The Moral Dilemma For Atheists - What To Do About Militant Atheism?

There is a fundamental logical and moral dilemma for atheists.

If they claim that atheism is no more than not believing in God,
is NOT a dogma or a doctrine, then they really have nothing left to say.

They simply go about life, as I do, not believing in astrology,
or purple unicorns. If I go further, critique astrology, or mock
it's adherents, then my praxis reveals an ideology, that is
'anti-astrology', layered on top of my disbelief and this melded
doctrine can easily develop dogma and all the other attributes
of belief.

So, atheists often claim, as a means of avoiding the challenge
to defend, support or provide evidence for their position, that
'atheism is nothing more than the disbelief in God'.

But atheism is more than that.  Atheists offer their opinions,
usually  critical, often ignorant and prejudiced, about other
people's beliefs, not just the religious,
 but also agnostics and other non-believers.

Theists are referred to, en masse and collectively, as supersitious,
primitive, lacking in reason, opposed to science. Often, even in the
works of prominent militant atheists such as Dawkins, they
extrapolate criticisms of one group, fundamentalists,
to all members of a religion, or even to all faiths.

And as in any pogrom of prejudice, examples can always be found,
(as the Nazis demonstrated), which propaganda can turn into
stereotypes and used to persecute a whole group.

Militant Atheists attack religion, and believers, often with violent intensity;


# From: Steve Knight
# Newsgroups: alt.atheism
# Subject: A.A. BAAWA  - FAQ
# Message-ID:
# Date: Sat, 26 Sep 2009 02:46:34 -0700
#
#  We kill theists and shit down their throats and
#  not in a girly way.
#
#
# Warlord Steve
# BAAWA


http://groups.google.com.au/group/us.legal/msg/ce0433cf8b107ed9?hl=en&dmode=source

This is clearly an extreme, threatening believers with death and
mutilation, and as atheist states carried out such threats,
killing over 60,000,000 people in the USSR, Maoist China
and Pol Pot's Cambodia, these threats must be taken seriously.


# "State atheism is the official promotion of atheism
# by a government, typically by active suppression of
# religious freedom and practice."
#     - "Protest for Religious Rights in the USSR:
#       Characteristics and Consequences,
#        David Kowalewski,
#        Russian Review, Vol. 39, No. 4 (Oct., 1980), pp. 426-441,
#
#
# "An atheist, Pol Pot suppressed Cambodia’s Buddhist religion:
# monks were defrocked; temples and artifacts, including statues
# of Buddha, were destroyed; and people praying or expressing
# other religious sentiments were often killed.
# ...the government emptied the cities through mass evacuations
# and sent people to the countryside. Cambodians were
# overworked and underfed on collective farms, often
# succumbing to disease or starvation as a result.
# Spouses were separated and family meals prohibited
# in order to steer loyalties toward the state instead of
# the family.
#
# About 1.7 million Cambodians, or about 20 percent of the
# population, were worked, starved, or beaten to
#death under Pol Pot’s regime."
# 
#      -   http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761579038/pol_pot.html
#
# The Cambodian Genocide:
http://www.lietuvos.net/istorija/communism/communism_photos2/392millones.jpg

#
# "The country's 40,000 to 60,000 Buddhist monks,
# regarded by the regime as social parasites,
# were defrocked and forced into labor brigades.
# Many monks were executed; temples and pagodas were
# destroyed or turned into storehouses or jails.
# Images of the Buddha were defaced and dumped into
# rivers and lakes. People who were discovered praying
# or expressing religious sentiments in other ways
# were often killed.
#
# The Christian and Muslim communities were among the
# most persecuted, as well. The Roman Catholic cathedral
# of  Phnom Penh was completely razed.
#
# The Khmer Rouge forced Muslims to eat pork, which they
# regard as an abomination. Many of those who refused were
# killed.Christian clergy and Muslim imams were executed."
#        -  http://countrystudies.us/cambodia/29.htm
#
# "Forty-eight percent of Cambodia's Christians were killed
# because of their religion."
#
http://www.lietuvos.net/istorija/communism/communism_photos2/44camboyano.jpg
#
#
# "the state established atheism as the only scientific truth."
#     - Daniel Peris, "Storming the Heavens:
#       The Soviet League of the Militant Godless"
#      Cornell University Press 1998 ISBN 9780801434853
#
#
# "State atheism has been mostly implemented in communist
# countries, such as the former Soviet Union,[1] China,
# Communist Albania, Communist Afghanistan, North Korea,
# Communist Mongolia and Poland under communist rule also
# promoted state atheism and suppressed religion.
#     - Forced out: the fate of Polish Jewry in Communist Poland.
#       Wolak, Arthur J.    p 104
#
# In these nations, the governments viewed atheism as an
# intrinsic part of communist ideology.


