Blog

by Steve Risner

People are human and therefore, according to the Bible, are twisted and their every thought is evil all the time (more or less). Man, without God, is a reprobate. A man with God truly in his heart is still able to do terrible things, not because of his faith, but in the case of Christianity, in spite of it. Every man is a hypocrite. Every man is a liar. Every man does evil, whether he is “religious” or not. (“Religious” would include atheism).

The fact that there have been mass murders, genocides, infanticides, and the like is because we are human—we are fallen creatures who have lost our way long ago. We rejected our Maker who is love. If Jesus Christ hadn't changed the world 2000 years ago, the planet would no doubt be a much darker and likely unspeakably evil place that we only see now in movies. Imagine the horror of Schindler's List. Now imagine that this was the case all over the world. People in power killing as they wish, terrorizing with no fear of being stopped. If you're in power, you kill at will. If you're not, you're living, barely, in a camp as a slave. Imagine the terror lived in a Mad Max film—where morality has been lost completely and the world is one large nut house. This is the world without Jesus Christ, in my imaginings.

Jesus Christ brought peace and love—peace with God and love for all mankind. He taught us to turn the other cheek and pray for our enemies. He died for the very people who tortured and murdered him. He taught humility and charity and the highest moral standard. Anyone who has done something horrible to another person “in the name of Christ” was a fool or crazy or something else. They were not acting as Christ taught. You cannot murder for Jesus. You cannot torture or mutilate another human out of your love for Christ. Christianity has often been proclaimed by unbelievers as a source of hatred or violence. I would like to explore some of those ideas today, keeping in mind that doing as Christ taught is being a Christian.

Quoting Richard Dawkins in “The God Delusion” who also quotes Voltaire and Russell: “The take-home message is that we should blame religion itself, not religious extremism - as though that were some kind of terrible perversion of real, decent religion. Voltaire got it right long ago: 'Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.' So did Bertrand Russell: 'Many people would sooner die than think. In fact they do.'”

What do you think of that quote? Is religion, period, a cancer the world is suffering from? I see countless hospitals, homeless shelters, food pantries, and charitable organizations that serve mankind that are built on “religion.” Religion, in my opinion, is the only reason this world is as good as it seems. Without Christ, the world would likely have been burned a long time ago by our own hands. Voltaire may believe that a belief in God is an “absurdity,” but I feel quite strongly that the evidence is overwhelming that God is real and the God of the Bible is the one true God. There is really no doubt, to be honest. The Bible is miraculous, and fulfilled prophecy as well as many other proofs found in it are convincing. And since we cannot explain the existence of the universe, our planet, or life without naive stories about large expanding nothingness or pond scum to people fairy tales, I'd say the fact of God's existence goes without saying. No argument for His existence is really necessary as nature cries out to us of His majesty. What of atheism?

The most vile thing common in the world today has been brought on by a lack of love for Jesus Christ and, I believe, therefore, humanity. This tragedy that is commonplace today is the murder of the unborn. You can see for yourself the numbers here, which I would hope would move you to tears. At the time of this writing, worldwide since 1980 (nearly a decade after it was made legal in the U.S.) the number of babies killed in the womb stands at nearly 1.5 billion lives. They were terminated before they ever had a chance to bathe in the atmosphere of our planet, before they ever saw the light of day.

This is due to a the worst kind of evil and is directly opposed to Christianity and to love in general. To suggest you love anything and yet support crushing the life of an unborn baby in its mother's womb is a disconnect for me. People may make mistakes and regret them, but many support and even march for the “right” to kill their children in the womb. Is anyone more responsible for this crime against humanity more than atheism? How about the anti-religious idea of “all beliefs are equal,” so killing babies in the womb is a belief that should be respected like anyone else's beliefs? I feel this is absurd. I can't say how many times I've heard someone say, “I wouldn't get an abortion, but I wouldn't stop someone from getting one if they wanted one. It's their right.” This is to turn away from unspeakable evil and, I feel, is evil itself.

