“In a world without God, everything is permitted" - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Parts 1 and 2 briefly discussed atheist philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach’s contention that God and religion are merely human inventions. His ideas would greatly influence those of Karl Marx (“religion is the opium of the people”) and Friedrich Nietzsche (“God is dead”), forerunners of two ideologies both atheistic and brutal, Communism and Nazism. In his book Reason to Believe
, Dr. Scott Hahn reasoned that “it was Feuerbach who made Stalin and Hitler possible, because he assured them that they acted in the absence of God”. Tyrants like Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot believed that God, the source of all morals, does not exist, and so there was nothing left to hold them back from perpetrating the worst of acts except the limits of their own power. They asked: Genocide is wrong? Says who?
Those who deny the existence of God ultimately renounce that of morality. They believe that whatever they do in this life will have no repercussions in the next - because to them, the afterlife does not exist! If this was true, then it means anyone can do anything in life, even the most heinous crimes, without fear of God’s judgment after death. Can you imagine the consequence if people with penchant for violence buy into such delusions? We shouldn’t have a hard time, for not too long ago, the world has witnessed it happen. As Dr. Hahn suggests, we only need to read “the history of the wars and genocide of the atheist regimes of the 20th century: Nazi Germany, Communist China and Cambodia, and the Soviet Union” to remember the result of such a horrific thought turn into reality.
Parts 1 and 2 briefly discussed atheist philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach’s contention that God and religion are merely human inventions. His ideas would greatly influence those of Karl Marx (“religion is the opium of the people”) and Friedrich Nietzsche (“God is dead”), forerunners of two ideologies both atheistic and brutal, Communism and Nazism. In his book Reason to Believe
, Dr. Scott Hahn reasoned that “it was Feuerbach who made Stalin and Hitler possible, because he assured them that they acted in the absence of God”. Tyrants like Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot believed that God, the source of all morals, does not exist, and so there was nothing left to hold them back from perpetrating the worst of acts except the limits of their own power. They asked: Genocide is wrong? Says who? Those who deny the existence of God ultimately renounce that of morality. They believe that whatever they do in this life will have no repercussions in the next - because to them, the afterlife does not exist! If this was true, then it means anyone can do anything in life, even the most heinous crimes, without fear of God’s judgment after death. Can you imagine the consequence if people with penchant for violence buy into such delusions? We shouldn’t have a hard time, for not too long ago, the world has witnessed it happen. As Dr. Hahn suggests, we only need to read “the history of the wars and genocide of the atheist regimes of the 20th century: Nazi Germany, Communist China and Cambodia, and the Soviet Union” to remember the result of such a horrific thought turn into reality.
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