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Comment by falcrist | Hacker News Reader

It's true that religion has engendered a great deal of evil throughout history. It seems like almost every major atrocity has been religiously motivated in some way.

However, if you look at Georgia for example, you'll see that suppressing religion doesn't do much. Even if you took the harshest anti-theist position, you'd have to admit that people simply need to choose to stop being religious. It's difficult or even impossible to force the issue.

So even if you dislike religion, the answer is still a secular society with freedom of religion and a healthy religious tolerance.

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Don’t gloss over all the atrocities committed by the Soviets and Chinese in the name of aetheism.

Evil people will harness whatever philosophy is convenient to justify their actions.

They didn’t commit them in the name of atheism, they committed them in the name of economic and social revolutions of which atheism played a relatively small part compared to communist ideology. By comparison with “in the name of god” there is no honest comparison.

@Jumpcrisscross: One can make similar arguments for the Crusades.

Then why not make that argument? Remember to put “Deus Vult” in that context.

Of course they did since the pretty much first they did was to imprison in concentration camps the clergy, and destroy all religious buildings as well.

“Pretty much” is doing yeoman’s work there, bravo. I like how it also glosses over the fact that most of what happened was anti-money, anti-status, and anti-intellectual.

> They didn’t commit them in the name of atheism,

Of course they did since the pretty much first they did was to imprison in concentration camps the clergy, and destroy all religious buildings as well. This comment is so incredibly naive.

Gloss over? The parent poster buried it in concrete! The Soviets and Chinese killed more than everyone before them, combined.

And you are 100% spot on - evil will use and abuse anything in pursuit of its goals. But those people that we clearly identify as evil - they were utterly convinced of the righteousness of their actions, whether it was Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, or the terrorists of the 21st century.

Were they not also religiously motivated?

Stalin himself was educated at a theological seminary. You should also be aware that Stalin drew upon the ideas of divine right that previous monarchs of Russia had used to claim authority. He used the Russian Orthodox church to grant himself legitimacy, and that church never left his side even through all of the atrocities. To this day, they create iconography of Stalin (typically with a halo).

Either way, this is decidedly NOT secularism.

I certainly didn't "gloss over" anything, having given approximately equal time to talking about religion and the suppression thereof. That's entirely unfair, by the way, since it's hard to find examples of the latter, while history is replete with examples of the former.

> religion has engendered a great deal of evil throughout history

It's more accurate to say religion was misused by many leaders hungry for power, fame, or treasure.

I wholeheartedly disagree with this statement. When the books your religion is drawing from glorify murder, subjugation, genocide, etc it's hardly a misuse of that religion to encourage or commit the same.

> It seems like almost every major atrocity has been religiously motivated in some way.

You seem to forget that what Stalin and Mao did in their respective countries, leading to the direct death of probably in the area of 50 to 100 millions people if not more, was completely anti-religious and can be pretty much considered as the greatest atrocity in History EVER. So, no, religion is probably not the root of all evil.

It's not hard to argue that Communism was a religion as it held all the trappings of such.

Of course not. A religion is something you choose to believe in. Communism did you give you any choice. It events prevents its own citizens to leave.

Many religions have sponsored wars of conquest and forceful indoctrination. The choice of belief in Communism or [this space intentionally left blank] was still up to the individual, though youthful indoctrination has been shown to be generally effective throughout history.

> The choice of belief in Communism or [this space intentionally left blank] was still up to the individual

That is a fake choice, since any hint of criticism led you straight to the Gulag. There's enough books about the period to check what actually happened in Russia and China.

Criticizing religion has often risked death or imprisonment.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition is perhaps the most well known due to the use of torture. In theory they limited themselves to the baptized, but as baptism occurred so young that's a meaningless distinction.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anusim is interesting as it's a category of forced conversion, but makes no mention of what they where forced to Catholic/Islam/whatever. When communism outlawed other religions it was doing the same thing as occurred in many other times and places.

PS: As an American it's very easy to internalize freedom of religion and separation of church and state. But, historically and even today that's far from universal.

After really thinking about what I posted really gave me an appreciation of their value.

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