Difference between revisions of "Atheism and human rights violations"
Conservative (Talk | contribs) (→= North Korean communism and torture) |
Conservative (Talk | contribs) (→Atheism and mass murder) |
||
Line 6: | Line 6: | ||
[[File:Stalin-140508 27880t.jpg|right|200px|thumb|[[Joseph Stalin]]'s atheistic regime killed tens of millions of people.]] | [[File:Stalin-140508 27880t.jpg|right|200px|thumb|[[Joseph Stalin]]'s atheistic regime killed tens of millions of people.]] | ||
− | Concerning | + | Concerning [[Atheism and Mass Murder|atheism and mass murder]], [[Christian apologetics|Christian apologist]] Gregory Koukl wrote that "the assertion is that religion has caused most of the killing and bloodshed in the world. |
There are people who make accusations and assertions that are empirically false. This is one of them."<ref name="Koukl">Koukl, Gregory (February 20, 2013). [http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5527 "The real murderers: atheism or Christianity?"] Stand to Reason. Retrieved July 19, 2014.</ref> | There are people who make accusations and assertions that are empirically false. This is one of them."<ref name="Koukl">Koukl, Gregory (February 20, 2013). [http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5527 "The real murderers: atheism or Christianity?"] Stand to Reason. Retrieved July 19, 2014.</ref> | ||
Koukl details the number of people killed in various events involving theism and compares them to the much higher tens of millions of people killed under [[Atheism|atheistic]] [[communist]] regimes, in which [[militant atheism]] served as the official doctrine of the state.<ref name="Koukl" /> See also: [[Atheism and communism]] | Koukl details the number of people killed in various events involving theism and compares them to the much higher tens of millions of people killed under [[Atheism|atheistic]] [[communist]] regimes, in which [[militant atheism]] served as the official doctrine of the state.<ref name="Koukl" /> See also: [[Atheism and communism]] |
Revision as of 04:42, March 15, 2019
Below are some resources relating to atheism and human rights violations:
Contents
Atheism and mass murder
See also: Atheism and mass murder
Concerning atheism and mass murder, Christian apologist Gregory Koukl wrote that "the assertion is that religion has caused most of the killing and bloodshed in the world. There are people who make accusations and assertions that are empirically false. This is one of them."[1] Koukl details the number of people killed in various events involving theism and compares them to the much higher tens of millions of people killed under atheistic communist regimes, in which militant atheism served as the official doctrine of the state.[1] See also: Atheism and communism
Communist regimes killed 60 million in the 20th century through genocide, according to Le Monde, more than 100 million people[2] according to The Black Book of Communism (Courtois, Stéphane, et al., 1997).[3] and according to Cleon Skousen[4] in his best-selling book The Naked Communist.[5]
It is estimated that in the past 100 years, governments under the banner of atheistic communism have caused the death of somewhere between 40,472,000 and 259,432,000 human lives.[6] Dr. R. J. Rummel, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Hawaii, is the scholar who first coined the term democide (death by government). Dr. R. J. Rummel's mid estimate regarding the loss of life due to communism is that communism caused the death of approximately 110,286,000 people between 1917 and 1987.[7]
The Reign of Terror of the French Revolution established a state which was anti-Roman Catholicism/Christian in nature [8] (anti-clerical deism and anti-religious atheism during the Enlightenment played a significant role in the French Revolution[9][10]), with the official ideology being the Cult of Reason; during this time thousands of believers were suppressed and executed by the guillotine.[11] Although Communism is one of the most well-known cases of atheism's ties to mass murder, the French Revolution and subsequent Reign of Terror, inspired by the works of Diderot, Voltaire, Sade, and Rousseau, managed to commit similar persecutions and exterminations of religious people and promote secularism and militant atheism. Official numbers indicate that 300,000 Frenchmen died during Robespierre's Reign of Terror, 297,000 of which were of middle-class or low-class.[12] Of the amount murdered via the guillotine, only 8% had been of the aristocratic class, with over 30% being from the peasant class.[13]
One of the most well known cases of mass murder during the French Revolution was the genocide at Vendée, which has yet to be officially recognized as genocide. Some estimates indicated that Robespierre and the Jacobins planned to massacre well over 15,000,000 Frenchmen,[12] and that he also intended to commit genocide against the Alsace region of France due to their German-speaking populace.[13] Besides the guillotine, the French Revolution also resulted in various other deaths, including trampling children with horses, burning people in ovens, "Republican Marriages" (which involved stripping people naked, tying them together to a log in a suggestive fashion, and then putting them into the water to drown. In the event that there wasn't enough people of both sexes, they also resorted to "tying the knot" in a homosexual manner), cutting recently raped girls in half after tying them to a tree, crushing pregnant women under wine pressers, cutting up pregnant women and using bayonets to stab the fetus inside before leaving her to die, "catching" infants thrown from a balcony with their bayonets, and using shotguns to ensure people bled out to death.[13]
