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Why Are Genocides Associated with Evolutionists and Atheists? Coincidence?

ftacky

Member
Here is a partial list of Evolutionists and/or Atheist dictators behind some of the most brutal regimes in the past few centuries - in their own words:

- Vladimir Lenin (1870 - 1924): Atheist and Evolutionist who renounced his belief in God after the death of his father and beloved brother; he said:
1) "Atheism is a natural and inseparable part of Marxism..."
2) "Darwin put an end to the belief that the animal and vegetable species bear no relation to one another, except by chance, and that they were created by God, and hence immutable."
He established hundreds of concentration camps while ordering the execution of Christians, Jews, and Muslims throughout Russia; his regime was responsible for the deaths of 6 - 8 million people through execution, starvation and war.
(ref: Volkogonov, D. (1994). Lenin: Life and Legacy.; Necrometrics.com)

- Leon Trotsky (1879 - 1940): Self-proclaimed "irreconcilable Atheist" and Evolutionist who said:
1) "We call our dialectic 'materialist', since its roots are neither in heaven nor in the depths of our “free will”, but in objective reality, in nature...There is place within this system for neither God nor Devil, nor immortal soul, nor eternal norms of laws and morals.";
2) "Every educated person since Darwin has labeled themselves an “evolutionist”. But a real evolutionist must apply the idea of evolution to his own forms of thinking."
3) "I shall die a proletarian revolutionist, a Marxist, a dialectical materialist, and, consequently, an irreconcilable atheist."
4) "But whatever may be the circumstances of my death I shall die with unshaken faith in the communist future. This faith in man and in his future gives me even now such power of resistance as cannot be given by any religion."
As a Bolshevik leader he masterminded the murder of hundreds of thousands of Russians through starvation and war during the Communist Russian Revolution.
(ref: Trotsky, L., Trotsky's Testament, 1940)

- Benito Mussolini (1883 - 1945): Atheist and Evolutionist who said:
1) "The God of the theologians is the creation of their empty heads."
2) "The history of the saints is mainly the history of insane people."
3) "Religion is a species of mental disease. It has always had a pathological reaction on mankind."
4) "When we claim 'God does not exist', we mean to deny by this declaration the personal God of theology, the God worshiped in various ways and divers modes by believers the world over... that God of absurd attributes who is an affront to human reason."
5) "Science is now in the process of destroying religious dogma. The dogma of the divine creation is recognized as absurd."
He was known for "daring God to strike him dead" on many public occasions; although he occasionally courted the Catholic church to gain political control, when he did gain control he persecuted both the Protestant and Catholic church by killing thousands of priests and clergy; responsible for 400 to 500 thousand deaths; he was executed by a firing squad while attempting to escape from Italy.
(ref: Haught, J., 2000 Years of Disbelief: Famous People with the Courage to Doubt.; Mussolini, B.
'Homme et la divinite/Bibliotheque Internationale de propagande rationaliste, Geneva)

- Joseph Stalin (died 1953): Became an Atheist/Darwinist after reading Darwin's "Origin of Species", stating:
1) "You know, they are fooling us. There is no God.”
2) "'I'll lend you a book to read (Darwin). It will show you that the world and all living things are quite different from what you imagine, and all this talk about God is sheer nonsense...."
He made atheism the official ideology of Russia and flooded the media and schools with atheistic propaganda; he crushed the Russian Orthodox Church, leveling thousands of churches and killing more than 100,000 priests, monks and nuns during the religious "purge" between 1937 and 1938 alone. Overall, his atheistic dictatorship killed 80 million people by starvation, execution, and war.
(ref: E. Yaroslavsky, Landmarks in the Life of Stalin, 1940;

- Margaret Sanger (died 1966): Atheist and Darwinist who said:
1) "The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it".
Although she was never in power to be a dictator, she was an advocate of eugenics (Darwinist-based attempts to develop a superior race through selective breeding of humans), mandatory sterilizations of the "unfit", and infanticide; founder of Planned Parenthood - America's largest abortion provider responsible for the deaths of untold millions of preborn children.

