Rebuttal to image 'atheist atrocity'? Maybe start a trend with an opposing image

JamesT · 04-14-2016, 01:45 PM

Hi,
I have seen this image (linked below) pop up on a few occasions, at first I see a few 'atrocities' were not even atheistic at all and coincidentally some religious. What I would like maybe 1 or 2 sentences explain why they have nothing to do with atheism and more to do with politics or power or just some insane leader. But please if one of these have any atheistic motive behind it, I would like to know.. as I believe to stay truthful about things, you cannot go wrong. I have seen many essays refuting this stupid fallacy, name 'The Atheist Atrocity Fallacy', and you can use those has a basis for information or well any history book. I will give a few links sources at the end to go by

I mean I have looked everywhere for a picture of sorts on google images but nothing really to go against this picture, there are a few with but nothing of worth. A collaboration with you guys will be extremely appreciative.

Update: As mentioned below: I don't mean these were done with people with no belief in a god (I could argue some of these leaders did and/or believed they were god and carried out and defended a religious worldview), rather were they done in the name of NO god. Was it there motive? Personally atheism is just a lack of believe of a deity and carry with it NO strong motive, i'e doctrine, worldview, book telling what to do, god telling them what to do.

This little write-up below accompanied the image:

Quote:

Atheism and Mass Murder in 20th century:
Mao Ze-Dong (China, 1958-61 and 1966-69, Tibet 1949-50) 49-78,000,00 people murdered
Jozef Stalin (USSR 1932-39 only) 15,000,000 people murdered
Pol Pot (Cambodia, 1975-79) 1,700,000 people murdered
Kim II Sung (North Korea 1948-94) 1.6 million people murdered
Tito (Yugoslavia 1945-1987) 570,000 people murdered
Suharto (Communists 1967-66) 500,000 people murdered
Ante Pavelic (Croatia 1941-45) 359,000 people murdered
Ho Chi Min (Vietnam 1953-56) 200,000 people murdered
Vladimir Ilich Lenin (USSR, 1917-20) 30,000 people murdered
Adolf Hitler (Germany 1939-1945) 12,000,000 people murdered

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Also I would like to mention but I'd say everyone know that Communism does NOT equate to atheism. I don't even know how this came about:
Communism is a political ideology, atheism is not political. Its simply the disbelief in gods or goddesses. There was much more than just persecution of religious people in communist-ran countries like Russia and China. Anyone that didn't follow them or protested them that got caught were often plucked from the streets to be tortured or executed, no matter what they believed. The motives for these were political, not based off the personal beliefs of the leaders. Just like there can be a water in a orange, does not in any way mean that water has a special connection to oranges. It doesn't mean that an atheist has to share *anything* with communism apart from a "lack of belief in a god or gods".

So I could say to many of these atrocities something like "Not atheist but Communist/political"
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Quote:

For example the North Korea one, everyone worshiped Kim Jong-Il and he himself believed he was the son of god or rather a mini god himself and his father a god.. The whole servility and totalitarianism by the people of North Korea is a religious regime, and believed he was god, as the first known totalitarianism in the world was a religious one.

In a place (North Korea) with absolutely no private or personal life, with the incessant worship of a mediocre career-sadist as the only culture, where all citizens are the permanent property of the state, the highest form of pointlessness has been achieved.
The whole "GOD" thing is similar to the situation in North Korea. North Koreans have been taught since childhood that the "Dear Leader" is indeed a God, so they actually believe it because they know nothing else since childhood. As children, we were drilled and instructed NOT to challenge religion, but to accept 'on faith" or be damned to hellfire and damnation. I don't wish to live under a permanent unalterable dictatorship where one grovels and praises the divine leader and his divine father sounds almost like heaven, does it not. Totalitarianism defined.

Religious belief is a totalitarian belief. It is the wish to be a slave. It is the desire that there be an unalterable, unchallengeable, tyrannical authority who can convict you of thought crime while you are asleep, who can subject you - who must, indeed, subject you - to total surveillance around the clock every waking and sleeping minute of your life - I say, of your life - before you're born and, even worse and where the real fun begins, after you're dead. A celestial North Korea.