But we must not judge all atheists by the words and actions
of one individual or a minority, as atheists themselves
frequently do when they blame all Christians for the Crusades
or all Muslims for Islamofascist terrorism, or worse,
simply hold all Religion to blame for both.

This is the evil doctrine of Collective Responsibility, which
easily becomes Collective Punishment.
The Nazis took examples of individual crimes, some real,
some fabricated, and used the new media, radio and film,
to constantly present a propaganda barrage in which each
individual crime was referred to with an ethnic/religious
appellation. As the terms "Jewish [insert crime]", 
were heard repeatedly, an association was formed, in
the reader's mind,  between the group, and a whole
range of crimes, a stereotype created and then
used to justify the most horrific persecutions.

We can not hold all atheists responsible for the crimes
against humanity committed by atheist states.
Just as we cannot hold all believers, from every religion,
 responsible for  the Crusades, or Witch Burnings, or
paedophile priests.

What we can hold modern atheists, or believers, responsible

for is their denial or defence, of those past wrongs.

Just as modern Neo-Nazis cannot be held responsible for

crimes committed by past Nazis, but can be held

complicit if they deny and defend those crimes, so

contemporary atheists can be complicit in the holocausts

committed by atheist states, if they deny or

defend them, or worse, go further to advocate

them and call for them to be repeated:

 http://www.atheistnexus.org/photo/2182797:Photo:17475?context=latest

The Church has apologised to Jews for the historical pogroms
of the past, Muslims around the world have condemned
Islamofascist terror, and Indonesia, a predominately Muslim
democracy, has been among the most effective in capturing,
trying and executing terrorists.

This, in the view of the Atheist Reform Movement(ARM) is
the example contemporary atheists need to follow.
To admit that every atheist state in history has been a
totalitarian tyranny, to condemn those regimes and not to
repeat their propaganda lies and pogroms against
believers.


What we see in alt.atheism is a hypocritical see-sawing by
militant atheists between the claim that 'Atheism has no
dogma or doctrine" and therefore no need to provide
evidence for their opinions, and the historical evidence
that atheist regimes have Forcibly IMPOSED atheism
on whole populations, enforced by terror, torture and
mass murder.Children in atheist states such as the USSR,
Maoist China and Pol Pots Cambodia were subject
to the FORCED INDOCTRINATION of atheism.
Adult believers were beaten, brainwashed, tortured
and murdered.

You can't claim to be a Nazi and not have to confront the
Nazi Holocaust

You can't claim to be an atheist and not confront the
atheist holocausts.


I don't believe in witchcraft, but if I critique witches,
then I must expect that witches will respond.

For atheists, whose main conversations in alt.atheism,
an open unmoderated PUBLIC forum to claim that
theists may not present their responses to atheist
provocations, will be attacked for doing so, or
'deserve whatever they get', even extremist threats of
violence, is hypocritical,  absurd and unacceptable.

Atheists repeatedly issue the challenge "Prove God" and
then abuse, slander vilify and even forge the posts
of those believers who attempt to do so.

If I really regard 'flat-earth' as a primitive superstition,
outdated and irrelevant, I do not spend time and energy
denouncing it.. I ignore it.

If I perceive it as a threat, as fundamentalist theism or
atheism can be, then I will debate it, oppose it,
denounce it with energy and determination UP TO and
INCLUDING the legal and moral boundaries for
civilised discourse, and no further, ..without whining
about the robustness of the opposition,
but pointing out it's dirty tactics,
without threatening violence,
but exposing it's attempts at intimidation or threat.


There are intelligent, rational, tolerant atheists AND
theists capable of moderate and fruitful discourse,
they should not be drowned out by ratbags
and fringe nutters.