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July 13, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
38:08
Hitler and Stalin and Atheism
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Good morning, everybody.
Hope you're doing well.
It's Steph.
My God, it's only 8.20 in the morning on the 30th of April 2007.
And this is Brain for Hire.
I've had a fine gentleman on YouTube who has promised donations if I will answer the following question.
So Rent-A-Lobe is in action.
And I think it's a very interesting question, and I'm going to frame it in sort of a larger Free Domain Radio approach to debating.
And the question is, Was Stalin an atheist and was Hitler an atheist?
And this is an argument that is often brought to bear against atheism by people who are religious by saying, well, if you look at Stalin and you look at Hitler, here's an example of a non-religious leaders who are, you know, evil and crazy and cause the deaths of tens of millions of people.
Now, you can't ever have an effective conversation with someone when they define the terms irrationally.
There's nothing wrong with people defining terms as long as they do so rationally.
And it's important to distinguish between art and propaganda.
And if you respond to propaganda between, sorry, an argument, between an argument, a logical argument and propaganda, art and propaganda are not that different.
If you respond to propaganda as if it were a logical argument, then you are lost to logic, and you lose the debate fundamentally.
And here is an example of what I call the argument from a fact, where somebody says, well, Stalin was an atheist, and therefore atheism breeds dictatorship, and therefore we cannot be atheists, we must be theists.
And there's a lot of premises in that statement, right?
There's a lot of logical premises which we need to have a look at.
Running off to look up whether or not Stalin was in fact an atheist would not be my response to this argument.
And, you know, maybe that's not the right way to do it, but I'll sort of share why I think it's not the right response and what I would do at least with this argument.
And we've all heard it if we're atheists.
We've all heard it before.
So, I always try and take the easiest route.
If I have to drive across town, I don't go via Alaska.
I have to try and take the easiest route because life is short.
And it's a lot easier to disprove people through logic than it is through research.
And of course, if you can disprove them through logic, then research is unnecessary.
And if they don't accept being disproven by logic, research won't help you at all, right?
So, I mean, I have no problem looking things up.
and sharing facts, but the first thing that you have to do is to figure out who's amenable to logical argument.
In other words, who's interested in having a logical debate and who's interested in just repeating propaganda that they've been told, which basically allows them to not think, right?
And that's not someone you want to get involved with.
This Hitler-Stalin thing is very much in that category.
So, here's some ways of approaching it, if you like, which Don't actually involve having to figure out whether Hitler and Stalin were atheists.
Because, I mean, you'll find arguments either way and I personally am fairly... I mean, Stalin was raised in a seminary and Hitler definitely appealed to to the church, and fascism was blessed by the Holy Pope of Rome, and there was a Nazi church.
He dealt with very much mystical concepts.
He was into superstition, and so on.
So, the question of whether or not these people were religious, well, we don't know.
There's no Ouija board slash summoning that we can put together to get the honest truth out of these demented and evil men.
So, here's some ways of approaching the question.
But you have to break it down in your mind logically as to what the propositions are that are being put forward to begin with.
So, the proposition is Hitler and Stalin were atheists.
Hitler and Stalin were evil.
Therefore, atheism is, or promotes, evil.
Now, let's say, and there's nothing wrong with accepting these premises as true.
Nothing wrong.
You can still win the argument and accept all of these premises as true.
If we say that Hitler and Stalin were atheists and that their evil, or the evil they did, was a direct result of that atheism, And therefore atheism promotes or creates evil?
No problem!
Let's accept all of those premises and then win the argument.
It sounds bad, doesn't it?
But you can do it very easily.
It does take a slight bit of research or at least some basic knowledge of the genocides of the 20th century in particular.
But We would say, I think, as a whole, that fewer deaths are better than more deaths.
Right?
Like, they pick on Stalin and Hitler because Stalin and Hitler, let's say, were responsible for a good number of deaths.
So, if we say that, combined, Stalin and Hitler were responsible for, say, Twenty million deaths.
Forty million people killed in World War II, but it wasn't like Germany was the only combatant, and it wasn't like Italy and Japan didn't sort of throw their lot in as well, and it wasn't like the US didn't nuke Civilian city.
So let's say that we'll give some million to Hitler, and we'll give some million to Stalin, who was, of course, responsible for the famine in the Ukraine, through the forced collectivization of the farmland.