- Mao Zedong (died 1976): Atheist, with Darwin as his favorite author; he stated:
1) "Religion is poison."
2) “Atheism must take the place of belief in a God.”
3) "Chinese socialism is founded upon Darwin and the theory of evolution."
Although he used the terms "gods" and "goddess" in his colorful poems, he made atheism the official ideology of China and flooded the media and schools with atheistic propaganda; lived an opulent lifestyle while the common people starved; his regime caused the deaths of 40 to 80 million people by starvation, torture, and executions.
(ref: M. Zedong, M. Kau, and J. Leung, The Writings of Mao Zedong, 1976; The Poems of Mao Tse-tung, Harper & Row).

- Karl Marx (1818 - 1883): Atheist who famously said:
1) "Man makes religion, religion does not make man"
2) "It (religion) is the opium of the people".
Evolutionist who enthusiastically called Darwin’s "Origin of Species" as "This is the book which contains the basis in natural history for our views.”
Although not a dictator himself, his writings and ideologies were used by many dictators to murder tens of millions. In Russia alone, 20 million Christians were killed by dictators who used his writings. (International Socialist Review, Issue #65; Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Selected Correspondence 1846–1895)

- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900): Atheist who said: "God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him."; and "...a theologian, a priest, a pope of today not only errs when he speaks, but actually lies—and that he no longer escapes blame for his lie through “innocence” or “ignorance.” The priest knows, as every one knows, that there is no longer any God." Evolutionist although he disagreed with certain minor points of Darwin's theory; his written work was the ideology behind Nazism which murdered millions; he was permanently placed in an psychiatric asylum after suffering a breakdown. ( The AntiChrist, F. Nietzsche, 1888)

- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945): Evolutionist; although he courted the Catholic church for his political gain, he was very anti-Christian and said:
1) "Our epoch will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity.”
2) “Christianity is the worst of the regressions that mankind can ever have undergone...”
3) “The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity.”
4) Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s minister of propaganda, noted in his diary in 1939: "The Fuehrer is deeply religious, but deeply anti-Christian. He regards Christianity as a symptom of decay. Rightly so. It is a branch of the Jewish race."
5) Martin Bormann, Hitler's secretary and right hand man, publicly stated in 1941, "National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable."
Hitler publicly and repeatedly invoked the name of God as a ruse to justify his brutal military and political actions; he applied Darwin's theory of evolution and "survival of the fittest" while attempting to develop a biologically superior race through ethnic cleansing; showed no regard for accountability to a higher power by killing 11 to 14 million people through starvation, execution, and war; committed suicide to avoid capture at the end of World War 2.

- Pol Pot (died 1998): Evolutionist who, as leader of the deadly Khmer Rouge, adopted Mao's Darwinist philosophies; known for his "Cambodian killing fields"; closed all religious institutions including Buddhist temples but especially persecuted Christians and Muslims; responsible for 1 to 3 million executions, mostly using axes, hammers, and sharpened bamboo sticks to save ammunition.

- Jim Jones (died 1978): Atheist who said:
1) "Off the record, I don’t believe in any loving God. Our people, I would say, are ninety percent atheist."
2) "I felt somewhat hypocritical for the last years as I became an atheist."
3) "You feel tainted, by being in the church situation. But of course, everyone knows where I’m at. My bishop knows that I’m an atheist...He must have spent twenty thousand dollars traveling around, hoping to get my denomination to remove me, because I was so atheistic.”
He was responsible for the 1978 mass murder/suicide of 908 members of the People's Temple cult in Guyana; he personally ordered the executions of several members of the visiting press and a U.S. Congressman.
(ref: The Jonestown Institute audiotape, 1976).



The response from atheists is that these dictators were motivated by communism and not by atheism or Darwinism. In other words, its only a coincidence that almost all of the genocidal dictators of the 20th Century - basically a 'Who's Who' List of dictators were all evolutionists and/or atheists. In addition, since the dictator could not have done the millions of killings himself, he had to employ thousands who shared his values and philosophies to help him. Interestingly, the case of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer (who was an atheist and evolutionist) may shed some light on these questions about the motivation behind their deeds:

Jeffrey Dahmer (1960 - 1994), Atheist/Evolutionist and serial killer, who said:
1) "If a person doesn’t think there is a God to be accountable to, then—then what's the point of trying to modify your behavior to keep it within acceptable ranges? That's how I thought anyway.
I always believed the theory of evolution as truth, that we all just came from the slime. When we, when we died, you know, that was it, there is nothing. So the whole theory (evolution) cheapens life."
(ref: Stone Phillips Interview with Jeffrey Dahmer, Dateline NBC, February 1994).

