Atheism in dock

Peter Kearney claims that 115 billion deaths are attributable to atheism or systems of government which have rejected or outlawed religion (“Blaming religion for most wars and violence simply doesn’t add up”, 19 January).

He cites the deaths under Hitler’s Nazi regime and those under the communist regimes of Stalin and Mao Zedong.

Ironically, Hitler was born a Catholic and remained a Christian, Stalin was born into the Russian Orthodox Church and trained as a priest and Mao was raised as a Buddhist.

But Kearney is merely revisiting the old theist argument that because Hitler, Stalin, and Mao were atheists (if they were), they all were responsible for terrible mass murder; therefore, atheism is responsible for terrible mass murder. This is an example of the logical fallacy “Post hoc ergo propter hoc” (“After this, therefore, because of this”).

There is no evidence that the deaths for which these men were responsible were due to a belief or espousal of atheism; Hitler’s anti-semitism was not religious; it was racial. Jews were targeted not because of their religion – indeed, many German Jews were completely secular in their way of life – but because of their racial identity. This was an ethnic and not a religious designation. Hitler’s anti-semitism was secular.

Stalin certainly made a vast effort to rid Russia of religion, but that had nothing to do with atheism per se; he merely used it as a tool to seize power.

Mao was an utter fanatic devoted to grasping, then consolidating total power and imposing his ideology upon all, driven not by non-belief, but by a belief in himself and his personality cult.

Religion is guilty of some truly hideous crimes and a direct root cause within a delusional belief can be established (9/11 is an example), but the attempt to put a lack of belief in the dock on the basis that some fanatical psychopaths committed crimes on an industrial scale is fallacious; the root cause was their psychopathy.

Atheism doesn’t kill people, fanaticism kills people, be that religious or political.

STEUART CAMPBELL Dovecot Loan, Edinburgh