In fact, that was 10 million right there.
So let's give them 40 million deaths.
Let's just pin 40 million deaths on Hitler and Stalin.
I mean, there's lots of arguments about that, but let's just say, for the sake of argument, that we accept that.
And we accept that those 40 million deaths ...were caused by the evil plague of corruption and misery that we call atheism, and that the Christian defines as atheism, and so on.
He had 40 million people killed.
I mean, there were 70 million killed throughout the Russian Communist experiment, just in Russia and in the Eastern Bloc countries, but Stalin wasn't responsible for all of those, right?
He was just one of the seven or eight premiers.
Party secretaries, I think they were called.
So, we got 20 million killed by Hitler.
Let's throw another 20 million at the feet of Stalin and say, yes, their atheism caused this directly.
And the Christian, by picking on these two, and let's say that that's fine to do and it's a reasonable moral argument to make, we'll get to that later, then he's saying, well, I'm going to pick on these two because they killed so many people.
So, killing more people is wrong, right?
Well, that's fine.
So, let's put 40 million deaths At the feet of atheism, directly caused by atheism, and so on.
Fine, fine, fine, fine.
So, given that more deaths is worse than fewer deaths, we can then say, okay, so if we pin 40 million deaths to the neck of atheism, Let's have a look at religion.
And there are some very credible estimates that pin worldwide historical deaths due to the wars of religion at a billion.
One.
One billion.
That's one thousand million for those who are, um, not, well, who are like one percent less mathematically literate than I am.
So, on the atheist camp, as accused by the, um, By the Christians, we have 40 million deaths.
On the religious side, as recognized by scholars, we have a billion deaths.
So, given that more deaths is worse than fewer deaths, the old rifle that the Christian picks up to shoot the atheist goes off in his own face.
Because we obviously are going to recognize that a billion murders is much worse Then, 40 million murders, which represent, of course, 0.4% of atheism.
percent of atheism, the charge that is leveled against atheism with regards to the numbers of deaths caused by, quote, atheists in the 20th century is 0.4 percent the deaths that are charged to religious fanatics or just religious superstitious fanatics, culty people in organized religions throughout the course of human history.
0.4% of the deaths are credible, even if we accept all the premises of the argument to Hitler and Stalin, and a billion deaths result from the wars of religion.
I'm not sure exactly how that levels atheism as a murderous doctrine, when even if we accept this ridiculous premise, atheism contributes 0.4% of the deaths of the two sort of big, quote, atheists.
And if we say that they're all responsible, atheism was totally responsible, blah, blah, blah.
It's clear to see that this is not an argument that is based on evidence or logic.
I mean, that's why all you have to do is look up religious deaths and do some rough calculations, right?
I mean, just some rough calculations and say, well, if doctrines that cause murder are wrong, then atheism is going to be pretty far down on your list.
In fact, atheism is going to be below environmentalism.
Environmentalism, I shouldn't laugh, because it's absolutely appalling.
Environmentalism, if we just look at one aspect of it alone, the banning of DDT, has resulted in the deaths of 60 million people worldwide.
That's a Hitler and a Stalin and a half!
So, environmentalism is going to be above atheism, Patriotism is going to be far above environmentalism, still below religion, which is, I do believe, the all-time number one murderer of mankind.
And you're going to have a slight problem, right?
You're going to have a slight problem sort of explaining it.
Now, what people are going to say is that, well, you know, it's still not right.
Well, yeah, of course.
But then we can sort of say, well, if we accept that belief, doctrinal beliefs that cause murder, are wrong, then the Christian who wants the atheist to give up his atheism because atheism causes death must, before he even talks to the atheist, have given up his own religion as a doctrine which causes death.
Of course, that's never the case, right?
And this is how you know you're not arguing with a rational human being.
You're just arguing with someone who mouths propaganda.
Well, you see, as... I can't remember who said this, but... Dostoevsky said, when men stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing, they believe in anything.
And that's pithy, and that's clever, but it's not an argument.
It's just... It's like that guy who said, a liberal is defined as somebody who has no problem with a woman working in the porn industry, as long as she's making minimum wage.
It's just clever.
I mean, it's just ha-ha, but it's like a stand-up routine.