Amazingly, Jeffrey Dahmer converted to Christianity in prison with the help of his father (who himself became a Christian and creationist later in his own life). Dahmer was later murdered in prison. However, he went to Heaven by the grace of God - stories don't end any better than that! If God can save a serial killer, He can save anyone! Thank You Lord for your mercy on him!
 

Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
I don't think you've established much of anything here. Certainly you have not established a notable link between atheist, evolution, and genocide. Both many of your "facts" and much of your reasoning is flawed.

For instance, Hitler was not an "evolutionist". Nietzsche did not have nearly as much influence on the Nazis as your claim he did. And Jeffrey Dahmer has nothing to do with Genocide.

As for the notion there's a link between atheism, evolution, and genocide, it might come as a surprise to you but, most prominent thinkers since Darwin have accepted evolution -- not just atheist thinkers. Even most Christian thinkers acknowledge that evolution is true. So it is in no way noteworthy that some of the people responsible for genocides have accepted evolution too.

Moreover, there have been genocides and similar atrocities led by religiously minded people. Apartheid in South Africa was closely associated with the Christian faith -- it certainly was promoted by enough pastors. The Rawandan genocide seems to have been conducted by religious people. And genocide itself is first recorded in biblical times, and seems to have been invented by religious people. Check your bible for accounts of the Hebrews conducting some of the earliest known genocides.

I'd say your thesis is poorly developed and supported.

Last, doesn't your religion give you anything more spiritual to do than smear people you disagree with?
 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
Quotes taken out of context are usually done so as a form of lying. If one cannot find the original work that quotes of the nature of the OP posted they should not be used in an argument. The OP probably got them from a source that he merely copied and pasted. He may not have been lying, but he was lied to, and as a result of buying those lies is lying by proxy.
 

Valjean

Veteran Member
Premium Member
If you think atheism is bad, I have it on good authority that 100% of pedophiles, arsonists, armed robbers and jaywalkers have a history of early milk use.
 

ftacky

Member
Simply stating quotes are taken "out of context" without DEMONSTRATING that they were "out of context" is easy but also unfair.

These people SAID they were evolutionists and/or atheists, and murdered millions along with their minions.

1) Please DEMONSTRATE how it was taken out of context.

2) If you believe it was just an unfortunate coincidence that they stated they were evolutionists and/or atheists, please state you believe it is all a coincidence. Coincidences do happen, right?

Thank you.
 
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Shad

Veteran Member
Here is a partial list of Evolutionists and/or Atheist dictators behind some of the most brutal regimes in the past few centuries - in their own words:

I guess the clue that some of those people were socialists and communists is lost on you....
 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
Simply stating quotes are taken "out of context" without DEMONSTRATING that they were "out of context" is easy but also unfair.

These people SAID they were evolutionists and/or atheists, and murdered millions along with their minions.

Please DEMONSTRATE how it was taken out of context. Thank you.
Not Hitler. He always claimed to be a Christian and was against Darwin's theory of evolution.

And like it or not when a person quotes out of context the burden of proof is upon the person making the quote.

By the way, you did a Gish Gallop. That is also a dishonest debating technique. Refuting one point refutes them all and the fact that Hitler claimed to be a Christian and was against the theory of evolution refutes your entire list.

Adolf Hitler on Christianity: Quotes

Hitler and evolution - RationalWiki


You should have made your claims one at a time.
 

Samuel Patre

New Member
Simply stating quotes are taken "out of context" without DEMONSTRATING that they were "out of context" is easy but also unfair.

These people SAID they were evolutionists and/or atheists, and murdered millions along with their minions.

1) Please DEMONSTRATE how it was taken out of context.

2) If you believe it was just an unfortunate coincidence that they stated they were evolutionists and/or atheists, please state you believe it is all a coincidence. Coincidences do happen, right?

Thank you.

I'm sorry, but you are the one making the claims that these quotes are valid, while neither providing context nor sources.
The onus is on you to support your claim.

Over half of your list never committed anything like Genocide, and of those that did, most were Communists, if not Fascist.
You could make a case for Communism leading to Genocide, but I fear that doesn't support your narrative.

