i started reading Sam Harris' book today. if you don't know Harris, he is one of the "New Atheists" who has come to prominence in the last two decades or so, proclaiming again that religion is bad, specifically Christianity. Christianity is a lie. Christianity causes harm. the God of the Bible is an evil, bloodthirsty God.
now we see plainly the effects of such an anti-theology: communism has returned from the dead with a vengeance, and right here in America. Darwin published his origin of the species in 1859, giving atheists what they needed to be "intellectually fulfilled" as Richard Dawkins described. eleven years before this, Marx published his Communist Manifesto and in less than a century, the planet saw the rise of Hitler, who attempted to purge Europe of "undesirables" and responsible for 6 million Jews alone, and Joseph Stalin, whose regime murdered 20 million by some estimates and Mao Zedong, who historians estimate murdered between 20 and 46 million people. what do these murderers have in common? the anti-faith of atheism.
but hitler was a christian. hardly. hitler used christianity as a tool to cement his people together, to use the German church to gather them under his banner of Jew-hate, non-German hate, and rigid national socialism. he knew well the power of belief, and shrewd man he was, he knew how to manipulate that power for his ends, but by no means was he a follower of Jesus Christ. by the time the members of the german church understood hitler's purpose, hitler had already marched through much of europe. hitler understood too well Darwin's two-pronged message--the strong survive and God is dead. biology favors the ruthless and there is no God to judge between the holy and the profane anymore. deciding that the German race was the superior one, he sought to exterminate every single member of every race and he judged to be inferior--gays, blacks, jews, the infirmed, etc., etc. if God did not exist, then he did not create every man with equal value, in his image, and there must be some that are superior to others.
if God does not exist, then he has not created some moral law by which he expects us to live and to which he holds us responsible. if men have no moral law to govern their actions, then might quite literally makes right. every man in power has the obligation, however amoral, to secure power and to wield it as he sees fit. whether he wields it for the good or ill of his countrymen is entirely up to him, but remember he does not believe in a God who will judge him for his actions. killing one man bears no eternal consequence and neither does killing a million
an avowed atheist, Karl Marx proclaimed religion "the opium of the people." religion pacifies men, he believed. in some sense, yes, religion brings peace to men, but the men who crossed the Delaware and rode through the country shouting "the british are coming!" signed the Declaration of Independence under threat of death, and threw tons of tea into Boston harbor were hardly atheists. Marx hardly needed to lift a finger to any threat, living in free England off the wealth of a friend who himself inherited his wealth. true religion gives strength and courage to men to fight injustice when necessary, for true religion removes the fear of death.
despite the lessons of communist china, russia, north korea, and cuba, communism has returned in the coddled, angry, self-centered, new atheism of organizations like antifa and black lives matter. please do not confuse the positive phrase "black lives matter" that should stand together with other obvious phrases, like "white lives matter," "brown, yellow, red, and olive lives matter," with the anarchist, marxist, murderous organization known as BLM. communism has not died because atheism has not died.
atheism and communism are at their core a replacement for christianity. they are the answer to protestantism/capitalism. where protestantism teaches that men are responsible to God, and God gives power to every believer to live rightly, and capitalism allows men the freedom to trade and prosper as they see fit, according to the strength, ambition, and wisdom God has given them, atheism teaches that there is no God that holds us responsible, who gives us strength to do right. in communism, the government becomes God, simultaneously providing a meager, impoverished existence while enforcing this existence through the all-pervading threat of force. communism requires this force because men have no God to hold them eternally accountable for their actions and beliefs, and men run rampant over each other, fighting each other for the scant resources their government does not confiscate.
capitalism cannot exist without christianity because capitalism requires freedom and freedom requires faith in God. men who do not believe that God will judge them do not behave themselves. they do not care for their fellow man. they believe in the strength of their might and in what this might can steal for themselves--wealth, women, power, etc. men who behave in this way need the heavy and deadly hand of a ruthless dictatorial government to rule them.
atheism is the faith of fools. i cannot answer all of harris' objections. yes, God commits acts that are not "nice." but good is not always nice. good often destroys evil, and it must, in ways that are not pleasant. many men have written many books detailing the historic and even scientific evidence for christianity. today we witness the sociological evidence firsthand against atheism in the hearts of men and women en masse who have not placed their faith in Christ.