It's not...
It's not got anything to do with a logical argument based on any sort of basic facts, right?
I mean, it doesn't take that long to figure out which has killed more people, religion or, sort of, quote, atheism.
Now, that should be enough.
I mean, that should be enough to get someone to say, oh, I'm so sorry, I'm going to go off and fight the religious people because I'm so concerned about doctrines, right?
This is what somebody's saying.
I am concerned about doctrines which cause murder.
Or which are associated with murder.
That is why I am against atheism.
They're not saying, oh, atheism is bad and I'm just making this up.
They're not saying, well, someone told me this so I'm just going to go with it.
They're saying my belief that atheism is bad is based on the fact that atheism promotes murder.
Therefore, any belief which promotes murder is bad and I will oppose it.
Therefore, since religion promotes hundreds of times more murders, than atheism, I'm going to be anti-religious, which is, of course, a logical paradox.
If you give up your religion, if you say atheism is evil because it causes murders, but religion is more evil because it causes more murders, then I'm going to give up religion, and then I'm going to be an atheist.
So at least you'll be in the camp which supports fewer murders, so to speak, right?
So, of course, if somebody doesn't respond to that, then you can say, well, you're not telling me the truth here.
You're not saying what your real premises are, right?
I mean, if your real premise is, I like to defend Christianity, and here's some tools that I have.
Then it's not an argument.
It's got nothing to do with atheism or Stalin.
It's just, you know, it's just words that you say like a magic spell to get people to stop criticizing religion or to shut them down or whatever.
I mean, it's just not a logical argument.
It's not something that you're doing with any kind of rig or any kind of science.
But there's another criteria which again doesn't require a huge amount of research, which I think can help To unravel is not, even if the first salvo, which should demolish the structure, doesn't demolish the structure.
Because someone's going to say, well, yes, but you're talking all religion, that includes Islam, which is violent, and Christianity is not violent, and blah, blah, blah.
And then you can say, okay, well, if I go and look up the murders that are committed in the name of Christianity, and they add up to more than those ascribed to Hitler and Stalin, Will you then give up your religion, if this is your major premise, that you reject beliefs that cause murder?
And if they say yes, then I'd say, look it up!
And let's say that Christianity has been a very nice religion, and only a third of the murders are attributable to Christianity.
That's a third of the world's major religions.
Judaism hasn't really had the chance to do a whole lot of murders, except when they got a state.
Let's say Christianity, it's been good.
It's only been a third.
Hell, you can give it a quarter.
It's 250 million.
That's still many times more than that attributable to these evil atheists.
So then, you can say, on the second round, let's say that Hitler and Stalin were both atheists.
I fully accept that.
But of course, Hitler and Stalin did not commit 40 million murders.
I mean, I think that would be impossible, right?
Unless you had nukes and you were able to fly a plane, build the nuke, fly the plane and drop it yourself.
I don't think that it would be possible to commit 40 million murders single-handedly.
So clearly what happened was there was a culture that believed in what Hitler and Stalin were ranting about.
You had a culture that was primed for, let's say, communism and primed for fascism in a way that, say, England and America weren't.
So the question would be, well, why is that?
Because Hitler's just, you know, munching on his carpet and screaming things in his office.
He doesn't go out and kill all these people.
Neither does Stalin.
I mean, certainly Stalin committed some murders before he became Stalin the Stalin.
But the question is, How were they able to achieve what it is that they achieved, the sort of unholy murders that they were able to achieve?
They weren't able to do it single-handedly.
you had two cultures, Germany and Russia, that were primed and receptive to communism and fascism.
Now, I think that we can say, and I think that any sane Christian, or maybe not too insane a Christian, would agree that communism and fascism are irrational doctrines.
I mean, even if we just take out the moral element, There's no such thing as class.
You can't worship class.
Marxism has been proven empirically false in its economic assumptions.
Fascism and the worship of race and of the state is completely illogical.
Totalitarianism is wrong and incorrect because it's elevating a simple human being to the status of a demigod, which is, of course, blasphemy.
Blasphemy to us as well, my friends.
I just stretched the term ridiculously.
So, let's at least say that fascism and communism are highly irrational degrees that require the worship of an abstract entity.