You have also neither supported the claim that most of these people accepted Evolution nor that it at any point influenced their actions.
The closest you have come is invoking the spectre of Eugenics which though often called Social Darwinism, is neither based on Evolution nor Charles Darwin. Feel free to support that notion.

I will give you that several of these people have claimed to be Atheists, but this forum is Creation vs. Evolution, and not Religion vs. Atheism. Most of the people in the US that accept Evolution are religious.
 

Earthling

David Henson
Simply stating quotes are taken "out of context" without DEMONSTRATING that they were "out of context" is easy but also unfair.

These people SAID they were evolutionists and/or atheists, and murdered millions along with their minions.

1) Please DEMONSTRATE how it was taken out of context.

2) If you believe it was just an unfortunate coincidence that they stated they were evolutionists and/or atheists, please state you believe it is all a coincidence. Coincidences do happen, right?

Thank you.

It's really simple. Can you think of any theists who could be said to have murdered millions along with their minions? I certainly can.
 

Jumi

Well-Known Member
I think they are attached to atheists for the same reason creationism and theism is associated with genocides. For political reasons. People wanting to make their rule in the world want to demonize and dehumanize people they don't like, whether they are theists or atheists.
 

Valjean

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Genocides are associated with failure of government to manage the safety and security of the people, creating a frightened, angry, infantalized populace eager to follow the first confident, strong-father figure who comes explaining who's to blame and offering a quick fix.

Its associated with ambitious, often Psychopathic , often Narcissistic; Right Wing Authoritarian, Social Dominants and insecure, status challenged, novelty-averse Authoritarian Followers.
Right-wing authoritarianism - Wikipedia
Authoritarian follower - Issuepedia
Milgram experiment - Wikipedia
Social dominance orientation - Wikipedia
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/psychopathy

Religion is a thin veneer, easily stripped away by fear, threat or promise of personal gain, as any review of man's history of war and genocide will attest.

We are a tribal species. We're not naturally wired to extend moral consideration to those outside our tribe. They are The Other. They are non-people. They are vermin. They can be disregarded/exploited/ killed with moral impunity.

It's usually a simple thing to induce a perfectly normal, respectable, churchgoing citizen to participate in a genocide. It's easy to strip away the social and religious veneer. If this were not the case, an effective military would be impossible.
https://www.simplypsychology.org/zimbardo.html

Atheist morality, on the other hand, is deep, it's internalized, it's not easily stripped away.
 
Last edited:

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
Here is a partial list of Evolutionists and/or Atheist dictators behind some of the most brutal regimes in the past few centuries - in their own words:

- Vladimir Lenin (1870 - 1924): Atheist and Evolutionist who renounced his belief in God after the death of his father and beloved brother; he said:
1) "Atheism is a natural and inseparable part of Marxism..."
2) "Darwin put an end to the belief that the animal and vegetable species bear no relation to one another, except by chance, and that they were created by God, and hence immutable."
He established hundreds of concentration camps while ordering the execution of Christians, Jews, and Muslims throughout Russia; his regime was responsible for the deaths of 6 - 8 million people through execution, starvation and war.
(ref: Volkogonov, D. (1994). Lenin: Life and Legacy.; Necrometrics.com)

- Leon Trotsky (1879 - 1940): Self-proclaimed "irreconcilable Atheist" and Evolutionist who said:
1) "We call our dialectic 'materialist', since its roots are neither in heaven nor in the depths of our “free will”, but in objective reality, in nature...There is place within this system for neither God nor Devil, nor immortal soul, nor eternal norms of laws and morals.";
2) "Every educated person since Darwin has labeled themselves an “evolutionist”. But a real evolutionist must apply the idea of evolution to his own forms of thinking."
3) "I shall die a proletarian revolutionist, a Marxist, a dialectical materialist, and, consequently, an irreconcilable atheist."
4) "But whatever may be the circumstances of my death I shall die with unshaken faith in the communist future. This faith in man and in his future gives me even now such power of resistance as cannot be given by any religion."
As a Bolshevik leader he masterminded the murder of hundreds of thousands of Russians through starvation and war during the Communist Russian Revolution.
(ref: Trotsky, L., Trotsky's Testament, 1940)