Although the aristocracy as well as clergy and the monarchy were the French Revolution's primary targets for extermination, they were not above slaughtering even those that acted as their own allies for the sake of it. This was chillingly shown with Commander Louis Grignon and his orders to his troops, who had uncontrollable bloodlust, that "everyone they met was to be immediately killed, even if they were Republicans."[13]
The aforementioned actions during the French Revolution, especially the Reign of Terror in 1793, would also inspire Karl Marx with the Communist manifesto, specifically telling Frederick Engels in correspondences to each other: “There is only one way of shortening, simplifying, and concentrating the bloodthirsty death-throes of the old society and the bloody birth pangs of the new—revolutionary terror. . . . [...] Once we are at the helm, we shall be obliged to reenact the year 1793. [...] We are pitiless and we ask no pity from you. When our time comes, we shall not conceal terrorism with hypocritical phrases. . . The vengeance of the people will break forth with such ferocity that not even the year 1793 enables us to envisage it...”[14]
Koukl summarized by stating:
“ | It is true that it's possible that religion can produce evil, and generally when we look closer at the detail it produces evil because the individual people are actually living in a rejection of the tenets of Christianity and a rejection of the God that they are supposed to be following. So it can produce it, but the historical fact is that outright rejection of God and institutionalizing of atheism actually does produce evil on incredible levels. We're talking about tens of millions of people as a result of the rejection of God.[1] | ” |
Atheistic communism and torture
See also: Atheistic communism and torture
The website Victimsofcommunism.org declares concerning atheistic communism and the use of torture:
“ | Significantly, communists did not merely try to block or halt religious faith but to reverse it. This was particularly true for Romania, even before the Nicolai Ceausescu era. This meant not just forbidding religious practice and jailing ministers and believers but employing torture to force them to renounce their faith. It was not enough to contain, silence, even punish believers in prison; it was decided they must be tortured in truly unimaginably degrading ways to attempt to undo religious faith.[15] | ” |
Richard Wurmbrand, a Romanian pastor of the Underground Church, wrote in his book Tortured for Christ:
“ | I worked in both an official and underground manner until February 29,1948....On that Sunday, on my way to church, I was kidnapped from the street by the secret police....A van of the secret police stopped in front of me, four men jumped out and pushed me into the van. I was taken away for many years.
For over eight years, no one knew if I was alive or dead. My wife was visited by the secret police who posed as released fellow-prisoners. They told her they had attended my burial. She was heart-broken. Thousands from churches of all denominations went to prison at that time. Not only were clergymen put in jail, but also simple peasants, young boys and girls who witnessed for their faith. The prisons were full and in Rumania, as in all communist countries, to be in prison means to be tortured.... A pastor by the name of Florescu was tortured with red-hot iron pokers and with knives. He was beaten very badly. Then starving rats were driven into his cell through a large pipe. He could not sleep.... If he rested a moment, the rats would attack him.... The communists wished to compel him to betray his brethren, but he resisted steadfastly. In the end, they brought his fourteen year-old son and began to whip the boy in front of his father, saying that they would continue to beat him until the pastor said what they wished him to say....When he could not stand it any more, he cried to his son; 'Alexander, I must say what they want! I can’t bear your beating any more. The son answered, 'Father, don’t do me the injustice to have a traitor as a parent. Withstand!...' The communists, enraged, fell upon the child and beat him to death, with blood spattered over the walls of the cell. He died praising God.... Handcuffs which had sharp nails on the insides were put on our wrists. If we were totally still, they didn’t cut us. But in bitterly cold cells, when we shook with cold, our wrists would be torn by the nails. Christians were hung upside down on ropes and beaten so severely that their bodies swung back and forth under the blows. Christians were put in ice-box 'refrigerator cells' which were so cold, frost and ice covered the inside... We Christians were put in wooden boxes only slightly larger than we were. ... Dozens of sharp nails were driven into every side of the box, with their razor-sharp points sticking into the box.... I have seen communists torturing Christians and the faces of the torturers shone with rapturous joy. They cried out while torturing the Christians, 'We are the devil.' 'We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities and powers of evil.' We saw that communism is not from men but from the devil. It is a spiritual force...of evil—and can only be countered by a greater spiritual force, the Spirit of God. I often asked the torturers, “Don’t you have pity in your hearts?” They usually answered with a quotation from Lenin that “you cannot make omelets without breaking the shells of eggs”... I have testified before the Internal Security Subcommittee of the U.S. Senate. There I described awful things, such as Christians tied to crosses for four days and nights. The crosses were put on the floor and hundreds of prisoners had to fulfill their bodily necessities over the faces and bodies of the crucified ones. Then the crosses were erected again and the communists jeered and mocked...[16] |
