For me, it doesn't have to be one with a Christian background to make a change, it just takes one with a good moral standard. One who feels the need to be just and do things right.
True but atheists have inspired other atheists to commit the most murders in history so absolute atheism has been proven to have spawned the worst tyrants to walk the earth. Fake Christians who commit murder,rape,theft etc aren't Christians. They may call themselves this but they are the opposite of what the Christian gospel teaches so an atheists argument about same goes for Christians is moot. The overwhelming majority of heinous crimes on a street level are also commited by atheists,satanists,occult worshippers,etc.
STALIN
"He was born on December 21, 1879 in Gori, Georgia, the son of a poor cobbler. He trained for the priesthood. His mother always hoped he would be a priest but it wasn’t to be. He was expelled from the seminary because of his revolutionary ideas.
Stalin played a minor role in the 1917 revolution. He made a name for himself as a gifted organiser and was hand-picked by Lenin who was another absolute atheist for the position of general secretary.
On Lenin’s death, Stalin’s ruthless quest for the top job began. In 1929 he launched a programme of collectivisation and industrialisation to turn his country of peasants into a modern workforce? The cost was astronomical with several million dying of starvation. Worse was to come in the killings of 1936-1939 that saw countless millions dead.
He had all opposition eliminated through a series of purges. Those who did not co-operate were executed or put into concentration camps. Stalin has surely amassed the greatest toll of killings of all time."
In the process he has become the world’s number-one tyrant and is likely to remain the same to the very end.
MAO ZEDONG
"During the year the author Jung Chang releases a biography of Mao that claims that 70 million Chinese died as a result of his policies.
Asked in an interview "who was the real Mao Tse-Tung?", Chang replies: "The real Mao was completely amoral. He rejected morality as an adult decision when he was 24-years-old and he said the world exists only for me. And from then on he pursued what he wanted with basically increasing power, first to become supreme party leader and then the supreme leader of China, and then to dominate the world. He single-mindedly pursued these goals throughout his life."
"People's Republic of China, Mao Zedong's regime (1949-1975)
Agence France Press (25 Sept. 1999) citing at length from Courtois, Stephane, Le Livre Noir du Communism:
Rural purges, 1946-49: 2-5M deaths
Urban purges, 1950-57: 1M
Great Leap Forward: 20-43M
Cultural Revolution: 2-7M
Labor Camps: 20M
Tibet: 0.6-1.2M
TOTAL: 44.5 to 72M"
POL POT
"Pol Pot was the leader of the Khmer Rouge and the Prime Minister of Cambodia from 1976 to 1979, having been de facto leader since mid-1975. During his time in power Pol Pot imposed an extreme version of agrarian communism where all city dwellers were relocated to the countryside to work in collective farms and forced labour projects. The combined effect of slave labour, malnutrition, poor medical care and executions is estimated to have killed around 2 million Cambodians (approximately one third of the population). His regime achieved special notoriety for singling out all intellectuals and other “bourgeois enemies” for murder. The Khmer Rouge committed mass executions in sites known as the Killing Fields. The executed were buried in mass graves. In order to save ammunition, executions were often carried out using hammers, axe handles, spades or sharpened bamboo sticks."
"Pol Pot," The Most Evil Men in History. <http://listverse.com/2007/09/05/top-10-most-evil-men/> (2 June, 2009).
NICOLAE CEAUSESCU
"Ceausescu had grandiose visions of leading Romania into a new age, and undertook massive, expensive, and somewhat pointless public works projects to achieve this end. Unfortunately, these projects ran up massive foreign debts as well, which he was unable to pay. The Romanian economy suffered, and soon collapsed for everyone except Ceausescu and his cronies.
Additionally, Nicolae had it in for the ethnic Hungarians in his country, and did his best to drive as many as he could out of Romania. Romanian citizenry was appalled at these policies, but were kept in check by the Securitate, his secret police, who kept almost 15%(!) of the population as paid informants.
