End Times and Current Events

General Category => Off Topic Stuff => Topic started by: Christian40 on December 10, 2011, 02:46:56 am



Title: Atheists have started many wars!
Post by: Christian40 on December 10, 2011, 02:46:56 am
Atheists versus Religion

Matthew 5:13 - Ye are the salt of the earth:
 
Salt irritates; if you’re not irritating somebody, you’re probably not doing very much as a Christian!
 
But this person used one argument which is very often used by atheists to somehow destroy the faith of people of many religions. And sadly, it has quite a big effect – people abandon God because of it! So let me elaborate on this common argument, and show you how to reply to it.
 
This is the argument: “Religion is the cause of all wars and deaths in the world”. A variation of this argument is “Nobody ever killed in the name of Atheism”. Sometimes they will cite examples. Often, people of faith have no comeback. But, as you can probably guess by now, I do.
 
We cannot deny that many wars throughout history have been influenced by religion. Remember, until 150-200 years ago, belief in God was second nature and nobody thought otherwise. The tide turned thanks to three men; James Hutton, who wrote that the earth is probably millions of years old and promoted the theory of uniformitarianism (the way things are today are the way things have always been). From that, Charles Lyell wrote The Principles of Geology in 1830 and removed the Flood of Noah from people’s conscience. That book heavily inspired Charles Darwin, who wrote The Origin Of Species By Means Of Natural Selection Or The Preservation For Favoured Races In The Struggle For Life (for short, The Origin of Species), and this book has led people to deny the Creator. Obviously, all wars before that time could have had a religious background (but by no means all battles).
 
Often, the Atheist making this argument has no clue about world history. But sometimes they may have a few examples. By far the most common examples they use are the Crusades and the Inquisitions. And if you don’t know better, you’ll have no response to “Christian” atrocities. Well, research them for yourselves and see how “Christian” they really were.
 
Firstly, look at the Crusades. These happened 1000 years ago. At the time, Europe was under the dominion of the Roman Catholic Church (RCC); Europe was known as the Holy Roman Empire, which lasted till 1828 – but lost most of its power thanks to the Reformation. At the time, the RCC was extremely powerful. Each country had a king, a prince, a duke, but they were subservient to Rome. People were kept dumb; whereas in the first half of the first millennium after Christ, the people were advanced and had buildings, literature, et cetera; in the second half of that millennium they were illiterate and living in mud-huts. This was enforced by the RCC. Knowledge would get you killed. Merely quoting a Bible verse, let alone reading or owning a Bible, was a death sentence. It was Rome’s way or else. I can write forever about how the RCC bears no resemblance to Christianity, but the point is that the Crusades were a Catholic endeavour, not Christian. The point of the Crusades was to defeat the Muslims and claim Israel for the Holy Roman Empire. It failed though and it was only in 1917 that Israel was relieved of Islamic (Ottoman) rule by peaceful means.
 
Secondly, look at the Inquisitions. For an Atheist to use this example shows their lack of knowledge. Again, the Inquisitions came straight from the Roman Catholic Church. Mostly this happened during the 16th and 17th Centuries, but was still practiced in the early 19th Century. What exactly were the Inquisitions? Quite simply, the RCC had previously enjoyed the monopoly of mind-control in Europe and everyone was forced to be Catholic “or else”. Enter the Reformation. People in their millions were abandoning Rome. At the same time, Catholic countries – notably Spain – were discovering and colonising countries on other continents. The Inquisitions were two-pronged; they were to convert people in the New World to Catholicism, and to get Protestants to return to Catholicism. This was done by means of force; people were given an on-the-spot choice - become Catholic or die on the spot. Many said no and were killed.
 
The irony is that Atheists will use the Inquisitions as an example of Christian atrocity; yet for the most part it was Catholics killing Christians; not the other way round. Here in South Africa, we have white people – in fact, the start of the Afrikaner people – thanks to the Huguenots fleeing the Inquisitions of Catholic Europe. Jan van Riebeeck came here in 1652 merely to set up a stopover port for the Dutch East India Company (VOC) for ships sailing from The Netherlands to Indonesia via the Cape of Good Hope; but afterwards, Protestants (Huguenots) from The Netherlands, Belgium and France fled here to escape the Inquisitions.
 
Currently, to my knowledge I can only cite one example of actual issue with Christians committing acts of violence and murder is the nonsense in Northern Ireland. It’s a tough situation and both sides (Protestants and Catholics) are at fault; it is definitely not the teaching of the Bible:
 
Luke 10:27 - And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.
 
