The Horrors of Atheistic and Secular Ideologies

In a recent Philosophy of Religion class I asked the students: "What reasons have you heard atheists give in support of their belief that God does not exist?" One student replied: "The fact that religion causes most of the world's evils."

I said "I've heard some atheists say that, too. But it's false." It's one of the myths of Facebook atheism.

Philosopher Alvin Plantinga writes: "Of course the world’s religions do indeed have much to repent; still (as has often been pointed out) the suffering, death, and havoc attributable to religious belief and practice pales into utter insignificance beside that due to the atheistic and secular ideologies of the twentieth century alone." (Plantinga, Alvin. Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism.)

I mentioned atheist David Berlinski's affirmation of Plantinga in his book The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions. Berlinski writes: "[As atheists] we have the following "awkward fact": "The twentieth century was not an age of faith, and it was awful. Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and Pol Pot will never be counted among the religious leaders of mankind." (19)

See here for a list of Berlinski's statistics.