Answering a Fool: Does Belief in Theism Lead to Genocide?

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The World Is Tired of Doom and Despair

People are tired of hearing nothing but doom and despair on the radio.

The message of Christianity is that salvation is found in Christ alone. And any who reject Christ therefore forfeit any hope of salvation any hope of heaven.

The issue is that humanity is in sin and the wrath of almighty God is hanging over our heads.

They will hear his words, they will not act upon them and when the floods of divine judgment, when the fires of wrath come they will be consumed and they will perish.

God wrapped himself in flesh condescended and became a man died on the cross for sin was resurrected on the third day has ascended to the right hand of the Father where he sits now to make intercession for us.

Jesus is saying there is a group of people who will hear his words.

They will act upon them.

And when the floods of divine judgment come in that final day their house will stand.

Answering a Fool and the Purpose of the Short Episodes

Welcome to Bible Bast where we aim to equip the saints for the works of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to ask. Listen and enjoy this midweek installment of Answering a Fool as Pastor Tim answers a fool according to his folly lest he be wise in his own eyes.

In these shorter episodes, Pastor Tim answers objections from internet trolls in an effort to help them go home and rethink their lives. Troll hunting is hard work, but hey, someone's got to do it. Now, without further ado, here's Pastor Tim.

The Objection That Theism Leads to Violence

Whenever the Bible is brought up in conversation in general there is a type of atheist or agnostic individual who is going to essentially try to dismiss whatever is being said with some sort of appeal to religious violence or religious genocide.

Now, we had a comment on one of our posts that was unrelated to the subject at hand but then the comment read this way Bible Bashed. The literal belief in theism is a horrific history that keeps repeating itself.

The apartheid turned genocide in Palestine is a good example and then basically underneath that there's a meme. You're completely entitled to opinions that are not supported by evidence but the moment you spread that opinion as fact, you are a liar.

If you spread it as a fact knowing it's not supported by evidence you are both a liar and a fraud. So this kind of move that's being made is a move that's essentially it's tempting to say that because there has been violence associated with religions in general.

He talked about the apartheid turned genocide in Palestine that's a good example that all religions must be rejected and so he lumps all theism irrespective of the type of theism that it is any belief in God, theism it's just a horrific history of violence that keeps repeating itself and must be summarily dismissed.

Why the Atheism Argument Is a Straw Man

Now, this kind of objection really isn't a morally serious objection at all. I mean it doesn't pass just logic 101. It's not an intelligent interaction with the Christian faith. It's just a dismissal.

It's a straw man that is essentially lumping all religions together and basically just saying that all that religion can produce is violence. This is one of those curious things to claim because when you actually think about deaths in the world death, violence, killing, genocide these are not problems that are somehow in any way uniquely connected with Christianity.

One of the things that your main atheist, Christopher Hitchens when he was alive, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins they always like to basically trot out this tired trope that Christianity just produces genocide but they don't seem to take to account all the genocide and death and slaughter that's come from their materialistic evolutionary atheists.

And so you think about someone like Adolf Hitler. He killed and executed 6 million Jews in the Holocaust 3 million Poles, 3 million Russian prisoners of war and as many as 8 million others in Europe. Hitler is an atheist who made the Crusades feel pretty tame in comparison.

Think about Joseph Stalin. Stalin killed in the Soviet Union following the Russian Revolution between that and until his death at the end of World War II between 10 to 20 million Soviet and German prisoners died so there are substantial death tolls.

Just think about Pol Pot in Cambodia and he killed as many as 2 million Cambodians which is about 20 of the population they died through execution, disease and starvation. So there's example after example after example just think about Mao he killed tens of millions of Chinese most of them in public executions.

Christianity Versus Atheism on Genocide

So you think about something like this and you think, man, there's a lot of deaths that seem to come from these atheist dictators and so the atheists wouldn't want Christians and wouldn't allow Christians to say that a product of atheism is genocide.

