You might have noticed a trend developing over the past several months. Every murder committed by an atheist is now being leveraged to bolster the narrative that atheism is no less responsible for human misery than religion.
Most of you are doubtless familiar with this canard. Throughout the mid-to-late noughties, the use of Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong and, bizarrely, Adolph Hitler as examples of atheism’s potential for evil could have been a drinking game—assuming one was eager to flirt with alcohol poisoning. If you’re interested in why this claim is specious, Skeptic Ink’s own Jonathan Pearce has taken a scalpel to it.
At the time, very few atheists found this lay-up of an argument compelling, which is why it’s strange that many of those same atheists are currently doing their best Bill O’Reilly impression and indicting unbelief every time we are reminded of a fact that no sane person disputes: lack of religious faith does not guarantee moral clarity. Unsurprisingly, this yarn is being spun almost exclusively by those on the far left.
The intention was to write a lengthy blog post on this topic, but there’s a useful discussion going on over at Pharyngula—I’m as shocked as you are. I’ve contributed several comments, so I’m just going to link to that discussion. It’s been mostly free of the usual mudslinging, so it’s a rare chance to engage with the folks over at Freethought Blogs without having to first wade through a sea of hostility.
Here’s the link:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2015/10/23/but-of-course-he-is/