In communism it's the state and class, in fascism it's the state and the race, or the state and the nation and the destiny and the Hegelian unfolding of history and blah blah blah.
So, in both societies it requires An irrational population prone to worship.
Huh.
Irrational population prone to worship.
And people would say, well, but, but, I see where you're going with this, saith the Christian, but he says, but they're worshipping a man, they're not worshipping God.
Okay, well, you see, from an atheist perspective, there is no God.
So people are only ever worshipping men.
People are only ever worshipping the Pope.
People are only ever worshipping those who wrote the Bible.
People are only ever worshipping the priest.
Because there is no God.
So there's no God to worship, and God is communicated to children, or inflicted upon children through human agencies, therefore those children grow up worshipping words uttered by men, fantasies inflicted by authority.
They do not grow up worshiping a god because there's no god.
So what happens is you have to look at, and you don't have to do a lot of looking for this, it's still easier than trying to figure out whether or not Stalin was an atheist, Look at the populations of Russia, the history of Russia, the history of Germany, the history of China, the history of Cambodia, the history of whoever you want to pick up that became a communist or fascist country, with the exception of Italy, which we'll talk about another time.
These countries did not go through the Enlightenment.
They did not go through a phase of rationalistic philosophy.
And Russia was pretty much stuck in the Middle Ages until communism.
I mean, they only got rid of serfdom in the late 1860s.
So Russia was highly mystical, highly irrational culture, and of course highly prone to or enslaved to worshipping a human being, a leader.
So there we have a highly irrational culture that worships, is prone to, or addicted to worshiping human agencies, human leaders.
Germany!
I skipped the whole Renaissance Enlightenment thing because it was being torn apart by religious warfare.
You want to look why Klaus... Is it Klaus from Sprockets?
Touch my monkey.
This is... I mean, these sort of depressed German films... Depressed and weird German culture.
My mom's German.
I have some understanding of this.
Because they just never went through a rational, Enlightenment, joy of life, secular, purely secular and scientific culture.
Cultural change, right?
So, they missed the whole Enlightenment, the whole... And so, Germany was this pocket of medievalism that went into the 20th century and got a hold of all the weapons produced by capitalism.
Germany was the first country in the world to introduce the welfare state in the 1860s, 1870s, under Bismarck.
So, Germany is a collectivist, mystical culture, highly prone to worshipping Because it's a militaristic culture as well, just as Russia was.
Wherever you have mysticism, you have militarism.
It's inevitable.
As you can see, America is the most militaristic and the most mystical of the Western countries.
So, it's not that Stalin and Hitler's atheism don't really matter.
What really matters is the cultural trends of the countries that worshipped them.
Or that accepted their rule.
And it had to be cultures which were irrational, because both fascism and communism are irrational doctrines.
And it had to be countries whose populations were addicted to worshipping individuals.
Or, if you don't like individuals and you can't get that across to the Christian, which is unlikely because the Christian is going to believe there's a God, are at least addicted to worshipping concepts like country.
Patriotism is the worship of an abstract entity that does not exist called a nation.
There's only people and trees and brooks and clouds.
There's no nation.
There's no nation that exists in the world.
There's a group of people that you can call a crowd, but the crowd cannot go and get the group of people a bunch of burgers.
The crowd doesn't exist.
It's just a conceptual tag.
You can't say, I'm going to sell you these nine apples and then I'm going to sell you the number nine.
It's not a good, it doesn't exist.
So, irrational worship of an abstract entity, the state, the nation, the race, the class, whatever, embodied the nation, the race, the class, whatever, embodied in an individual is a hallmark of, is what made these evils possible.
So, the last thing I've seen is that the people who have been in the world, Now, even a Christian, unless he's completely deranged, is going to accept that atheism is more empirically rational than religion.
Atheism, not communism, not fascism.
Because otherwise there would be no reason for the word faith.
Faith is belief without evidence, and so God is not as empirically rational.
They'll say, oh, he's spiritually rational.
Well, that's fine, but it's not empirically rational in the way that atheism is.
It contradicts empirical rationality directly.
So if it turns out that the cultures that had the least atheistic, Atheistic or deistic rationality worked into their belief systems through the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.