” |
Torture in the Soviet Union
In the atheistic communist regime of the Soviet Union, torture was frequently employed to extract false confessions which were subsequently used to establish that individuals were "enemies of the people" - particularly under the militant atheist Joseph Stalin's regime.[19]
In the Soviet Union, many Orthodox priests and laymen experienced religious persecution in the form of torture and being sent to prison camps, labor camps or mental hospitals.[20][21][22][23]
Atheistic, Chinese communism and torture
The Chinese communist regime has used beatings, harassment and torture to suppress religion in China and continues to use these practices.[24][25][26]
Atheistic communist North Vietnam and torture
From 1961 to 1973, the North Vietnamese government and Vietcong held hundreds of Americans soldiers captive. Hanoi's Ministry of Public Security's Medical Office (MPSMO) was responsible for "preparing studies and performing research on the most effective Soviet, French, Communist Chinese and other ...techniques..." of extracting information from POWs. The MPSMO "...supervised the use of torture and the use of drugs to induce [American] prisoners to cooperate." Its role also "...included working with Soviet and Communist Chinese intelligence advisors who were qualified in the use of medical techniques for intelligence purposes."[27]
North Korean communism and torture
See also: Atheism and cannibalism
North Korea practices state atheism and belief in God is actively discouraged.[28] Open Doors, an organization based in the United States, has put North Korea at the very top of its list of countries where Christians face significant persecution - for 12 years in a row.[29]
The Christian Post published an article entitled North Korean Defector Who Spent 28 Years in Prison Camp Details Hunger, Torture, and Cannibalism in the DPRK which stated:
“ | More than 200,000 North Koreans, including children, are imprisoned in camps where many perish from forced labor, inadequate food, and abuse by guards, according to Human Rights Watch. The isolated, secretive nation has no media, functioning civil society, or religious freedom, and pervasive problems include arbitrary arrest, lack of due process, and torture.[30] | ” |
See also
- Atheist atrocities
- Atheism and violence
- Atheism and psychopathy
- Atheism and world peace
- Atheism and forced labor
- Atheism and sadism
- China and involuntary organ harvesting
- Richard Dawkins, atheist atrocities, and historical revisionism
- Atheism and morality
- Atheists and historical illiteracy
External links
- Torture memoirs revive horrors of communism, The Telegraph
- Stop Chinese Torture - video
- Imprisonment & Torture In Communist Red China - Hatred of Christianity - video
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Koukl, Gregory (February 20, 2013). "The real murderers: atheism or Christianity?" Stand to Reason. Retrieved July 19, 2014.
- ↑ Wolfe, Claire (2000). "Review of The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression by Stéphane Courtois et al., trans. by Jonathan Murphy and Mark Kramer". Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership website. Retrieved from October 23, 2007 archive at Internet Archive on May 21, 2015.
"China: 65 million deaths; USSR: 20 million deaths; North Korea: 2 million deaths; Cambodia: 2 million deaths; Africa: 1.7 million deaths; Afghanistan: 1.5 million deaths; Vietnam: 1 million deaths; Eastern Europe: 1 million deaths; Latin America: 150,000 deaths; Communist movements or parties not in power: about 10,000 deaths. "Nearly 100 million deaths. Not casualties of war, but civilian slaughter. Deaths in gulags and concentration camps. Deaths from a bullet to the head. Most of all, deaths by starvation - the result either of planned famines, meted out as punishment to internal foes (as in Stalin's USSR), or unintended consequences of central policy." - ↑ Available at:
- Courtois, Stéphane, et al. (1999). The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, trans. by Jonathan Murphy and Mark Kramer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Book archived at Internet Archive. Accessed December 3, 2014.
- Courtois, Stéphane, et al. (1999). The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, trans. by Jonathan Murphy and Mark Kramer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Amazon.com book page. Retrieved on May 22, 2015.
- ↑ Father of anti-Communist conservative libertarian survivalist author Joel Skousen.
- ↑ In July 2014, the noted African-American surgeon and political commentator, Dr. Ben Carson, appeared on Fox News and said, "The Naked Communist lays out the whole progressive agenda."
- ↑ Multiple references:
- The Black Book of Communism The Human cost of Communism - 100 Million, IndyMedia, April 4. 2004, Retrieved 5/23/2015
- "The Black Book of Communism". Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences website: Cold War Studies. Retrieved July 19, 2014.
- Rummel, R. J. (November 1993). "How many did communist regimes murder?" University of Hawaii website; Freedom, Democracy, Peace; Power, Democide, and War. Retrieved July 19, 2014.
- White, Matthew (February 2011). "Source list and detailed death tolls for the primary megadeaths of the twentieth century". Necrometrics. Retrieved July 19, 2014.
