Pitiful North Korea

I feel sorry for the author of that piece, sharing a last name with Christopher Hitchens the outspoken atheist.

Isn't it funny how militant atheists rarely if ever want to talk about countries whose governments are officially and aggressively atheistic? I guess that those countries somehow don't count toward discrediting atheism, the same way that actual communist countries don't count toward discrediting communism in the minds of true believers.

BB: Also, Adolf Hitler did not discredit non-smokers. Crazy.

I'm not understanding you, Jez. Nobody bases a government on smoking or non-smoking. But many governments have been based on religions, including the religion that is militant atheism.

We've been hearing shrieks of "Theocracy!" for years now from the Left, and many on the Right have agreed with the Adams quote about freedom being impossible without religion. Since our country's founding (and probably since the beginning of government) religion has been a central question. And ever since the French Revolution many have advocated aggressively atheistic government.

So it seems entirely appropriate to ask what actually happens under aggressively atheistic government. Consider it data for the scientific method, which many atheists claim to love. I think the data will show that aggressively atheistic governments are almost always brutal and poor.

This is an important observation because it counters the constant leftist claim that if actual religious believers are elected to power, then this will plunge our country into a Dark Night of Fascism. There are some benighted theocracies out there, such as Iran. But there are many more benighted atheist-ocracies.

Actually, North Korea is a poor example of an atheist-ocracy, because it has degenerated past that point. North Koreans today worship the head of state as a god, like the ancient Egyptians.

Look at it the other way around: the most successful modern societies are those that are relaxed about religion and non-religion and accept citizens of varying beliefs with minimal or no interference.

There's more than one way of getting it wrong.

Indeed. Militant atheism in government is no better or worse than militant theism in government.

I neither need nor want your religion, Ben, but I couldn't care less that you or anyone else practices it.. just keep its silly restrictions on freedom out of laws that affect me.

About "Militant atheism," I am astounded that of those two words you have the greater trouble with "atheism".
I think any society which can be described as "militant" is in trouble, atheist or not.
"Dictatorship" is also a bad word. "Communist" perhaps also. Why then the focus on the "atheist", when there are all these other possible sources of blame?

Jez: "the most successful modern societies are those that are relaxed about religion and non-religion and accept citizens of varying beliefs"

That depends on the time scale that you use to measure success. The tolerant societies are wealthier right now, but their futures are generally bleak on longer-term demographic trends. Ultra-tolerance is nice while it lasts, but it can't last for long. And when it falls, it generally gives way to the sort of militant government that you fear.

Over time, all governments must become more or less controlling, as circumstances require. Too much control strangles the economy, but too little control invites political instability. Few Americans understand political instability because we have had so little of it. Just the one civil war in the country's entire history, and no serious attempts at invasion. But that doesn't mean that the problem has disappeared, or that we're somehow exempt.

Wait until we lose a major city to a suitcase nuke, and then you'll see a sharp turn toward government control. If it goes that far, then you'll see an overreaction towards too much control. That's why I prefer incremental steps now, such as immigration control, rather than floating along in a dreamland until something truly awful wakes us back up.

Jez: "Why then the focus on the "atheist", when there are all these other possible sources of blame?"

I focus on atheism because it doesn't work as a national religion. It hasn't worked as a matter of historical fact, and I don't think that it can even work in theory. Atheism as social policy is based on some theories of psychology and human nature that simply don't fit the facts.

Even Islam is superior to atheism, because over the centuries Islam has at least managed to maintain reasonable political stability in the countries that embrace it. True, the Islamic countries are often repressive and impoverished, but they don't commit atrocities on anything near the scale on which atheistic countries do.

BB said: "Atheism as social policy is based on some theories of psychology and human nature that simply don't fit the facts."

Whereas theism as social policy is based on anything but facts.

Theism and government are, in my estimation, mutually exclusive. Combining them by using one to influence the other only ruins and brings about the eventual dilution of them both.

"Hi , I'm from the government and I'm here to help you." is just as much of a joke as "Hi government, I'm and I'm here to help you."

Oops.. the last paragraph should be:

"Hi (insert religion here), I'm from the government and I'm here to help you." is just as much of a joke as "Hi government, I'm (insert religion here) and I'm here to help you."

"I focus on atheism because it doesn't work as a national religion."

Well no, but it isn't a religion. It doesn't work as a cocktail shaker either.

"Atheism as social policy is based on some theories of psychology and human nature that simply don't fit the facts."

Well, I'm not sure how it implies a social policy, but atheism is based on the lack of belief in a deity, not anything to do with psychology or human nature at all.

What doesn't work is a dictator forcing you to be or profess to be an atheist and preventing you from worshipping how you wish. But the problem there is dictatorship and totalitarianism. But it's not atheism that makes a leader do that.

Finally, the impoverished nature of Islamic countries depends on the time scale you use to measure impoverishment -- medieval Islam was a far wealthier culture than Christianity, a situation which persisted for centuries.
The scale of communist states' atrocities is the result of a combination of industrial possibilities with the will of ruthless tyrants. I don't believe 20th century tyrants are uniquely evil. I put it to you that a character like Genghis Kahn was equally ruthless as say Stalin, but he didn't have trains so couldn't physically kill as many people.