Without ruffling too many feathers, the basic situation is this. The UK ran all of Ireland for a long time. The UK was Protestant and Ireland was Catholic. The Irish wanted freedom from the UK and started a civil war, at a time when the UK was fighting heavily in World War I. The UK granted the Irish a referendum on independence. Twenty-six counties voted for independence; this is called the Republic of Ireland (Eire). Six counties voted to stay with the UK; this is called Northern Ireland (Ulster). Northern Ireland was mainly Protestant, but many of the Catholic people there desire to unite with the Republic of Ireland. That’s basically where the tension comes from. Add to this a terrorist group, the IRA (Catholic, pro Ireland), volatile political parties, outright incitement (like the Protestant Orange March, where Protestants celebrate a Protestant victory of 300 years ago by basically marching through Catholic areas in an act of “ner ner ner, we beat you”) and you have quite a problem. Most people there have no desire to fight, but there is always something that will flare up tensions and sadly some people take it too far. So in this case, religion is half of the reason for the issue, but it’s not based on anything the Bible teaches; the main reasons are over land and human stubbornness.
 
So there is an example I can give where religion – even Christianity – can be involved in hostilities. However, Atheists who use this argument either fail to realise, or simply ignore:
 
The presence of a battle among people claiming a persuasion does not prove God does not exist;
They imply that Atheism is 100% peaceful;
They conveniently keep quiet about Atheist atrocities and inflictions.
 
Is Atheism really that peaceful? Well, let us have a look at some examples of what happens when the Atheists get their wish and religion is eliminated:
 
USSR. After Lenin died in 1923, Jozef Stalin became the Soviet Union’s new leader and stayed there until he died. Stalin grew up as a Georgian Orthodox (basically Catholic) but read Darwin’s The Origin of Species and became an Atheist. For the first 20 years of his rule, religion was banned. Only Atheism was allowed, only evolution and communism was taught in schools. The Ten Planks of Karl Marx’s 1848 Communist Manifesto were implemented. During Stalin’s reign of terror, commercial agriculture were banned and replaced by government agriculture. Farmers could not produce for themselves; everybody earned the same salary. Morale was so low that farmers couldn’t be bothered to work; it caused mass starvation in the USSR and even led to a reformation of Communist ideology, just to keep the Soviets fed! Anybody who thought differently to Stalin was executed. If you believed in God, you were killed. If you said “Stalin sucks”, you were executed. Officers would literally walk up to you, put a bullet in your head, then walk away without a care in the world. No conscience at all. Alternatively, you were shipped off to death camps, called Gulags. All in all, anywhere between 60 and 100 million people died under Stalin. What did Stalin have to say? “Killing a million people is like mowing the lawn”. Well, according to the evolution theory, which is the only explanation Atheists have for the existence of everything, he would be absolutely right! The evolutionary worldview is that a human being is just a conglomerate of chemicals which evolved from a rock 4.4 billion years ago – just a mere organism - and so is grass. Worth noting is that when Communism ended and the USSR split up, the population of former Soviet countries flocked to religion en masse.
 
China. Mao Tse Tung started his Cultural Revolution in 1949. By revolution, I mean genocide. Up to 15,000 Christian missionaries were murdered every month. Chairman Mao’s favourite book was The Origin of Species. And it showed. Again, religion was absolutely banned; even to this day, Christians and Catholics in China must go underground because it’s persecuted against. Under Mao, Atheism, Communism and Evolution were the only legal doctrines. His regime was so brutal, it begs belief. Carrying a Bible was a capital offence. Disagreeing with him about anything was punishable by death. So bad was it, that if you were a poor person wearing glasses, you were executed because wearing glasses gave people the impression that you were smart. Absolutely brutal! So bad was it, that when Mao died and was replaced by Deng Xiao Ping, they immediately had to start with reforms. All in all, anything up to 70 million people died. Even as you look at China today, reforms and all; it is still an Atheist, Communist country. From someone I know who lives there; the people there wander around with no motivation, no desire; no conscience; they just aim to stay alive. They have no knowledge of a higher power other than the government which enslaves them. The Chinese also enforce their ban of religion outside its borders; during the 1970s, when Chinese workers came to Africa to build railways (Tanzania-Zambia Railway), the workers were kept in camps, isolated from the locals; banned from speaking to anybody. Not only were the Chinese workers banned from reading the Bible, but as part of the conditions to build the railways, the said African countries would imprison anybody who dared give a Chinese man a Bible!
 
Kampuchea. As a child, I remember charities advertising to help people in Cambodia; ten years after the Khmer Rouge stopped their killings. Ten years later I remember the Khmer Rouge executing its former leader, Pol Pot. What happened there? Well, the Communists took over in the 1970s, led by Pol Pot. Cambodia briefly became Kampuchea. No prizes for guessing what his persuasion and favourite book was! In just a couple of years, one third of the entire population was murdered! To get an idea of just how cruel they were, watch a movie called The Killing Fields. Extremely violent, but that’s what it was like.
 
