Violence and Worldviews

With convincing clues to the existence of a creator we move on to looking for clues as to what our Creator has communicated about his nature and purpose.  More specifically, we will consider why Christianity rises to the top of all other notions about relating to God.  Before considering the positives, there is one criticism commonly raised that needs to be addressed first. The claim that religion in general, and Christianity in particular, is the cause of more death and destruction than any other worldview.

Bertrand Russell wrote in Why I Am Not a Christian, “there was every kind of cruelty practiced upon all sorts of people in the name of religion.” Philosopher Richard Rorty proclaimed religious belief “politically dangerous” with atheism as the only practical foundation for a “pluralistic, democratic society.”

Dinesh D’Souza in What’s So Great About Christianity, contrasts the Inquisition with the Soviet Gulag, asking why we still hear about the Inquisition 500 years later,  while merely 20 years after the collapse of godless Communism we no longer hear about the Gulag?

D’Souza then presents the numbers. Stalinist Russia: 20 million killed as a result of mass slayings, forced labor camps, show trials followed by firing squads, and population relocation.  Adding to the Russian toll are the atheist Soviet dictators: Lenin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev.

Mao Zedong’s Communist China: Seventy million deaths.

Hitler: Ten million murdered, with six million Jews among them.

Then there are the less infamous but no less brutal atheist tyrants like Kim Jong Il of North Korea, Enver Hoxha of Albania, Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania, and Pol Pot of Cambodia.

We will finish this thought next time.  In Christ…