...decreed that all Romanian women must bear 5 children apiece....he had specially trained birth squads set up to visit women at home and at work once a month, and administer pregnancy tests...As a result of this decree, state-run orphanages were soon filled to overflowing with about 150,000 orphans in a country with a population of about 5 million.
In addition to tapping phones and opening mail, the Securitate also required all typewriters to be registered. The penalty for owning an unregistered typewriter was death.
After receiving a death threat from an anonymous sender, Ceausescu ordered the Securitate to secure handwriting samples from the entire population.
Ceausescu was steadfast in his denial that AIDS was a real disease. He believed that it was mainly a syndrome of the bourgeoise West, and that Romanians would not suffer. So, of course, Romanians suffered. Thousands of the abovementioned orphans died of AIDS contracted from blood transfusions and shared needles in vaccinations."
"Nicolae Ceausescu," Everything 2. <http://everything2.com/title/Nicolae%2520Ceausescu> (2 June, 2009).
SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC (Serbian Dictator)
"Charges:
The Indictment charges Slobodan Milosevic on the basis of individual criminal responsibility (Article 7(1) of the Statute) and superior criminal responsibility (Article 7(3) thereof) with:
Two counts of genocide and complicity in genocide under Article 4 of the Statute;
Ten counts of crimes against humanity involving persecution, extermination, murder, imprisonment, torture, deportation and inhumane acts (forcible transfers) under Article 5 of the Statute;
Eight counts of grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 involving wilful killing, unlawful confinement, torture, wilfully causing great suffering, unlawful deportation or transfer, and extensive destruction and appropriation of property under Article 2 of the Statute, and;
Nine counts of violations of the laws or customs of war involving inter alia attacks on civilians, unlawful destruction, plunder of property and cruel treatment under Article 3 of the Statute."
"MILOSEVIC Case Information Sheet(IT-02-54) "Bosnia and Herzegovina" <http://www.un.org/icty/glance/milosevic.htm> (3 June, 2009).
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (Russian dictator)
"Lenin was the initiator of the central drama--the tragedy--of our era, the rise of totalitarian states. A bookish man with a scholar's habits and a general's tactical instincts, Lenin introduced to the 20th century the practice of taking an all-embracing ideology and imposing it on an entire society rapidly and mercilessly; he created a regime that erased politics, erased historical memory, erased opposition. In his short career in power, from 1917 until his death in 1924, Lenin created a model not merely for his successor, Stalin, but for Mao, for Hitler, for Pol Pot.
It is, perhaps, impossible to calculate just how many tens of millions of murders "flowed" from Leninism. Certainly Stalin differed from Lenin in the length of his time as dictator--some 25 years to Lenin's six--and he also had the advantage of greater technology. As a result, Stalin's murderous statistics are superior to Lenin's. And yet Lenin contributed so very much.
Very few of Stalin's policies were without roots in Leninism: it was Lenin who built the first camps; Lenin who set off artificial famine as a political weapon; Lenin who disbanded the last vestige of democratic government, the Constituent Assembly, and devised the Communist Party as the apex of a totalitarian structure; Lenin who first waged war on the intelligentsia and on religious believers, wiping out any traces of civil liberty and a free press."
BENITO MUSSOLINI
"Hence the fact that although Mussolini, like many of the Fascists, was an atheist and anti-clerical at heart."
Pollard John, "Mussolini’s Rivals: The Limits of the Personality Cult in Fascist Italy." New Perspective. Volume 4. Number 2. December 1998.<http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~semp/facistitaly.htm> (18 June, 2009).
Losses by Ethiopians as a result of Mussolini's Second Ethopian Invasion::
275,000 - killed in action
78,500 - patriots killed during the occupation (1936-1941)
17,800 - women, children, and others killed by bombings
30,000 - massacre of February 1937
35,000 - persons who died in concentration camps
24,000 - patriots executed by Summary Courts
300,000 - persons who died of privations due to the destruction of their villages
760,300 - TOTAL
“Second Italo-Abyssinian War,” Wikipedia. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Italo-Abyssinian_War> (19 June, 2009).