Jez, there's no sense quibbling over whose definition of 'religion' is correct. Yes, of course you can define the word to exclude atheism. I choose not to.

I think that everyone has a religion in the sense that they have answers to the basic questions that religions answer, such as questions about morality, the meaning of life and death, and so forth. 'Religion' is the best word we have in English to efficiently refer to all those theories collectively. I understand that you don't see your religion as a religion. You think it's simply truth. But then, so does everyone else.

Let's also not quibble over what 'atheism' means. In the narrow sense it refers only to a lack of belief in a god. But I use it more broadly to refer to the cluster of beliefs that atheists tend to share.

And that leads into a central feature of modern atheism: a belief in the supremacy of consciousness and free will. So when I observe that people who emphatically don't believe in a god tend to share lots of other beliefs, the typical atheist response is to reject that observation. We non-atheists are initially baffled by this attempt to conquer facts with ideology, but on reflection I understand why this point is so important to atheists. If atheists tend to cluster in their beliefs, then that could imply that the conscious thought process by which they think they're arriving at those beliefs is only epiphenomenal. It's like the kiddie-cars on rails at the carnival: It's lots of fun to turn the fake steering wheel and pretend that you're steering the car, but it ruins the game to notice that all the cars travel the same path and end up in the same place.

The flip side of that belief in the primacy of consciousness is that atheists believe that human nature doesn't exist, or if it does exist then it isn't important. So, for example, when we talk about dictatorship under atheistic governments, I see it as the natural result of combining atheism, unlimited power, and human nature. As I see it, that combination always leads to dictatorship, which then usually leads to impoverishment and atrocities.

You see it differently. You see the dictatorships as resulting from the particular choices of the particular leaders involved, with the atheism being irrelevant. You believe that the atheist leaders might have chosen otherwise. They might have chosen not to become dictators, and so we should be tolerant and open-minded about the next attempt to establish an atheist state. Maybe this time, you think, it won't turn into a dictatorship. And maybe the next time we get into the kiddie-car, if we can figure out how to turn the steering wheel just right, then we will travel down a different path and end up somewhere else.

You point out that there have been lots of non-atheist dictatorships and atrocities, and that's true but irrelevant. The important point is that all atheist governments end up in the same place for the same reason. The fact that there are other roads to Hell shouldn't confuse us about where the atheist kiddie-car will take us.

So we aren't going to agree on much as long as we disagree in our fundamental assumptions about consciousness and human nature. I like to call it theology, but you can call it psychology if you want. The questions are the same, regardless of the label.

You raise an interesting question about Genghis Khan. I don't know much about the Mongols, but I suspect that their goal was simply to establish themselves as the dominant group. I would expect that the Mongols frequently accepted tribute as protection money. They didn't care about the the beliefs of the people they subjugated; they just wanted the money and the power. They weren't spreading an ideology; they were spreading their race, their genes.

The Communists were very different. They were Utopians. They wanted to create a workers' paradise peopled with New Men whose blank-slate minds would be written on exclusively by the super-smart Communist specialists in correct thought. And when Utopia failed to appear, this was always determined to be the fault of specific groups of people, especially educated people. So the Communists killed whichever groups were determined to be obstructing progress toward Utopia. They killed, and killed, and killed, and killed, and still Utopia somehow never materialized.

I don't see how that's in any way similar to the Mongols.

re definition of atheism: it's worth being clear about it. The word "religion" can be used to simply describe fervor or zeal, or it can be used to describe any system of beliefs, but you are comparing it with proper full-scale religions which involve devotion and worship of a deity. It's worth being absolutely clear where the word "religion" can be applied to atheism: the second and only the second. I tend to think of that usage as almost parodic, like when a tradesman refers to some classic text or manual as his "bible".

In the contexts of atheism and a proper religion like Christianity, other words take on different meanings. Take "belief" for example; for me it can be a very tentative thing, easily changed in the face of new evidence and no-one need get burned; for a Christian a (religious) belief is something that must be defended and unchanging on pain of eternal fire.

So side-by-side comparisons as if they were both religions in the same sense are worthless, and that's why I, at least, get prickly about calling it a religion without setting up a great many caveats first.

I would prefer to call what you're talking about "materialism" ie a world-view which does not refer to soul or spirit. Let atheism be a tenet of materialism rather than eg. evolution be a tenet of atheism and I'll be infinitely more comfortable with the language.

"The flip side of that belief in the primacy of consciousness is that atheists believe that human nature doesn't exist, or if it does exist then it isn't important."
This simply isn't true at least for me, and the greater part of your response rests on this. Human nature obviously is, and is significant. I've read some history and I've lived enough to see that first hand.

But I see no reason for an "atheist state" to become a dictatorship.

What is an Atheist state anyway? America separates religion and state -- could you call it an atheist state because of that? What about somewhere like France, a secular state. Neither of those are seriously in danger of falling to a dictatorship.

But I agree that once dictatorship is established, tyranny is pretty much guaranteed. It needn't be with the first dictator, but it's just a matter of time.

The similarity with the Mongols is the "killed, and killed, and killed, and killed" motif. That's really the money part of the thing for me, the idealogical bs behind it really pales into insignificant beside that amount of death.
But here's a famous quote from Kahn that might help sum up his ideology: "It is not sufficient that I succeed - all others must fail".