- Benito Mussolini (1883 - 1945): Atheist and Evolutionist who said:
1) "The God of the theologians is the creation of their empty heads."
2) "The history of the saints is mainly the history of insane people."
3) "Religion is a species of mental disease. It has always had a pathological reaction on mankind."
4) "When we claim 'God does not exist', we mean to deny by this declaration the personal God of theology, the God worshiped in various ways and divers modes by believers the world over... that God of absurd attributes who is an affront to human reason."
5) "Science is now in the process of destroying religious dogma. The dogma of the divine creation is recognized as absurd."
He was known for "daring God to strike him dead" on many public occasions; although he occasionally courted the Catholic church to gain political control, when he did gain control he persecuted both the Protestant and Catholic church by killing thousands of priests and clergy; responsible for 400 to 500 thousand deaths; he was executed by a firing squad while attempting to escape from Italy.
(ref: Haught, J., 2000 Years of Disbelief: Famous People with the Courage to Doubt.; Mussolini, B.
'Homme et la divinite/Bibliotheque Internationale de propagande rationaliste, Geneva)

- Joseph Stalin (died 1953): Became an Atheist/Darwinist after reading Darwin's "Origin of Species", stating:
1) "You know, they are fooling us. There is no God.”
2) "'I'll lend you a book to read (Darwin). It will show you that the world and all living things are quite different from what you imagine, and all this talk about God is sheer nonsense...."
He made atheism the official ideology of Russia and flooded the media and schools with atheistic propaganda; he crushed the Russian Orthodox Church, leveling thousands of churches and killing more than 100,000 priests, monks and nuns during the religious "purge" between 1937 and 1938 alone. Overall, his atheistic dictatorship killed 80 million people by starvation, execution, and war.
(ref: E. Yaroslavsky, Landmarks in the Life of Stalin, 1940;

- Margaret Sanger (died 1966): Atheist and Darwinist who said:
1) "The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it".
Although she was never in power to be a dictator, she was an advocate of eugenics (Darwinist-based attempts to develop a superior race through selective breeding of humans), mandatory sterilizations of the "unfit", and infanticide; founder of Planned Parenthood - America's largest abortion provider responsible for the deaths of untold millions of preborn children.

- Mao Zedong (died 1976): Atheist, with Darwin as his favorite author; he stated:
1) "Religion is poison."
2) “Atheism must take the place of belief in a God.”
3) "Chinese socialism is founded upon Darwin and the theory of evolution."
Although he used the terms "gods" and "goddess" in his colorful poems, he made atheism the official ideology of China and flooded the media and schools with atheistic propaganda; lived an opulent lifestyle while the common people starved; his regime caused the deaths of 40 to 80 million people by starvation, torture, and executions.
(ref: M. Zedong, M. Kau, and J. Leung, The Writings of Mao Zedong, 1976; The Poems of Mao Tse-tung, Harper & Row).

- Karl Marx (1818 - 1883): Atheist who famously said:
1) "Man makes religion, religion does not make man"
2) "It (religion) is the opium of the people".
Evolutionist who enthusiastically called Darwin’s "Origin of Species" as "This is the book which contains the basis in natural history for our views.”
Although not a dictator himself, his writings and ideologies were used by many dictators to murder tens of millions. In Russia alone, 20 million Christians were killed by dictators who used his writings. (International Socialist Review, Issue #65; Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Selected Correspondence 1846–1895)

- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900): Atheist who said: "God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him."; and "...a theologian, a priest, a pope of today not only errs when he speaks, but actually lies—and that he no longer escapes blame for his lie through “innocence” or “ignorance.” The priest knows, as every one knows, that there is no longer any God." Evolutionist although he disagreed with certain minor points of Darwin's theory; his written work was the ideology behind Nazism which murdered millions; he was permanently placed in an psychiatric asylum after suffering a breakdown. ( The AntiChrist, F. Nietzsche, 1888)

- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945): Evolutionist; although he courted the Catholic church for his political gain, he was very anti-Christian and said:
1) "Our epoch will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity.”
2) “Christianity is the worst of the regressions that mankind can ever have undergone...”
3) “The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity.”
4) Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s minister of propaganda, noted in his diary in 1939: "The Fuehrer is deeply religious, but deeply anti-Christian. He regards Christianity as a symptom of decay. Rightly so. It is a branch of the Jewish race."
5) Martin Bormann, Hitler's secretary and right hand man, publicly stated in 1941, "National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable."
Hitler publicly and repeatedly invoked the name of God as a ruse to justify his brutal military and political actions; he applied Darwin's theory of evolution and "survival of the fittest" while attempting to develop a biologically superior race through ethnic cleansing; showed no regard for accountability to a higher power by killing 11 to 14 million people through starvation, execution, and war; committed suicide to avoid capture at the end of World War 2.