"Over 5.2 million men served in the Italian army during the First World War Italy's total wartime casualties was 420,000 killed and almost 955,000 wounded."
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE (Philosopher)
"He believed that the values of self-sacrifice inherent in Christianity undermined the cultural development; that democracy and socialism, which treated all people equally, stifled individual creativity and genius; and that universal suffrage gave power to the masses. Therefore, it was up to exceptional individuals to take leadership. He outlined his plan for a new generation of “supermen” who “were free from sentimental inhibitions and prepared …to use violence in the building of a new, nobler world.” (Hitler was one of his most committed followers).
"Thus Spake Zarathustra" (1883-1884). Cited in Christopher, J.R., Wittet, G.G., Modern Western Civilization. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1991, 214.
KARL MARX (Father of Communism)
"The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is therefore in embryo the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo."
"The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion."
"Karl Marx," Atheism. <http://atheisme.free.fr/Quotes/Marx.htm> (2 June, 2009).
AYN RAND (Philosopher)
"She was also an atheist, and promoted ethical egoism...while condemning altruism."
"Ayn Rand," Wikipedia. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand> (3 June, 2007).
“To live for his own sake means that the achievement of his own happiness is man’s highest moral purpose.”
Rand, Ayn, The Virtue of Selfishness. New York: Signet Books, 1964, 27.
OTHER EVIL ATHEISTS
ALFRED KINSEY (Sex Researcher)
"Jones (a former employee of the Kinsey Institute) “…describes the Indiana University professor as a "secular evangelist," "a scolding preacher rather than a scientist," and a "covert revolutionary" who "used science to lay siege to middle class morality." Kinsey, explains Jones, engaged in "a public crusade for private reasons."
Those "private reasons" included a bizarre sex-life that involved wife-swapping, homosexual group-sex, an extreme masochism that helped destroy his health, and, perhaps, pedophilia. At every turn these "private reasons"—perversity and a need for dominance over others—permeated his "scientific" work.”
“Kinsey’s fellow researchers also served as his sex partners. Their zeal for sex played a role in leading their research to focus on people who deviated from societal standards—pimps, prostitutes, homosexuals, imprisoned sex offenders, etc.—and away from those who conformed. Kinsey’s "methodology and sampling technique virtually guaranteed that he would find what he was looking for," confesses Jones.
Kinsey’s perversion was often self-destructive. For most of his life, he masturbated with a "toothbrush" inserted in his urethra. At one point, Jones conveys, Kinsey crawled into a bathtub and "circumcised himself without the benefit of amnesia." Perhaps most disturbing of Jones’ revelations is an incident that happened during the college professor’s final years. Jones explains, "he tied a strong, tight knot around his scrotum with one end of the rope dangling from the pipe overhead. The other end he wrapped around his hand. Then, he climbed up on a chair, and jumped off, suspending himself in midair." The self-inflicted torture would hospitalize him for weeks and, ironically, may have contributed to the untimely death of this champion of "sexual freedom" two years later."
BARON D'HOLBACH (Author/Philosopher)
"Denying the existence of a deity, and refusing to admit as evidence all a priori arguments, d'Holbach saw in the universe nothing save matter in motion. In this, he was influenced by John Toland. The foundation of morality is happiness: "It would be useless and almost unjust to insist upon a man's being virtuous if he cannot be so without being unhappy. So long as vice renders him happy, he should love vice." This theory of morality can be seen as a precursor to utilitarianism."
BARON DE SADE (Philosopher)
(18th Century French Philosopher who epitomizes the life style of many who abandon God and conceive their own immoral code. The word "Sadism" originates in this man)
"French philosopher Donatien Aldonse Louis de Sade argued, often eloquently, for the rejection of faith and religion and embrace of the self and its desires..."