- Higgins, David (June 22, 2007). "Memory and ideology: Washington's newest statue is the Victims Of Communism Memorial". Sarasota Magazine website. Retrieved from October 8, 2007 archive at Internet Archive on May 22, 2015.
- Radosh, Ronald (February 2000). "The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression". First Things [journal] website. Retrieved July 19, 2014.
- ↑ Rummel, R. J. (November 1993). "How many did communist regimes murder?" University of Hawaii website; Freedom, Democracy, Peace; Power, Democide, and War. Retrieved July 19, 2014.
- ↑
- Tallet, Frank Religion, Society and Politics in France Since 1789, pp. 1-17 1991 Continuum International Publishing
- SPIELVOGEL, Jackson Western Civilization: Combined Volume p. 549, 2005,Thomson Wadsworth
- Latreille, A. FRENCH REVOLUTION, New Catholic Encyclopedia v. 5, pp. 972–973 (Second Ed. 2002 Thompson/Gale) ISBN 0-7876-4004-2
- ↑ War, Terror and Resistence
- ↑ Forging Freedom: The Life of Cerf Berr of M Delsheim by Margaret R. O'Leary, iUniverse (June 1, 2012), pages 1-2
- ↑ Multiple references:
"It is wonderful that, amid the horrors of this dismal period, while 'the death dance of democratic revolution' was still in rapid movement, among the tears of affliction, and the cries of despair, 'the masque, the song, the theatric scene, the buffoon laughter, went on as regularly as in the gay hour of festive peace.'”
"It's this second Enlightenment tradition that Cardinal Ratzinger referred to when he wrote, 'The radical detachment of the Enlightenment philosophy from its roots ultimately leads it to dispense with man.' Actually this transition happened not 'ultimately' but almost immediately. The first instance occurred when Enlightenment worship of abstract 'reason' and 'liberty' degenerated quickly into the mass murders committed during the antireligious Reign of Terror in France. 'Liberty, what crimes are committed in your name', said Madam Rolande as she faced the statue of Liberty in the Place de la Revolution movements before her death at the guillotine. She was one of the early victims of a succession of secular systems based on rootless notions of 'liberty', 'equality', and 'reason'.
"As many historians have pointed out, the atheist regimes of modern times are guilty of far more crimes than any committed in the name of religion. Communist governments alone were guilty of more than one hundred million murders, most of them committed against their own people.” - ↑ 12.0 12.1 McIlheny, William H. (June 12, 2009). "A primer on the Illuminati". The New American website. Retrieved on May 22, 2015.
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Erik (October 1989). "Operation Parricide: Sade, Robespierre & the French Revolution". Fidelity magazine. Retrieved from Culture Wars website on May 22, 2015.
- ↑ Socialism Sucks community (April 30, 2014)."Marxism in America". Facebook website. Retrieved on May 22, 2015.
- ↑ The War on religion
- ↑ Tortured for Christ - excerpt from Chapter 2, by Pastor Richard Wurmbrand, founder of Voice of the Martyrs
- ↑ Martyred in the USSR
- ↑ The Russians' Secret by Peter Hoover with Serguei V. Petrov, Speaking Without a Tongue, Chapter 1 (Pages 1-3)
- ↑ Alexander Solzhenitsyn. "The Gulag Archipelago"
- ↑ Father Arseny 1893-1973 Priest, Prisoner, Spiritual Father. Introduction pg. vi - 1. St Vladimir's Seminary Press ISBN 0-88141-180-9
- ↑ L.Alexeeva, History of dissident movement in the USSR, Memorial society, in Russian
- ↑ A.Ginzbourg, "Only one year", "Index" Magazine, in Russian
- ↑ The Washington Post Anti-Communist Priest Gheorghe Calciu-Dumitreasa By Patricia Sullivan Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, November 26, 2006; Page C09 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/25/AR2006112500783.html
- ↑ China: The crackdown on Falun Gong and other so-called "heretical organizations". Amnesty International (23 March 2000). Retrieved on 17 March 2010.
- ↑ Militant Atheist extremist regime persecuting and torturing Christians in China
- ↑ Woman describes torture, beatings in Chinese detention camp By MARIA DANILOVA, AP News, November 26, 2018
- ↑ "War Crimes: The Cuban-Vietnam Connection", National Alliance of Families.
- ↑ Elizabeth Raum. North Korea. Series: Countries Around the World. Heinemann, 2012. ISBN 1432961330. p. 28: «North Korea is an atheist state. This means that people do not pray in public or attend places of worship. Buddhist temples exist from earlier times. They are now preserved as historic buildings, but they are not used for worship. A few Christian churches exist, but few people attend services. North Koreans do not celebrate religious holidays.»
- ↑ Repressive, atheist North Korea has a surprising relationship with Christian missionaries
- ↑ North Korean Defector Who Spent 28 Years in Prison Camp Details Hunger, Torture, and Cannibalism in the DPRK