Who wants this to be true? Who but a slave desires such a ghastly fate? North Korea has a dead man as its president, Kim Jong-Il is only head of the party and head of the army. He's not head of the state. That office belongs to his deceased father, Kim Il-Sung.

It's a necrocracy, a thanatocracy. It's one short of a trinity I might add. The son is the reincarnation of the father. It is the most revolting and utter and absolute and heartless tyranny the human species has ever evolved.

- Christopher Hitchens
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So taking whats above as a guide, the summary would be: I would say "North Korea was a religious state that had Kim Jong-Il as a god and he himself believed he was the son of god and his father Kim Il-Sung was a god.. The son is the reincarnation of the father."
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If/when I have enough information, I will and try to create a few opposing pictures
1) The rebuttal to this (i.e - Mark out with red marker saying "Incorrect" and give a brief explanation why.)
2) 20thC atrocities - and give the years, deaths and description of what type of regime (political, power, religious etc.) it is (preferably using the picture shown here as a direct guide).
3) Since they can do it, so can we. We will make a "Religious 20th Century Atrocities" statistical image.

What do you guys think? If you guys think you know how to handle photoshop, please go ahead and create a master piece

I appreciate any co-operation and feedback. Hopefully later on after people can upload an image on a blog and therefore will be on google images

- Cheers

JamesT · 04-14-2016, 02:20 PM

Update:
The next part is pretty long but not necessary to read but I like to be as thorough as possible. The next few paragraphs were taking mostly from what Christopher Hitchens said and other people with a few coming from 'Atheist Atrocity Fallacy' pages on the internet. I hope this will come in handy for creating these images

[quote]Firstly, Hitler was a Christian, the church stood by him through all of his career, his regime was based on the Christians doctrines, he wanted to create a Neo-Nazi Christian regime as him as the son of god. He wanted people to worship god and himself making him a minor god.

Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Mao etc.. all trotted out to defend a religious worldview using religious doctrines and sided with the church.
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Part 1:
Fascism, the original 20th-century totalitarian movement, is really, historically, another name for the political activity of the Catholic right wing.

People, radicle extreme preachers, often assert a rather false pis aller question:
“Well what about atheist nihilism, what about atheist cruelty, what about 20th-century totalitarianism?” I take this seriously and I can only summarize it now and I will do it so very tersely as I can. First, Fascism, the original 20th-century totalitarian movement, is really, historically, another name for the political activity of the Catholic right wing. There is no other name for it—Francoism, Salazarism, what happened in Croatia, in Austria, in Barbaria and so on—the church keeps on trying to apologize for it, can't apologize for it enough, it's the Catholic right, Mussolini.

You can't quite say that about Hitler, National Socialism, because that's also based on Nordic and Pagan blood myths, leader worship and so on, though Hitler never repudiated his membership of the church and prayers were said for him on his birthday every year until the very end on the orders of the Vatican. And all of these facts are well known and the church still hasn't found any way to apologize for that enough. And whatever it is, you can call that, you can't call it secular. You may not call it secular. By the way, Joseph Goebles was ex-communicated from the Catholic Church. 50 percent, according to Paul Johnson the Catholic historian, of the Waffen SS were confessing Catholics, none of them was ever threatened with ex-communication, even threatened for it—with it for taking part in the final solution. But Joseph Goebles was ex-communicated for— marrying a Protestant. You see, we do have our standards.

conversation but to imply not only Hitler was an atheist but that he did so because he was one.. is horrendously idiotic. To say he specifically hated religious people is a lie. He hated EVERYONE who had power. In fact he DISPISED atheists too by announcing his opposition to atheism on multiple occasions, declaring his intention to “stamp out” atheism, and presiding over the distribution of Bibles urging their readers to believe in God “wholeheartedly”.

Regardless of what Hitler really believed, he was emphatically not an atheist: he said so himself numerous times, and in fact firmly declared his opposition to atheism. Here is a quote uttered by Hitler in April 1933:

Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without religious foundation is built on air; consequently all character training and religion must be derived from faith…

And from a speech given in October of that year:
We were convinced that the people need and require this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.

