Stalin and the Crusades: Morality and Immorality of Religious Claims Acted Upon

[Sushi]

First of all, I apologize for my jerky writing; my mind is preoccupied and my thoughts a bit disjointed...

Often the argument about religion and unreligion (or our type of atheism) goes about like this:

religion makes people do terrible things; look at the crusades, at witchhunts, etc.

The counterpoint to this is, of course, Stalin, an atheist, killed many believers.

The response to this is usually referring to Stalin killing to communism.

Now, let's just ignore whether that last point is true or not regarding WHY he killed, and assume he did so because he was an atheist who hated religious belief.

It often appears to me that discussions on why religion leads to immorality are somewhat flawed. Someone CAN kill in the name of atheism; just like someone CAN kill in the name of Christianity.

This is reprehensible... but, I think, a better argument can be made on why religion leads to immorality.

I think that, when we act, we should use empirical fact to guide us. It cannot tell us what to do, quite obviously--but given our preferences and premises it can help us. For example, if we wish not to get burned, we don't touch a hot poker.

As it has been said before, "Religion makes good people do bad things." Religion gives us unjustified claims about the world. "Holy" mandates about homosexuality, the human "soul" (and thus the abortion/embyrionic stem cell research debate), etc.

Assuming the Christian worldview IS the correct one, would it not be "right" to have a hostility to Christianity, abortion, pornography/sex, and so on?

Isn't it just more prudent to say that religion causes immorality because it leads us to false conclusions about the world, instead of just citing deaths "in the name of" religion? Immoral faults caused by irrationality (the religious beliefs) are faulted directly are religion for coming to conclusions based on faith that can lead to hurting innocent people--witches aren't real, so thus supposed "evil" people were put to death wrongly through irrational belief. Atheism has no such features, which is why the Stalin comparison fails.

Am I correct in asserting this as a better take on the religion/irreligion morality debate?

[Ginarley]

...snip....

Isn't it just more prudent to say that religion causes immorality because it leads us to false conclusions about the world, instead of just citing deaths "in the name of" religion? Immoral faults caused by irrationality (the religious beliefs) are faulted directly are religion for coming to conclusions based on faith that can lead to hurting innocent people--witches aren't real, so thus supposed "evil" people were put to death wrongly through irrational belief. Atheism has no such features, which is why the Stalin comparison fails.

Am I correct in asserting this as a better take on the religion/irreligion morality debate?

I agree entirely - the crusades-were-evil argument is very weak and takes you nowhere useful. To me the greatest "evil" that religion does is to actively blunt humans greatest natural advantage - our ability to think. If we learn to think critically and skeptically we will be able to make educated moral decisions. And more importantly thinking allows you to understand the consequences of an action, instead of thinking there are no consequences thanks to some guy getting nailed to pieces of wood or that there are even positive consequences (40 virgins for example) for doing something otherwise evil. It is not that religion tells you to do evil things, it is that it takes away your ability to decide for yourself what is evil.

[hammegk]

I'd say dictators kill in the name of themselves. Atheism provides an easy way for them to decide neither good nor evil exist, and their ego (and that of their henchmen) becomes the law of god (the dictator) on earth.

[ChristineR]

The problem is that atheism is not an ideology. Stalin had the idea that it was okay to kill people in order to force them to become atheist. You could call that idea "communism."

Of course in reality very little of Stalin's killing was motivated by the desire to convert people to atheism, and communism is far more than atheism. I don't see any obvious reason why you couldn't have had a Christian communism and a church-going Stalin persecuting and starving the citizens of the Soviet Union.

Religion was not all there was to the Crusades either, of course, but the Crusades (at least as we know them) would not have happened if it weren't for the religious aspects.

[Cello Man]

I think it needs to be pointed out that those who always equate atheism with Stalin are making a tremendous logical fallacy along these lines:

All cows are mammals and they eat grass.
This means all mammals must eat grass.

Stalin was an atheist and a brutal dictator.
This means all atheists are brutal dictators.

See how dumb it is when you fill in the blanks with something else? I know this is kinda over simplifying the counter-argument, but it really needs to be out in the open so the rest of the discussion won't be bogged down in half-truths held up as absolute fact.

[andyandy]

Isn't it just more prudent to say that religion causes immorality because it leads us to false conclusions about the world, instead of just citing deaths "in the name of" religion?

it depends on what you regard as "morality"...

religion can be seen as a vehicle for a societal imposition of a "moral" framework for believers to operate within - a religion can be seen as causing "immorality" if a subjective opinion is formed as to the immoral nature of the rules within that framework.