- Pol Pot (died 1998): Evolutionist who, as leader of the deadly Khmer Rouge, adopted Mao's Darwinist philosophies; known for his "Cambodian killing fields"; closed all religious institutions including Buddhist temples but especially persecuted Christians and Muslims; responsible for 1 to 3 million executions, mostly using axes, hammers, and sharpened bamboo sticks to save ammunition.

- Jim Jones (died 1978): Atheist who said:
1) "Off the record, I don’t believe in any loving God. Our people, I would say, are ninety percent atheist."
2) "I felt somewhat hypocritical for the last years as I became an atheist."
3) "You feel tainted, by being in the church situation. But of course, everyone knows where I’m at. My bishop knows that I’m an atheist...He must have spent twenty thousand dollars traveling around, hoping to get my denomination to remove me, because I was so atheistic.”
He was responsible for the 1978 mass murder/suicide of 908 members of the People's Temple cult in Guyana; he personally ordered the executions of several members of the visiting press and a U.S. Congressman.
(ref: The Jonestown Institute audiotape, 1976).



The response from atheists is that these dictators were motivated by communism and not by atheism or Darwinism. In other words, its only a coincidence that almost all of the genocidal dictators of the 20th Century - basically a 'Who's Who' List of dictators were all evolutionists and/or atheists. In addition, since the dictator could not have done the millions of killings himself, he had to employ thousands who shared his values and philosophies to help him. Interestingly, the case of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer (who was an atheist and evolutionist) may shed some light on these questions about the motivation behind their deeds:
There's a far better correlation for you to make.
Your biggest malefactors in history were socialists.
(Some of yours were Christian (Hitler) or of that background (Lenin).)
Jeffrey Dahmer (1960 - 1994), Atheist/Evolutionist and serial killer, who said:
1) "If a person doesn’t think there is a God to be accountable to, then—then what's the point of trying to modify your behavior to keep it within acceptable ranges? That's how I thought anyway.
I always believed the theory of evolution as truth, that we all just came from the slime. When we, when we died, you know, that was it, there is nothing. So the whole theory (evolution) cheapens life."
(ref: Stone Phillips Interview with Jeffrey Dahmer, Dateline NBC, February 1994).

Amazingly, Jeffrey Dahmer converted to Christianity in prison with the help of his father (who himself became a Christian and creationist later in his own life). Dahmer was later murdered in prison. However, he went to Heaven by the grace of God - stories don't end any better than that! If God can save a serial killer, He can save anyone! Thank You Lord for your mercy on him!
If God makes people accountable for their actions, thereby preventing immoral
actions, then how do we explain Bernie Madoff, Timothy McVeigh, etc, etc?
 

Milton Platt

Well-Known Member
Here is a partial list of Evolutionists and/or Atheist dictators behind some of the most brutal regimes in the past few centuries - in their own words:

- Vladimir Lenin (1870 - 1924): Atheist and Evolutionist who renounced his belief in God after the death of his father and beloved brother; he said:
1) "Atheism is a natural and inseparable part of Marxism..."
2) "Darwin put an end to the belief that the animal and vegetable species bear no relation to one another, except by chance, and that they were created by God, and hence immutable."
He established hundreds of concentration camps while ordering the execution of Christians, Jews, and Muslims throughout Russia; his regime was responsible for the deaths of 6 - 8 million people through execution, starvation and war.
(ref: Volkogonov, D. (1994). Lenin: Life and Legacy.; Necrometrics.com)

- Leon Trotsky (1879 - 1940): Self-proclaimed "irreconcilable Atheist" and Evolutionist who said:
1) "We call our dialectic 'materialist', since its roots are neither in heaven nor in the depths of our “free will”, but in objective reality, in nature...There is place within this system for neither God nor Devil, nor immortal soul, nor eternal norms of laws and morals.";
2) "Every educated person since Darwin has labeled themselves an “evolutionist”. But a real evolutionist must apply the idea of evolution to his own forms of thinking."
3) "I shall die a proletarian revolutionist, a Marxist, a dialectical materialist, and, consequently, an irreconcilable atheist."
4) "But whatever may be the circumstances of my death I shall die with unshaken faith in the communist future. This faith in man and in his future gives me even now such power of resistance as cannot be given by any religion."
As a Bolshevik leader he masterminded the murder of hundreds of thousands of Russians through starvation and war during the Communist Russian Revolution.
(ref: Trotsky, L., Trotsky's Testament, 1940)