Though Hitler never repudiated his membership of the church and prayers were said for him on his birthday every year until the very end on the orders of the Vatican. And all of these facts are well known and the church still hasn't found any way to apologize for that enough. And whatever it is, you can call that, you can't call it secular. You may not call it secular. Hitler says that he’s doing God’s work and executing God’s will in destroying the Jewish people? How come the fuhrer oath that every officer of the Party and the Army had to take, making Hitler into a minor god, begins, “I swear in the name of almighty God, my loyalty to the Fuhrer?” How come that on the belt buckle of every Nazi soldier it says Gott mit uns, God on our side? How come that the first treaty made by the Nationalist Socialist dictatorship, the very first is with the Vatican? It’s exchanging political control of Germany for Catholic control of German education. How come that the church has celebrated the birthday of the Fuhrer every year, on that day until democracy put an end to this filthy, quasi-religious, superstitious, barbarous, reactionary system?

I’m sorry, sir, but it doesn’t proof squat. Hitler hated atheist as much as religious. Ur saying if 1 kills religious people has 2 be an atheist. Not true. He can be a person from another rival religion, physcopath or control freak. All of which Hitler was. He hated atheists as much as religious people. It proves he was a psychopath and killed for power.

To begin, here are just a few of Hitler’s Christian confessions:

“My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice…For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.” [3]

“The greatness of Christianity did not arise from attempts to make compromises with those philosophical opinions of the ancient world which had some resemblance to its own doctrine, but in the unrelenting and fanatical proclamation and defense of its own teaching.” [4]

However, an article released today by the United Press, Hitler bested God by 2 commandments, should be the final nail in the coffin of this spurious claim. This brief article concerns the discovery of an extant copy of “Germans with God”, a version of the Bible written by the Third Reich and distributed to German churches in 1941. The Nazi version contains two additional commandments to add to the standard ten, neither of which should be very surprising: “Honor your Fuhrer and master” and “Keep the blood pure and your honor holy”. Here is its rendition of the original Decalogue:

• Honor God and believe in him wholeheartedly,
• Seek out the peace of God,
• Avoid all hypocrisy,
• Holy is your health and life,
• Holy is your well-being and honor,
• Holy is your truth and fidelity,
• Honor your father and mother — your children are your aid and your example,
• Maintain and multiply the heritage of your forefathers,
• Be ready to help and forgive,
• Joyously serve the people with work and sacrifice.

Nazi comparisons might want to take a closer look at that first one: “Honor God and believe in him wholeheartedly“. Again, this is a Bible that the Nazi regime, and this almost certainly means Hitler himself, wrote, edited and approved of.

Adolf Hitler continued announcing his opposition to atheism on multiple occasions, despite declaring his intention to “stamp out” atheism, and despite presiding over the distribution of Bibles urging their readers to believe in God “wholeheartedly”.

By these it suggests that when Hitler wanted to overthrow Christianity and other religions (and atheists too, I might add), he himself made him a minor god and as seen above has all the characteristics of a new Neo-Nazi Religious Regime using Christianity's doctrines to do so.

Conclusion:
Hitler was a Catholic, so was Mussolini. Both of them had an official political concordat with the Catholic churches. Both of them wanted the worship of themselves as well as of God. And their third main ally, Hirohito, the Emperor of Japan, not content just to be theocratic, was himself a god. So anyone who says that fascism and Nazism were secular is an ignoramus...on a gigantic scale.

Fascists on the other hand (Franco, Mussolini, Hitler and various South American dictators) were strongly Catholic, – some with a few additional right-wing Protestant affiliations. There have been many good books by Karlheinz Deschner (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karlheinz_Deschner) although few have been translated into English. However, this one, God and the Fascists: The Vatican Alliance with Mussolini, Franco, Hitler, and Pavelic, should be available soon. It is already on Amazon for pre-order.

Smellyoldgit · 04-14-2016, 03:34 PM

JamesT · 04-14-2016, 03:57 PM

Davin · 04-18-2016, 07:53 AM

The closest a person to get to an "atheist murder" is if they said something like, "I killed him because I don't believe in a god." But that's an irrational statement.

Many religions have prescriptions for killing people. Atheism has none, because atheism doesn't have any tenants, books, or prophets.

It's not any more complicated than that. It's like trying to attribute the murders to mustaches.