Julian Baggini is certainly right that being an atheist does not necessarily mean being an associate of the holocaust. Still, in order to defend atheism from the accusation of having been the cause of mass murders in the 20th century, Baggini seems to go very far:
[R]eligion is by nature not only divisive, but divisive in a way which elevates some people above others. It is not too fancicul, I think, to see how the centuries of religious tradition in Western society made possible the kind of distinction between the superior Aryans and the inferior others which Nazism required. (Baggini, Atheism, 2003, p. 86)
If Baggini is right, any thought implying distinctions (such as Plato’s utopian Republic) would lead to this kind of effect. And supporters of Christianity could claim that they were the ones who said that we are all children of God… Again, I am led to think that putting the history of atheism in a wider context, e.g., taking India and China into the picture would help enhancing the debate.
There is nothing in the idea of atheism that demands a holocaust. Atheism is a rational stance of rejecting the existence of supernatural forces or figures due to lack of evidence. In fact, the very lack of a belief in the afterlife would compel an atheist to pursue a good life here and now. An atheist has no need to wait for death in order to live a “good life”. Ajita Kesakambali, Brihaspati, and Charvaka (doubtful that the latter two existed other than being strawmen used for jousting by the faithful) did not talk about mass murder. They were actually interested in exposing the religious institutions as nothing more than a means of making a living by exploiting the masses. Ajita, to my knowledge, was a very simple person who did not possess material objects. He lived a life of a monk on the bank of the Ganges. Calling Ajita a materialist was simply to highlight the fact that he did not believe in the existence of the “non-material” (supernatural) things such as gods, ghosts, demons, etc. However, Ajita was not into materialism because he did not accumulate material objects of possession.
Truly, no normally thinking person could ever hope to have a good life on Earth after committing even a single murder. Mass murderers are either psychopaths who lack empathy, or mass murderers are people who are brainwashed into thinking that their murderous act, in some twisted way, will give them eternal bliss after death. After having committed a murder, the belief in eternal bliss after death can only take place in a larger context of a theistic religion which believes in an afterlife that rewards people for doing the work of god. Non-critically thinking religious people could be brainwashed into committing mass murders. However, a psychopath can commit murder simply because the psychopath lacks empathy. Psychopaths can be religious or non-religious.
Thanks for the comment. I slightly disagree with the fact that brainwashing needs to be religion-based. I am sure Pol Pot-like projects were also able to convince people that it was good to kill in order to achieve a greater good, be it a utopian future or the good of your nation.
Leaving out the people who kill once in a fit of rage or passion, killers, who kill victims whom they do not know, are either psychopaths or are motivated by faith. You are right, brainwashing need not always be religion-based nor based on a theistic framework. My argument is that if there are susceptible brains that can be brainwashed into believing in things without evidence, in principle they could also be brainwashed into believing that killing humans would not be a bad idea. On the flip side, it would take religion (faith or god) to motivate a “normal person” to commit acts of horror. How many atheist killers can you list? Pol Pot, Mao, Stalin, Hitler, and then perhaps a hundred more? Now try to list all the theistic killers, endless is the list. How many believers joined the Crusade? How many believers went to the Americas and Australia to commit genocide in the name of religion? How many terrorize the middle east, central Asia, and South Asia in the name of some invisible person? You will also notice that when atheists kill, they do not claim to do the work for atheism. On the other hand, when theists kill, they link their work to god, religion, religious belief, or their twisted faith.
I have an academic proposal to answer this important question, one could collect data on all convicted criminals (with personal consent of course) to see how many of them have a psychopathic brain by fMRI. My hypothesis is that one would find large number of psychopaths among convicted murderers, particularly mass murderers and serial murderers who have murdered people whom they do not know. I would also guess that among non-psychopaths who are convicted of mass murder, majority would be theists doing it for the sake of religion, god, religious belief, or their pious land. My suspicion is that most convicted mass murderers or serial killers are not atheists. I do not have the data but as always, I am open to changing my opinion if the data is to the contrary.
Salil, thanks for the engaging answer. I am not a statistician, but I guess that it is most likely that most murderers will end up being believers, just because the world’s population consists of way more believers than non-believers. One would need to adjust data, therefore, to evaluate them. Moreover, I wonder whether we should not use more ésprit de finesse in distinguishing what it means to be a “believer”. I, for one, cannot accept that this definition should cover both fundamentalists who think that everyone else is wrong and people like Raimon Panikkar or any other person open to recognise religious beliefs as different ways only.
Personally, I think that the main point is critical thinking and that there are Christians, theists, naturalists, Jews, materialists, Śaivas, Vaiṣṇavas, Buddhists, Zarathustrians, Jainas and atheists who are rational human beings and Christians, etc. who are not. Unfortunately, contemporary politics shows that critical thinking is a fatiguing enterprise and that many prefer uncritical band-wagoning. In many cases, in the name of ideals, such as “Our Nation”, “Our Blood”, “Our Traditions”
I agree with all your points.
That book was written in 2003 when Baggini when he was still an ‘ini’ (irish diminutive) philosophically speaking. He was born in 1968. Since then his position has become more cautious as far as I can judge. He even scolds Dawkins for his outré attitudes. The Nazi slur is silly, not even offensive, more at the level of a juvenile troll.
Thank you, Michael. I read the book and was annoyed by its apologetic tone. Your point might explain it.