East-Bloc. After World War II, the Eastern part of Europe fell under Soviet control. Hence the countries involved became Atheist, Communist states. The atrocities in East Germany under Erich Honecker, or in Romania under Nicolae Ceaucescu, are quite well known. Residents within the East Bloc were able to travel within the countries, but were virtually banned from travelling outside the East Bloc. If they wanted to see the West, they had to risk execution to have themselves smuggled out. A former work colleague of mine is from Hungary, and as a child she and her brother were smuggled out of the country in suitcases. Atheism was the only tolerated mind thought and any variation was punished by jail or death. If you as a Westerner tried to enter an East Bloc country, your car was virtually dismantled; they would look even within the body panels, just to check if there were no Bibles in there. Within such countries – Bulgaria was known for it – the authorities would place their own agents undercover as Pastors. So, if a Bulgarian – who may have known about Jesus but couldn’t read about Him – wanted to know more, or simply gather with other believers; the undercover agent posing as a Pastor could tell the authorities exactly who were believers, and punishment would ensue. Worth noting is that since the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, in most former East Bloc countries the population immediately flocked to religion en masse. Bulgaria, for example, was an Atheist country during Communism but today the official statistics show virtually no Atheism left at all (though obviously these are just numbers). Clearly the Atheist Utopia wasn’t so good after all!
 
I recommend you get hold of a book called “Breakthrough” by Rudi Lack; he was a mission worker in 1970s East Bloc, Africa and China – he explains in great detail what people had to go through just to give somebody access to read a book!
 
Friends, it is a common claim by Atheists that the world will be a much better place without belief in God. But as you have just seen, Atheist regimes always end up in extreme tyranny and immense genocide!
 
Now, Atheists will respond to this by saying that these are examples of Communism, not Atheism. Not all Atheists are Communists. This is true! But Communism absolutely cannot work without Atheism. In order for Communism to succeed, it requires Atheism. People who believe in the Almighty God don’t make good slaves. But if you get the population to believe there is no God, then the next best absolute authority is the State. So these examples are perfectly valid. Each regime banned religion, banned even the slight possibility of creation in favour of evolution, and enforced Atheism with tyranny. If people think I am exaggerating the past, simply look at North Korea today.
 
Thus, as Atheists attack you in a debate (well, some don’t even need a debate or excuse to attack you!) with vitriol and scoffing, do please remind them that just the amount of deaths in the USSR and China alone, only in the 20th Century and in each case only in a 20-year span, Atheism has killed far more people than all the wars in history combined! Possibly up to 170 million people murdered just in those two cases!
 
You may be wondering why I haven’t mentioned Adolf Hitler yet. Honestly, I am merely giving the Atheists a break on that one. You see, it is a rife debate over what Hitler actually was. He was a confirmed Catholic, yet clearly he wasn’t Catholic. In various statements he made in his lifetime, he clearly loathed Christianity, which he was quoted as calling “the biggest and most fatal, seductive lie that ever existed”. He absolutely hated God. Hitler, and indeed the Nazi regime, was also fascinated by the Occult; even their Swastika was a mystical Eastern symbol. But Hitler was also greatly inspired by the evolution theory, and its offshoot eugenics (Francis Galton, who was actually Charles Darwin’s cousin). So the jury is out. If you are convinced he was an atheist, or at least motivated by the evolution theory which is designed to give Atheists an apparent credibility, then please add up to 100 million people to the total.
 
Well, now Atheist genocide casualties are already nearing 200 million just from all of the above examples. Is that all? Well, if 200 million people just aren’t enough, let us consider abortion. Personally I hate the word abortion; it is murder, plain and simple. But now why would people even consider killing their unborn child? What about maternal instinct? Well, there are many reasons why someone would do this. Sometimes they consider it an act of kindness (if the child is going to be born deformed or incurably ill). Sometimes they do it because of financial or cultural reasons (out of wedlock, they’re poor, or think they’re poor – did you know Timothy was a half-caste born out of wedlock, yet he wrote two books in the Bible!). Sometimes the woman was raped and bearing the rapist’s child is too painful to bear (well it’s not the child’s fault – give birth and adopt out!). However, in today’s world, those are not often the reasons. Simply, the evolution theory – which, remember, is the Atheist’s sole backup for explaining why they reject God – has caused mass abortion. In my home country, the United Kingdom, an alarming rate of teenage girls have had abortions. Some have abortions like you and I change our socks. Many women there barely give it a second thought, that they are killing an unborn child! It’s just like pulling a tooth for them. They don’t even think about the unborn child being a human being; they see it as a fetus.
 