If those cultures were specifically geared, and it was a very strong predictor of their susceptibility to fascism and particularly to communism, then you could, even if we accept that Stalin was an atheist and atheism caused, you know, his whatever, what it murders,
There was no fertile ground in the more rational and secular cultures for communism and fascism.
There was no fertile ground in the more secular, atheistic or agnostic slash deistic.
There was no fertile ground in the atheistic cultures for, or the more atheistic cultures, for this kind of hysterical individual worshipping collectivism.
Thus, even if we accept that Stalin was an evil atheist and atheism did this, that, and the other, it was only made possible Because people were willing to follow him, and people were only willing to follow him because they'd been trained in irrationality and the worship of abstracts and collective concepts.
State, class, race, nation.
The Fuhrer.
Which are religious concepts?
You obey somebody on authority despite the evidence of your senses and logic.
That's how religion is transmitted, people.
Obey the person in authority because he is in authority, not because he has better thoughts or can prove a goddamn thing.
Just because he's in authority, you must obey.
And if you don't obey, you're evil.
Well, gotta tell ya.
Let's say Stalin was an evil atheist.
He only profited from the destruction of integrity, intellectual integrity, that was wrought by the priests.
So that's another way, even if we accept that Stalin was an evil atheist, that he was merely profiting from religion.
Religion.
Religion certainly came first, and it was the most religious countries that became the most susceptible to totalitarianism.
Italy did go through the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, but Italy is the home of Catholicism and the Pope.
And the Pope blessed fascism.
The Pope was a huge fan of Mussolini.
And so all the Catholics lined up and said, great, whatever you say, El Duce!
So there's another example where religion is the cause of these murders.
It's not evil atheists with mustaches.
It's the fact that people are trained to follow leaders despite any evidence.
But that comes from religion!
Now, even if we accept that atheism causes murder or whatever, And even if we accept that Hitler and Stalin were both atheists, that in no way, shape or form, proves that atheism was the sole cause of their evil.
That in no way proves that atheism was the sole cause of their evil.
As Richard Dawkins, old Dickie D, has pointed out, Both Hitler and Stalin had mustaches.
Does that mean that we can assume that everyone with a good old Freddie Mercury stache is a mass murderer in the wings?
They both did have mustaches.
Neither of them were bald.
Ah, you see, now we're getting somewhere.
But the fact that they both had mustaches doesn't prove that the mustache, you know, the old soup strainer was a key, the key and sole cause of their evils.
Because calling somebody an atheist doesn't really mean much. - It doesn't really mean much.
Because they could be nihilists, who believe in nothing, no virtue, no truth, no reality, and of course no God, but they don't disbelieve in God because they find that the statement that God exists is invalid, but they find that any positive statement of truth is invalid.
So somebody who's a nihilist will also say, yeah, I'm an atheist.
But so what?
That doesn't mean that they disbelieve in God because they have a standard of truth.
They just disbelieve in all standards of truth.
So calling someone an atheist doesn't really matter.
If atheism, here's another one, if atheism were the sole cause of sociopathic evil, Then you'd have a tough time explaining the Royal Society of Science or whatever the heck it's called in England.
92% of its members are avowed atheists.
Do we then take these masters of science and throw them into the same cage in hell that we put Stalin and we put Hitler and all the people who enabled their evil actions?
Malcolm Muggeridge, the satanic evil dictator?
A little tough to swallow, right?
Another way is to bring the personal to bear.
And to say, alright, so you believe that atheism is the direct and sole cause of the grandest of human evils.
I answer to a Christian who's making this argument.
Well, I am an atheist.
Do you believe that I am evil?
And they may say, yes, you are evil and you are part of the apocalyptic vision of hell on this earth and you must die, die, die.
In which case I'd say, well, here's a person who acts with integrity in the realm of the Bible.
Run!
That would be my sort of suggestion.
Don't just pray.
But if they say, no, I think that you're just misguided.
Or, I think that you just don't, you haven't found Christ yet, you're not evil, you're just misguided, right?
You say, oh, okay, so on the one hand you're saying that Hitler and Stalin were evil because they were atheists, therefore atheism causes evil, but you're saying to me that I'm just misguided.
So it is possible that religion, sorry, that atheism is both the direct cause of A. satanic, bottomless, genocidal evil, and B. confusion.
I think that might be casting the net just a little wide.
