Anthony Esolen, in
Crisis Magazine, on the New Intolerance:
The “faith” of no faith moved Stalin to murder his millions in the Ukraine, and Mao to murder his tens of millions throughout the vast rural territories of China. Secularism is a bloody business, because, without God, man is affixed to the terrible adverb “only,” and there is very little you cannot do to someone who is “only” a counter in an economic tally, or a pawn in a vast historical battlefield, or an organic machine consuming food and water, or whatever.
Read more
here.
2 comments:
Since when is Marxism "new"? It is its own weird secular religion, with a prophet and a promised utopia. The belief in a higher purpose leading to an ultimate good is what enables people to kill unbelievers, not atheism. Otherwise,how does one explain jihad in the Middle East, or the terrorist acts committed by rightwing Christians in the US? In my view, as I am not ensnared in an ideology like Christianity or Marxism, there is no higher purpose which justifies killing an innocent person. It is those ideologies which dehumanize individuals as unworthy unbelievers, not atheism. Each persons' life is its own highest purpose, and society should strive to maximize happiness of the broadest range of people possible.
Dear Mr. Cobb,
First you say, "The belief in a higher purpose leading to an ultimate good is what enables people to kill unbelievers."
Then you say, "Each persons' life is its own highest purpose, and society should strive to maximize happiness of the broadest range of people possible."
It would be interesting to compare the number of murders committed in the U.S. for religious reasons verses those committed because someone saw their own life as the highest good.
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