[CapelDodger]

Stalin's first preoccupation was with nationalities, not religion. The nationality question in the Empire - crossing the Tsarist-Soviet divide - was a strategic concern. Religion tends to overlay the ethnic framework, and is often the rallying-point of nationalism. Stalin's oppression of religion was tactical, not ideological. He put much more effort into physically transporting national minorities, to break that other fundamental bond of Homeland, and killed far more in doing so. Far, far more. It's heart-rending. But it has nothing to do with Stalin's atheism. Stalin was simply a sociopath. History's full of them, and the vast majority weren't professed atheists. Quite the opposite.

[CapelDodger]

... but, I think, a better argument can be made on why religion leads to immorality.
One that I use is that religion provides yet another way for manipulative bastards to manipulate our very impressionable species into acting against its better nature.

It starts with "Don't kill". OK, we're all down with that. Life's more comfortable when killing's not going on all around us.

"Don't kill, but you must kill homosexuals". Hold up, my cousin's a screaming queen and he's brilliant with the kids, great fun, everybody loves him and his friend.

"Who gave you Don't Kill?" Umm ... you? "Do you want it taken away?" Umm ...no?

"Dead right. You owe us for that, so off the poof. He makes some of your priests feel uncomfortable."

[advancedatheist]

For some reason nobody gives Stalin credit for killing all those atheistic Old Bolsheviks during the purges who had blood their hands from the Revolution, Civil War and farm collectivization. Nor does any one want to remember that Stalin led the Soviet Union to victory over Nazi Germany. (Despite how Hollywood portrays the Second World War as an Anglo-American triumph, the Soviets did the bulk of the fighting.)

[Euromutt]

I'd say dictators kill in the name of themselves.Spot on.Atheism provides an easy way for them to decide neither good nor evil exist, and their ego (and that of their henchmen) becomes the law of god (the dictator) on earth.I'm not unsympathetic to that notion, but I don't agree with that wording. I don't think dictators "decide neither good not evil exist," but rather, they seek to cast themselves as the final arbiters in deciding matters of right and wrong. It is thus inconvenient if a segment of the population believes in some supernatural entity whom they consider to be that final arbiter, or at least better qualified than said dictator. So what's a dictator to do?

One option is to attempt to forcibly eradicate belief in such entities all together. This approach is most common in communist dictatorships, such as Stalin's.

The second is to co-opt the predominant organized religion and get its hierarchy to propagate the notion that your interpretation of right and wrong is fully consistent with God's (or whoever). This approach has been used by monarchies and fascist dictatorships like Franco's, and works best in countries where the overwhelming majority of the populace adheres to one particular denomination.

In the event that the population is too heterogenous, and you can't get all the churches to endorse you, you can always try the Nazi approach and create your own religion, loosely based on a couple of pre-existing ones.

[Elizabeth I]

Stalin killed people because he was a paranoid bast**d. Had his psychopathy taken a slightly different turn he might have declared himself Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church and killed off all nonbelievers. Except, of course, that to admit the existence of God would be to admit somebody higher up the food chain than Stalin.

[CapelDodger]

For some reason nobody gives Stalin credit for killing all those atheistic Old Bolsheviks during the purges who had blood their hands from the Revolution, Civil War and farm collectivization. Nor does any one want to remember that Stalin led the Soviet Union to victory over Nazi Germany. (Despite how Hollywood portrays the Second World War as an Anglo-American triumph, the Soviets did the bulk of the fighting.)
I don't give Stalin any credit for the purges, he slaughtered many far better men than himself. It is arguable that only someone as crudely brutal as Stalin could have forced through the industrialisation that enabled the Red Army to wear down and then crush the Nazis. Even then he nearly blew it by eviscerating the officer corps in the 30's, and by refusing to hear of Barbarossa even though it was hardly secret. Stalin expected the attack in 1942, and that was all he needed to know. That's the sort of problem you get when you're ruled by a paranoid psychopath.

[hammegk]

I think it needs to be pointed out that those who always equate atheism with Stalin are making a tremendous logical fallacy along these lines:
You have it backwards. :)



The problem is that atheism is not an ideology.
Yes, that why it's such a problem converting people to it .... :D



Had his psychopathy taken a slightly different turn he might have declared himself Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church and killed off all nonbelievers. Except, of course, that to admit the existence of God would be to admit somebody higher up the food chain than Stalin.
Few people in positions of great power appear to admit anything being higher on the food chain. A choice of atheism as a personal philosophy removes any lingering doubt.


Euromutt: We are in basic agreement.

I will say a dictator's choice of religion as a basis at least gives the followers/converts/survivors something more palatable than dictator worship, although the move to dictator worship seems inevitable to me.