But if you're going to make that argument you're going to say, hey, what is more consistent with an atheist worldview. Or is genocide more consistent with an atheist worldview or a Christian worldview and you have to say it it's obviously more consistent with an atheist worldview than it is a Christian worldview.

Think about the scriptures that were given Jesus tells us to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us and despitefully use us. We're told, you know, if your enemy hungers to feed him, if you thirst to give him drink for in so doing you'll heap coals of fire upon his head.

We're told to love our enemies to pray for our enemies to do good to those who persecute you and despitefully use us. If you look at the actual fruit of Christianity the fruit of Christianity in the world is largely good.

Now there's some negative fruit and I don't think anyone would say that hey, the crusades, those were good things but one of the things to realize is that bad has been done in the name of every single cause and you don't throw out the good just because there's some bad there.

Darwinism, Scientific Racism, and Genocide

But then you think about something like atheism atheism logically if you think about the logical consequences of an atheistic worldview the logical consequence of an atheist worldview is obviously genocide.

I mean, it obviously is so with Darwin's origin of the species you think about the subtitle there as it relates to the favored races. Darwin's idea was that there were different races of human beings meaning almost sub-human categories of individual human beings that fall all along the different line of a spectrum between man and ape, essentially so when you think about something like that when you think about a Darwinistic worldview one of the things that was intentionally I mean, the idea of racism was intentionally developed in a Darwinian framework which basically said that there was different sub-human, quasi-species of human beings that were higher and lower on the evolutionary scale.

All the racism that you see that existed as a result of the scientific racism came from a Darwinian worldview quite logically and naturally so you had the Europeans who were considered the highest on the evolutionary ladder and then you had the Asians below that and below that the bottom rung was the Jews and the blacks and so in that kind of framework genocide is a natural product of that kind of belief.

If you believe that Jews and you believe that blacks are sub-human species as scientific racism in Darwin taught us then one of the things that you're going to come to is that the natural by-product of that is going to be genocide because they're not afforded the same rights as the favored races in the language of Darwin as far as that goes and one of the things that you'll see is that in these atheist regimes you see genocide that's the natural result of a philosophy that makes sense of it and that obviously makes sense in a worldview that's based on survival of the fittest now I think if you were to be charitable to your atheist objectors one of the things that you might realize is that, hey, yes, okay well, atheism, you might grant the point so let's grant the point atheism has its materialistic, naturalistic atheism it has its bad examples whatever, but not every single atheist out there wants to go commit genocide and so maybe it's possible to be an atheist and not to be pro-genocide, sure yeah, I believe that, but if you expect me to make that kind of allowance for you then you also are going to have to make that same sort of allowance for Christians, and you might also want to make the kind of allowance to say that hey, it seems to be that if you actually do read the Bible with any care and quit engaging in the straw man silly arguments that are easily refuted one of the things that you'll realize is the Bible does teach a lot about loving your enemies and praying for those who persecute you and it is quite possible it is quite possible that there are many people who abuse Christianity and come to some bad conclusion so there's that at the very least, you might want to say at least the verdict is out on that sort of issue but this kind of objection is kind of silly when you think about it, when you actually look at history and you look at the death toll that's out there Christians are by no means the major cause of genocide in history.

Not All Religions Are Equal

Religions in general are not even the major cause of genocide in history and that's something you have to think about. Not all religions are equal, not all religions are teaching the same thing and there are some religions that are more prone towards ethnic or religious genocide than Christianity, and Christianity simply isn't one of them.

Closing Sign-Off

This has been another installment of Answering a Fool with Bible Bashed. As always, if you would like to be included in one of our Answering a Fool episodes, feel free to respond to us on our Facebook, Twitter or Gab posts with a disrespectful sarcastic, often off-topic comment that shows you did not thoughtfully engage with anything we have actually said, and we will do our best to include an answer to your trolling comment.

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