Naturalism's Worldy End

I have often commented on the vacuousness of the Naturalistic, atheistic worldview, but some things I've read recently serve to condense that idea in words more powerful than I could ever come up with.

We have seen where such a worldview leads -- in real time. Stéphane Courtois, director of research at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) estimates the human death toll (over less than 100 years) in regimes sharing this worldview are as follows:

• 20 million in the Soviet Union


• 65 million in the People's Republic of China


• 1 million in Vietnam


• 2 million in North Korea


• 2 million in Cambodia


• 1 million in the Communist states of Eastern Europe


• 150,000 in Latin America


• 1.7 million in Africa


• 1.5 million in Afghanistan

That's 94,000,000 (million) people. To be fair, Courtois' critics claim he exaggerates. They say the real death toll was only somewhere between 65 and 93 million. Fair enough. But for those who attempt the hideous comparison of this barbarity to the admitted abuses of Christian zealots, here are the numbers for which Christians are culpable:

• 19 witches hanged (not burned) in Salem, Massachusetts


• 300,000 witches executed in Europe between 1484 and 1782


• 2,000 executions during the Spanish Inquisition


• 10's of thousands died during the Crusades

For those who are mathematically challenged, the difference is 93,647,981 -- or more than two orders of magnitude less -- over a time frame of almost 800 years.

This is not to excuse the barbaric taking of human life by anyone, but let's be fair. The Christians who took those 352,019 lives did so in direct opposition to the teachings of Jesus Christ and the Christian faith. We cannot hold a belief system responsible for those who choose to abuse and corrupt it.

By contrast, the atheistic worldview that murdered 94,000,000 people did so based on the direct result of, and adherence to, the nihilistic, valueless system from which it gained its power to kill.

It was with these facts in mind that I read Andrew Stuttaford's review of Orlando Figes new book, The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia, a chilling account of "private lives, and thoughts, of those who lived through it, inhabitants of a society where reticence, conformity, and role-playing could be, even at home, matters of life and death."

For those who may defend the Naturalistic worldview, I would challenge them to listen to the lamentations of the Russian poet Anna Ahkmatov -- listen and consider the kind of society such a worldview logically entails and has been verified to create ...

This was when the ones who smiled
Were the dead, glad to be at rest.
And like a useless appendage, Leningrad
Swung from its prisons.
And when, senseless from torment,
Regiments of convicts marched,
And the short songs of farewell
Were sung by locomotive whistles.
The stars of death stood above us
And innocent Russia writhed
Under bloody boots
And under the tires of the Black Marias.

... Listen, and reconsider.