"It was de Sade's unusual sexual proclivities that made him the man who lent his name to the term 'sadism', and although his personal preferences are perverse by today's standards, they were not particularly unusual for young aristocrats in the eighteenth century. It was his writings -- 'Justine', '120 Days of Sodom', 'Lusts of the Libertines', and others -- which branded him an arch pornographer. The lion's share of these writings involve varying combinations of dubious sexual activities, violence, and fecal matter."
His work aside, de Sade was a rather romantic figure, spending some 29 years behind bars (either prison or asylum), and escaping in circumstances that shame the Scarlet Pimpernel."
PETER SINGER (Bioethicist)
Singer, by trying to be more broadminded than is reasonable, has created a philosophy that actually dehumanizes people, reducing them to points of consciousness that are indistinguishable from those of many non-human animals. Therefore, what is of primary importance for the Princeton bioethicists is not the existence of the being in question, but its quality of life. But this process of dehumanization leads directly to discrimination against those whose quality of life is not sufficiently developed. Singer has little choice but to divide humanity into those who have a preferred state of life from those who do not. In this way, his broad egalitarianism decays into a narrow preferentialism:
When we reject belief in God we must give up the idea that life on this planet has some preordained meaning. Life as a whole has no meaning. Life began, as the best available theories tell us, in a chance combination of gasses; it then evolved through random mutation and natural selection. All this just happened; it did not happen to any overall purpose. Now that it has resulted in the existence of beings who prefer some states of affairs to others, however, it may be possible for particular lives to be meaningful. In this sense some atheists can find meaning in life.
Life can be meaningful for an atheist when he is able to spend his life in a "preferred state." The atheistic perspective here does not center on people, however, it centers on happiness. This curious preference for happiness over people engenders a rather chilling logic. It is not human life or the existing human being that is good, but the "preferred state." Human life is not sacrosanct, but a certain kind of life can be "meaningful." If one baby is disabled, does it not make sense to kill it and replace it with one who is not and "therefore" has a better chance for happiness? "When the death of the disabled infant," writes Singer, "will lead to the birth of another infant with better prospects of a happy life, the total amount of happiness will be greater if the disabled infant is killed.
According to this avant garde thinker, unborn babies or neonates, lacking the requisite consciousness to qualify as persons, have less right to continue to live than an adult gorilla. By the same token, a suffering or disabled child would have a weaker claim not to be killed than a mature pig. Singer writes, in Rethinking Life and Death:
Human babies are not born self-aware or capable of grasping their lives over time. They are not persons. Hence their lives would seem to be no more worthy of protection that the life of a fetus.
And writing specifically about Down syndrome babies, he advocates trading a disabled or defective child (one who is apparently doomed to too much suffering) for one who has better prospects for happiness:
We may not want a child to start on life's uncertain voyage if the prospects are clouded. When this can be known at a very early stage in the voyage, we may still have a chance to make a fresh start. This means detaching ourselves from the infant who has been born, cutting ourselves free before the ties that have already begun to bind us to our child have become irresistible. Instead of going forward and putting all our effort into making the best of the situation, we can still say no, and start again from the beginning."
HENRY MORGENTALER
Most people around the world do not know who Henry Morgentaler is. In Canada Henry Morgentaler is a well known atheist-abortionist. Pro- abortion groups worldwide applaud him as one of their heroes; Pro-life groups see him as a callous killer of countless human lives. Recently Morgentaler was chosen to be awarded "The Order of Canada," for being a heroic defender of the rights of women. Is this man truly a hero, or is he an enemy of humanity?
Henry Morgentaler has gone from being a law-breaker, for stubbornly performing illegal abortions, to becoming a Canadian luminary. He has just been chosen to be awarded the prestigious and coveted, "Order of Canada," the highest civilian award any Canadian can receive. The reason? Having helped to bring about the liberalization of Canadian abortion laws.
