, a) The Founding Fathers of the US were all Christians working to bring about "One Nation Under God", or some such rhetoric, or b) the former USSR's horrible regime was caused by the rejection of God. or c) Hitler was an atheist and atheism,material, (or of you're Ben Stein, scientific) thought leads to despotism and genocide.I would like to point out some fallacies in this line of thought.
First off, Russia has, throughout her history, never really been "free", not even today. There are still reports of secret police types hauling people away and what I get from friends who have worked gigs over there, that there are still places you can't go without getting an AK 47 shoved in your face. Under communism, the crime rate of the average citizen remained flat. One would think if collective atheism lead to moral breakdown, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany should've experienced moral anarchy among the average citizens, NOT just the government. Yet clearly this wasn;t the case, in fact it was the exact opposite. Under Nazi Germany, for example, crime among the citizenry was down. In fact, morally "cleaning up Germany" helped Hitler's popularity. If you want to get an idea of the direction Germany was going morally, watch some of the early German silent films,particularly the works of Fritz Lang and the Dr.Mabuse series. Hitler cleaned up alot of prostitution,drugs and pornography when he came to power and it helped his popularity tremendously. In the USSR, such crimes were well policed, just ask any drug dealers who were unfortunate enough to get caught under the old regime.
If godlessness leads to moral breakdown, why didn't the average Soviet citizens decay into collective moral anarchy?
The fact is, these acts of moral outrage, the genocide, the totalitarianism have absoloutely nothing to do with religion,yet have everything to do with power and corruption, which can happen under ANY regime, theistic or not. Human nature is human nature
"Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings."
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Well I'm an atheist and I have been called many things, but no one has ever accused me of being a communist- so you can just put me down as Exhibit A.
If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X
Equivocation fallacy when theists use this. Hitler was a very good christian. Mein Kampf is filled with quotes on god and christianity. Even said in one of his speeches that "Jesus was the first to expose the Jews and that was why he was killed,".
“It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.”
― Giordano Bruno
that sick son of a bitch!!!
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson
I could call you lots of names, but I would never call you a communist.
My only problem with you has been that you suffer from the same monochromatic thinking that one word ideas can act as a template for a complex society. This is where BOTH Ayn Rand AND Marx got it wrong. If evolution is a range then our outward expressions of economies and politics cannot be different then that. Everything sounds nice on paper to the people that advocate it, but reality is never as simple as a word as a cure all.
"Less government" sounds nice, but CANNOT at this point work considering the growing plutocracy which has exploded via the "money equals power" decision of citizens united.
I keep telling what you can do to achieve that, but without self introspection and giving more directly to those who are the workers, AT THIS POINT all less government will do AT THIS POINT, is put more power into the hands of the few.
Unless there is a mindset change at the top, they give the rest of us no choice but to compete with the same voting booth they flood money with.
But outside this issue, this IS ONE THING we can agree on. Not believing in a god says nothing about the politics of the person who does not believe. Our battling each other as we do, should show how pathetic it is for any theist to claim we all love Stalin and Hitler.
I think the worst either of us can say about the other is that we could claim the other is misguided. But since both of us love beer, and football in a country built on the private sale of both, and I am damn sure not going to give up on my Skins, any theist reading this should get the message.
WE ARE NOT ALL THE SAME POLITICALLY OR ECONOMICALLY just because we don't believe.
Beyond, I only post this here not to derail the thread, but merely as an example to any believer reading this that we are not all the same. There are other threads we can punch each other in the face over. Lets just let this be an example to believers that we are not robots anymore than they are.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
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LOL. Who wants to live in a country where there are no prostitutes, drugs and pronography ? Damn. No wonder the Nazis slaughtered so many people and committed such heinous crimes; poor bastards did not have anything better to do except walk around saluting Hitler and burning books. Must have really sucked.
“It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.”
― Giordano Bruno
We can hardly imagine a more totalitarian regime than a theocratic camp of desert nomads with Yahweh supervising the whole operation and making up rules as he goes. OTOH, religious style has its soft side, with Jesus and his group, with the giving property to the poor and following Jesus, or as early Christians pooled their property together. I heard that in south America there is the religious left wing politics instead and I can understand that.
As you say, atheism has no political guidelines, perhaps except being fair and impartial to all religions.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_communism
includes:
In the 19th century The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, colloquially called Mormons, attempted to live a form of Christian communalism called the Law of Consecration, using organizations described as the United Order. This was established under Joseph Smith, Jr.[4] and was first practiced in Kirtland, Ohio in the early 1830s. This originally helped Latter Day Saints with settling in Ohio and was to have helped with building and sustaining entire communities in Missouri, including Independence, Adam-ondi-Ahman, and Far West. Subsequent events, including the 1838 Mormon War, made it impossible for these communities to thrive.
After the Mormon Exodus and initial settlement of the Utah Territory, Brigham Young began in 1874 to establish a series of community cooperatives, which were collectively called the United Order of Enoch. This program was used in at least 200 Mormon communities, most of them in outlying rural areas, away from the central Mormon settlements. Most of the cooperatives lasted for only two or three years before returning to a more standard economic system. One of the last United Order cooperatives was located in Orderville, which continued until an 1885 anti-polygamy law enforcement action under the Edmunds Act effectively ended it by jailing many of its leaders.
...
However, an independent Christian communist movement did re-emerge, in a rather unexpected place: Latin America. This was a separate development from the earlier European and North American movements. Latin American Christian communism is a strong trend within liberation theology, which is a specifically Christian movement concerned with social justice and equality that incorporates both communists and other socialists. Liberation theology is predominantly Catholic in origin, given that Roman Catholicism is the dominant Christian denomination in Latin America, but there have also been liberation theologians from many other denominations. Liberation theology experienced significant growth during the 1960s and 70s, and many liberation theologians (including bishops and other prominent clergymen) supported the Sandinista government of Nicaragua in the 1980s.