- Benito Mussolini (1883 - 1945): Atheist and Evolutionist who said:
1) "The God of the theologians is the creation of their empty heads."
2) "The history of the saints is mainly the history of insane people."
3) "Religion is a species of mental disease. It has always had a pathological reaction on mankind."
4) "When we claim 'God does not exist', we mean to deny by this declaration the personal God of theology, the God worshiped in various ways and divers modes by believers the world over... that God of absurd attributes who is an affront to human reason."
5) "Science is now in the process of destroying religious dogma. The dogma of the divine creation is recognized as absurd."
He was known for "daring God to strike him dead" on many public occasions; although he occasionally courted the Catholic church to gain political control, when he did gain control he persecuted both the Protestant and Catholic church by killing thousands of priests and clergy; responsible for 400 to 500 thousand deaths; he was executed by a firing squad while attempting to escape from Italy.
(ref: Haught, J., 2000 Years of Disbelief: Famous People with the Courage to Doubt.; Mussolini, B.
'Homme et la divinite/Bibliotheque Internationale de propagande rationaliste, Geneva)

- Joseph Stalin (died 1953): Became an Atheist/Darwinist after reading Darwin's "Origin of Species", stating:
1) "You know, they are fooling us. There is no God.”
2) "'I'll lend you a book to read (Darwin). It will show you that the world and all living things are quite different from what you imagine, and all this talk about God is sheer nonsense...."
He made atheism the official ideology of Russia and flooded the media and schools with atheistic propaganda; he crushed the Russian Orthodox Church, leveling thousands of churches and killing more than 100,000 priests, monks and nuns during the religious "purge" between 1937 and 1938 alone. Overall, his atheistic dictatorship killed 80 million people by starvation, execution, and war.
(ref: E. Yaroslavsky, Landmarks in the Life of Stalin, 1940;

- Margaret Sanger (died 1966): Atheist and Darwinist who said:
1) "The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it".
Although she was never in power to be a dictator, she was an advocate of eugenics (Darwinist-based attempts to develop a superior race through selective breeding of humans), mandatory sterilizations of the "unfit", and infanticide; founder of Planned Parenthood - America's largest abortion provider responsible for the deaths of untold millions of preborn children.

- Mao Zedong (died 1976): Atheist, with Darwin as his favorite author; he stated:
1) "Religion is poison."
2) “Atheism must take the place of belief in a God.”
3) "Chinese socialism is founded upon Darwin and the theory of evolution."
Although he used the terms "gods" and "goddess" in his colorful poems, he made atheism the official ideology of China and flooded the media and schools with atheistic propaganda; lived an opulent lifestyle while the common people starved; his regime caused the deaths of 40 to 80 million people by starvation, torture, and executions.
(ref: M. Zedong, M. Kau, and J. Leung, The Writings of Mao Zedong, 1976; The Poems of Mao Tse-tung, Harper & Row).

- Karl Marx (1818 - 1883): Atheist who famously said:
1) "Man makes religion, religion does not make man"
2) "It (religion) is the opium of the people".
Evolutionist who enthusiastically called Darwin’s "Origin of Species" as "This is the book which contains the basis in natural history for our views.”
Although not a dictator himself, his writings and ideologies were used by many dictators to murder tens of millions. In Russia alone, 20 million Christians were killed by dictators who used his writings. (International Socialist Review, Issue #65; Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Selected Correspondence 1846–1895)

- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900): Atheist who said: "God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him."; and "...a theologian, a priest, a pope of today not only errs when he speaks, but actually lies—and that he no longer escapes blame for his lie through “innocence” or “ignorance.” The priest knows, as every one knows, that there is no longer any God." Evolutionist although he disagreed with certain minor points of Darwin's theory; his written work was the ideology behind Nazism which murdered millions; he was permanently placed in an psychiatric asylum after suffering a breakdown. ( The AntiChrist, F. Nietzsche, 1888)

- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945): Evolutionist; although he courted the Catholic church for his political gain, he was very anti-Christian and said:
1) "Our epoch will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity.”
2) “Christianity is the worst of the regressions that mankind can ever have undergone...”
3) “The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity.”
4) Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s minister of propaganda, noted in his diary in 1939: "The Fuehrer is deeply religious, but deeply anti-Christian. He regards Christianity as a symptom of decay. Rightly so. It is a branch of the Jewish race."
5) Martin Bormann, Hitler's secretary and right hand man, publicly stated in 1941, "National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable."
Hitler publicly and repeatedly invoked the name of God as a ruse to justify his brutal military and political actions; he applied Darwin's theory of evolution and "survival of the fittest" while attempting to develop a biologically superior race through ethnic cleansing; showed no regard for accountability to a higher power by killing 11 to 14 million people through starvation, execution, and war; committed suicide to avoid capture at the end of World War 2.

- Pol Pot (died 1998): Evolutionist who, as leader of the deadly Khmer Rouge, adopted Mao's Darwinist philosophies; known for his "Cambodian killing fields"; closed all religious institutions including Buddhist temples but especially persecuted Christians and Muslims; responsible for 1 to 3 million executions, mostly using axes, hammers, and sharpened bamboo sticks to save ammunition.

- Jim Jones (died 1978): Atheist who said:
1) "Off the record, I don’t believe in any loving God. Our people, I would say, are ninety percent atheist."
2) "I felt somewhat hypocritical for the last years as I became an atheist."
3) "You feel tainted, by being in the church situation. But of course, everyone knows where I’m at. My bishop knows that I’m an atheist...He must have spent twenty thousand dollars traveling around, hoping to get my denomination to remove me, because I was so atheistic.”
He was responsible for the 1978 mass murder/suicide of 908 members of the People's Temple cult in Guyana; he personally ordered the executions of several members of the visiting press and a U.S. Congressman.
(ref: The Jonestown Institute audiotape, 1976).



The response from atheists is that these dictators were motivated by communism and not by atheism or Darwinism. In other words, its only a coincidence that almost all of the genocidal dictators of the 20th Century - basically a 'Who's Who' List of dictators were all evolutionists and/or atheists. In addition, since the dictator could not have done the millions of killings himself, he had to employ thousands who shared his values and philosophies to help him. Interestingly, the case of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer (who was an atheist and evolutionist) may shed some light on these questions about the motivation behind their deeds:

Jeffrey Dahmer (1960 - 1994), Atheist/Evolutionist and serial killer, who said:
1) "If a person doesn’t think there is a God to be accountable to, then—then what's the point of trying to modify your behavior to keep it within acceptable ranges? That's how I thought anyway.
I always believed the theory of evolution as truth, that we all just came from the slime. When we, when we died, you know, that was it, there is nothing. So the whole theory (evolution) cheapens life."
(ref: Stone Phillips Interview with Jeffrey Dahmer, Dateline NBC, February 1994).

Amazingly, Jeffrey Dahmer converted to Christianity in prison with the help of his father (who himself became a Christian and creationist later in his own life). Dahmer was later murdered in prison. However, he went to Heaven by the grace of God - stories don't end any better than that! If God can save a serial killer, He can save anyone! Thank You Lord for your mercy on him!

You left out the genocides in the Bible.........
 

Valjean

Veteran Member
Premium Member
There's a far better correlation for you to make.
Your biggest malefactors in history were socialists.
I'm pretty sure there were malefactors all over the map, and some despots calling their movements socialist, weren't.

I don't think it's socialism, per se, that's the problem. I think various personality disorders and other mental aberrations better account for the despotism.
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
I'm pretty sure there were malefactors all over the map, and some despots calling their movements socialist, weren't.
Certainly, capitalists & other "ists" can be oppressive despots too.
But I spoke to the particular regimes cited in the OP.
I don't think it's socialism, per se, that's the problem. I think various personality disorders and other mental aberrations better account for the despotism.
Socialism is particularly vulnerable to evil leaders causing evil results.
It stems from it necessarily needing tight economic & political control
compared to capitalism. (Socialist countries need to prevent outbreaks
of capitalism, but capitalist countries don't need to prevent outbreaks of
socialism.)
 
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