So, I would say that if the religious person is going to say that you're evil for being an atheist, they're being consistent with their beliefs.
But then they're completely insane, so run away.
If the religious person says that you are just confused and sad and lost and lonely with that buddy Jesus, then you say, OK, well, let's accept that that's true.
Let's accept that God exists, that atheism is wrong, and all this.
But you're saying that atheism does not directly cause genocidal murders in the millions.
That atheism can simply cause confusion and alienation from God.
The lack of faith is just a shame.
It's not a stare-in-your-face, stomp-on-your-foot, satanic, horny evil.
And therefore, you can't say that atheism was the cause of the evils of Stalin and Hitler, even if we accept that they were atheists.
Because I'm an atheist, and you're accepting that atheism is not the cause of me acting the same way.
So there must be some other factor that caused the evil of Stalin and Hitler, other than atheism.
Unless you believe that the Royal Scientist Society is 92% rational scientific atheists, that they're all a cabal of sociopathic murderers waiting to spring their evil final solutions on society.
Well, if you don't accept that, if you think that that's not true, if you think it is true, then again, I'd get away from this person.
This is completely insane.
But if it's not true that atheism is the direct and causal driver of evil, if it can produce confusion or sadness or a mere alienation from God or whatever, then clearly saying that Hitler and Stalin's evil were caused by their atheism is not true.
And what, has this taken like 20 minutes to go through these arguments?
Probably five or ten if you don't go on tangents, make mistakes, or throw in some bad jokes.
So, in this case, we can see that the argument falls completely, and we don't ever have to prove that Hitler and Stalin weren't atheists.
So this is a very, very important thing.
When you're engaged in a debate with someone, don't let them define the terms.
Unless they're doing so in a highly rational and scientific and empirical manner.
Don't let anybody else define the terms.
Because then, the other thing that happens is the reason that people want you to run off and find out whether these dictators were atheists or not, is because they don't want to debate you in the moment.
They want to say what they say, and then they just want you to run off and find proof.
And by the time you come back, they can roll their eyes and say, Oh my God, are you still thinking about that?
Right?
Which is humiliating.
I mean, they don't want you to debate with them in the moment, and it doesn't take long.
If you got these arguments down cold, it would take you about five or ten minutes to step someone through that is proof of this proposition.
Now, sadly, that's going to be humiliating to them, because it's going to reveal to them that they weren't thinking, they were just mouthing corrupt propaganda, but that's another issue we can deal with another time.
But you have to question the definitions.
You have to question the propositions.
You have to go beyond the stated word.
Otherwise, you're going to spend the rest of your life running around looking up for things for people, and when you come back to them with the answer, they're just going to say, well, I've got some... They're going to either roll their eyes, they're going to humiliate you, or they're going to say, well, no, I've got some sources that say this, and then you're going to end up in footnote wars.
And that, of course, is not the job of a philosopher.
That's the job of a nonsensical, waste-of-skin academic.
So the job of a philosopher is not to look things up.
Most fundamentally, the job of a philosopher, that's the job of a historian.
The job of a philosopher is not to look things up.
I mean, I know I've thrown some facts in here, not really many, and things that you could get in about five minutes on the internet, but things which are provable, right?
You can't fundamentally prove whether Stalin was an atheist or not, because nobody knows his secret convictions.
Everything that he wrote was propaganda.
The man was a sociopath and evil, right?
Are we going to assume that he's going to tell the truth about his religious beliefs?
My God, of course not!
He lied about everything.
He murdered, you know, was responsible or ordered the murders of millions of people, and then we think he's going to tell the truth.
So there's no truth.
That we can get to.
And that, of course, is what people want to stymie you with.
Because then, at the end of it, they'll say, well, if there's no proof, I guess I just have my opinion and you just have yours, and they've stymied you.
And that's not good.
The important thing is never look things up, other than just a couple of numbers to get ratios, if that's important.
Although you can win the argument without looking anything up.
So don't leave the debate to go and look things up.
Don't let your other person define the terms.
Don't let, for God's sake, don't let a religious person define the terms.
My heavens!
So, anyway, I hope that this is helpful.
I look forward to the aforementioned promises of donations if I took this topic on, and I think I did a mildly decent job.
So thank you so much.
Brain for Hire signing off.
Hope you're doing well.
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