{"id":742,"date":"2008-12-11T08:57:22","date_gmt":"2008-12-11T16:57:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=742"},"modified":"2008-12-11T09:28:27","modified_gmt":"2008-12-11T17:28:27","slug":"bradlaugh-in-comments-on-unbelief-and-totalitarianism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/bradlaugh-in-comments-on-unbelief-and-totalitarianism\/","title":{"rendered":"Bradlaugh (in comments) on unbelief and totalitarianism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bradlaugh, in comments<\/a>, responding to “Panopaea”, who’d invoked<\/a> the old chestnut assigning collective blame to religious unbelievers for the Twentieth Century rise of totalitarianism: <\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Das, was der Mensch von dem Tier voraushat, der veilleicht wunderbarste Beweis f\u00fcr die \u00dcberlegenheit des Menschen ist, dass er begriffen hat, dass es eine Sch\u00f6pferkraft geben muss. (\u201dAn advantage humans enjoy over animals, and what may be the best proof of their superiority, is that they have grasped there must be the power of a creator.\u201d) \u2014 Tischgespr\u00e4che, Feb. 1942.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hitler and Stalin both had excellent religious educations. (Stalin was a seminarian: the frequent occurrence of expressions like \u201cBog velyel\u201d \u2014 \u201cGod willing\u201d \u2014 in his speeches was the cause of much secret amusement.) Their people remained largely religious: the Germans noted how captured Russian POWs invariably had religious medallions and such secreted under their uniforms. (This is in Nikolai Tolstoy\u2019s book<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

So \u2014 it looks as though religious education produced terrorist dictators, and religious populaces are rather easily subdued by those dictators. Doesn\u2019t it? And why was not the most emphatically Christian nation in Europe \u2014 Franco\u2019s Spain \u2014 emphatically on the Allies\u2019 side in WW2? Etc., etc.<\/p>\n

And there either are gods, or there aren\u2019t. If there aren\u2019t, what is your point?<\/p>\n

* * *
\n[end of quote from Bradlaugh]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bradlaugh, in comments, responding to “Panopaea”, who’d invoked the old chestnut assigning collective blame to religious unbelievers for the Twentieth Century rise of totalitarianism: * * * Das, was der Mensch von dem Tier voraushat, der veilleicht wunderbarste Beweis f\u00fcr … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[101,43],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=742"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":749,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742\/revisions\/749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}