Alfred Kinsey
Alfred Kinsey was an infamous American biologist and professor of entomology and zoology, who made groundbreaking research on human sexuality. Undoubtedly, he helped to progress social values – but, nevertheless, he took sadistic pleasure out of his research, and did some very weird stuff, including exploiting children for sex. Moreover, much of his research was fraud.
Napoleon Bonaparte
Many people agree that Napoleon Bonaparte, heavily involved in the anti-clerical French Revolution, was atheist – he claimed that “all religions have been made by men”. He was one of the best ever military commanders, and conquered much of Europe. He staged a coup and declared himself Emperor. While he ended anarchy in post-Revolution France, many considered him a tyrant and usurper. He ignored treaties and conventions, seeking undisputed rule throughout Europe. He plundered conquered territories. His 17 years of rule resulted in the bankruptcy of France, loss of many of her territories, six million dead Europeans and economic setback in just one generation.
Than Shwe
Gen-Than-Shwe-MyanmarThan Shwe is the 77 year old dictator of Myanmar/Burma, the head of the ruling military junta. He has overseen the formation of one of the most closed societies in the world. There is no notion of free press, and journalists who opposed his regime are detained. Aung Suu Kyi, the leader of the main opposition party, is kept in house detention by him. Civil servants are forbidden from resigning. Burma has the highest rate of child soldiers in the world, and uses forced labor on construction projects. As far as dictators go, Than Shwe keeps a relatively low, and even sullen, profile. Nevertheless, he reportedly leads an extravagant lifestyle, while his people continue to suffer a life of extreme poverty and natural disasters. In the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, he refused entry into the country for many foreign aid organizations.
Kim Jong Il
KimjongilKim Jong-Il is the de facto leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and responsible for the deaths of four million of his fellow Koreans. He is also at the heart of a bizarre personality cult; apocryphal stories such as how “at the time of his birth there were flashes of lightening and thunder, the iceberg in the pond on Mt. Paektu emitted a mysterious sound as it broke, and bright double rainbows rose up” are abundant. Those caught stealing food in the famine-struck nation, or attempting to cross the borders, are subject to public execution. Kim is continuing his lavish lifestyle and military obsession in spite of the crumbling economy. In North Korea he and his father are deified, considered saviors of the whole universe. 250,000 dissidents are confined to “re-education camps”. He has waged a war on South Korea that involved assassinating South Korean leaders and blowing up South Korean planes. He presents a great threat to the world in terms of nuclear warfare, having persuaded the Soviet Union to award him a nuclear reactor in 1984.
Jeffrey Dahmer
Jeffrey DahmerJeffrey Dahmer, an infamous serial killer and atheist sentenced to 900 years in prison, said “if a person doesn’t think that there is a God to be accountable to, then what’s the point of trying to modify your behavior to keep it within acceptable ranges?”. He brutally killed seventeen men and boys, dismembering them, storing their parts and indulging in cannibalism and necrophilia. In 1991, he was caught by the police after one of his would-be victims escaped. Despite pleading not guilty on the basis on insanity, the court found him sane and fully accountable. He later expressed remorse.
Jim Jones
Cm Cults-Jones HoJim Jones drew people into atheism through the People’s Temple, largely based in California. He said that he “took the church and used the church to bring people to atheism”. In 1978, 909 people at the restricted communist “sanctuary” he presided over in Jonestown, Guyana, committed “revolutionary suicide” at his command. This occurred after the arrival of an American delegation, which he claimed was conspiring against the People’s Temple. Men, women and children took a vial of cyanide and died within five minutes. Only a few people escaped. This event was the largest single loss of American civilian life, in a non-natural disaster, up until 9/11. This entry has the unique status of being on both the atheism and Christianity list. The reason is that the majority of people considered Jones to be the leader of a type of Christian cult, but, as the quote above illustrates, it was really a ruse to attract people who would otherwise have steered well clear of him.