Dawkins wants us to believe he's taken some sort of moral high ground in not believing in God. This idea is actually hysterical because you can't even find a reason to be moral or define morality without first drawing on the notion of a Being that would decide what is right and wrong above a subjective belief. If Dawkins doesn't believe in God, and therefore objective morality, then if he feels or if his society feels that rape, incest, sex slaves, or child abuse are morally viable ideas, then they are in the atheist's version of morality. True morality transcends society or the individual—objective morality. But the idea that Dawkins explains—that God is some sort of evil tyrant—is also bankrupt on the scale of intellect. God defines goodness, so I would be curious by what standard Mr. Dawkins is making his claims about God's nature. And how can one suppose to be morally superior to God when they don't believe in objective morality and don't believe in God?

It's often claimed that religion has claimed terrible numbers of lives over the centuries. By “religion” obviously we are talking about religions other than atheism. But the fact is that atheism or some form of it has claimed countless lives over just the last century—more lives, I believe, than all “religious” wars of the last 4500 years. Within the last century, monsters like Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, and Mao among others have murdered at least 20 million, about 20 million, 1.5 million in 4 years, and 2 million respectively. From 1929 to 1979, these 4 men systematically murdered nearly 50 million people. In the case of Hitler, the numbers can jump to more like 75 million lives he's responsible for taking if we include fallen soldiers from World War II that spanned half of the globe. Atheism gives no hope and places no value on human life, if atheists are to be consistent in their beliefs. Why would they? Humans and any other form of life are just an accidental collection of matter no different, really, than a rock or puddle of water. Fortunately, not all atheists live like this is true, but at its core, this is atheism. This is how atheism can lead a man or group of men to murder millions of innocent lives. This is how it creates the Holocaust or the Killing Fields.

There have been religious wars that have spilled innocent blood, I believe. However, there have been wars credited to religion that I don't feel are warranted. This would include wars like the Dungan Revolt where 20 million died. It was a revolt of Muslims against non-Muslims, yes, but it was not over religion. It was over unfair treatment or a broken agreement. It was not over their faiths but, really, over money. So the semantics get thick. It's hard to agree on anything when it comes to this stuff. But in over 4000 years, I think it's safe to say religion has not resulted in more worldwide deaths than atheism (again, also a religion but they'll try to act like it's not) and certainly not more than secularism.

I think what's important to take home here is simple but a deep truth about humanity. We are broken. We do evil things. We do terrible things to one another. Many times, this has to do with the human heart and not a particular religion. Of course, there are those whose faith teaches from birth to be violent and to hate others. That's one of the symptoms of humanity's plight. We're evil and some want to teach their children to be evil. There are those who do awful things in the name of some religion, but the truth is many if not most of those people use religion as an excuse to do terrible things they would have done anyway. There are some faiths that promote killing and hate, but most do not. Christianity teaches love and grace. Anyone who acts “in the name of Jesus” but is acting against the teachings of Jesus is not acting because of their Christianity but in spite of it. Jesus taught us to love on another and pray for those that persecute us. He valued human life so much that He allowed Himself to be brutally beaten and torn and nailed to a cross to save humanity. Atheism is much different. Atheism is cold and empty. Atheists may love but they have no explanation for it. Atheists may be moral but they cannot tell you where that morality comes from.

The moment an atheist claims to have some sort of moral high ground because of the Crusades or some such thing, be sure to point out that humanism (a very popular form of atheism) is responsible for the deaths of, to date, about 1.5 billion children whose only crime was being conceived. Atheism has the potential to create the most ruthless monsters the world has ever seen. It's made the murder of the unborn a topic for discussion on television news programs rather than a terrible crime that should be punished severely. I've mentioned just a few of the world's notable murderous atheists in this blog post. On top of this, the silent holocaust of human children speaks loud enough to, I believe, silence any critic of the God of the Bible or those who follow Him.

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