Why would an unborn human being be just a fetus? You may thank the godless evolution theory for that one. When The Origin of Species was translated to German in 1860, Professor Ernst Haeckel loved it. He sought to find proof for evolution. By 1869, he had none. So he decided to help it along. He made fake drawings of the embryos of a human, a dog, a salamander and a fish; then doctored them to look very similar. He pointed to the presence of lines on the side of a human fetus and claimed they were “gill slits” and therefore proof we evolved from fish (actually the lines are the early stages of ears; nothing to do with breathing at all). He claimed that the human fetus underwent the different stages of evolution during the nine-month pregnancy. Well, in 1874 his own college, the University of Jena, held a trial and he was found guilty of lying. He openly admitted his drawings were fake and that he deliberately lied in order to get people to abandon God and believe in evolution. He had no remorse whatsoever, because, in his words, “everyone else is doing it”. He’s right about that – I write this piece in 2011 and certain documentaries and textbooks still use “gill slits” (or, ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny) as proof for evolution. And they say evolution isn’t a religion! Most definitely it is!
 
But what damage one Atheist called Ernst Haeckel has done! Because by spreading the lie about the gill slits, and with institutes still teaching it as fact to this very day, it has relegated the unborn child to being “just a fetus”. You see, people don’t feel guilty about aborting a fetus. Actually, many pro-death activists refer to the unborn child as a parasite! Clearly they aren’t as grateful as Hagar was:
 
Genesis 16:11 - And the angel of the LORD said unto her, Behold, thou art with child, and shalt bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael; because the LORD hath heard thy affliction.
(notice how God didn’t say “thou art with fetus”)
 
Psalms 22:10 - I was cast upon thee from the womb: thou art my God from my mother's belly.
 
Isaiah 44:24 - Thus saith the LORD, thy redeemer, and he that formed thee from the womb, I am the LORD that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself;
 
Seems like God created us human from conception! But if there is no God and an unborn child is but a fetus, a medical term, people have no guilty conscience whatsoever. Thanks, in great part, to an Atheist who falsified proof for a dumb theory and many Atheists who still claim his proven lie to be true. Obviously not all people who abort their children are Atheists, but the attitude required to do this is all thanks to Haeckel and his minions. And the stats are shocking – over 1 billion people murdered by abortion! Close to 50 million just in the USA, after it was legalised in 1973 (Roe vs Wade). Here in South Africa the current regime complains about a few people (I once heard 6,000) who died during the “struggle”, but they fail to mention that since the ANC legalised abortion, over 800,000 South Africans have been murdered just in the last 17 years! (in addition to the 20,000+ murdered per year due to crime).
 
Looking at these figures, it just doesn’t seem real does it? Just from the few things I mentioned, that is up to 1.2 billion people who can attribute their deaths, in part or in full, thanks to Atheism and the dumb theory used to support it. Yes friends, and it is the very same Atheists who accuse us of being responsible for all the death, war and suffering in the world.
 
But look, Atheism has always been around, to a small degree. There was a smattering of Atheist ideas with the likes of Epicurus 2,500 years ago. Today, Atheism is still just a minority; in many “civilised” countries it is about 10-15% of the population. But that’s still way too high; and the Atheist ideology has crept into many weak believers! This is why you should know your Bible and beware!
 
And in the Bible, you will see that the Bible both speaks about Atheists, and predicts how they will behave today:
 
Psalms 14:1 - The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.  They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.
 
(and just to reiterate)
 
Psalms 53:1 - The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.  Corrupt are they, and have done abominable iniquity: there is none that doeth good.
 
Romans 1:21-25 - Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
 
The more you study the creation-evolution thing, the more obvious it becomes that this refers to evolution-loving Atheists. “Served the creature more than the creator”? But now this is three verses in a row, where Atheists are called fools. It’s almost as if God is trying to tell us something! As for “professing themselves wise, they became fools” – after a few debates with Atheists, this is the very first thing they do! Once you learn to notice the concept of “I’m smart, you’re dumb” then debates with them eventually become tedious as this is virtually their only line of defense.
 
2 Peter 3:3 - Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water:
 
Interesting – Atheists scoff at the Bible and Christians for fun; “all things continue as they were since the beginning of the creation” is a blatant reference to the belief of uniformitarianism; and as for “willingly ignorant”, which means “dumb on purpose” … yup! Goes hand in hand with “walking after their own lusts” because many of them also reject God and hate the Bible because accepting it would mean giving up some sins of choice, and they don’t want to!
 
In closing. War sucks. People get hurt, people get killed. There are a variety of reasons for wars to happen. Maybe some crazy guy becomes the leader of a country and wants to control them; maybe some guy wants to expand his land by invading another country. Some wars have been fought over religion. Yet the Atheists are tremendously wrong in claiming that all war and suffering is due to religion. Firstly, they are either ignorant or deliberately lying. Secondly, if they wish to resort to such an accusation, you can now reply to them and touch upon Atheist atrocities which make all other atrocities in world history combined look small in comparison. Thirdly, even if there were a bunch of human beings abusing God’s holy name to start a war, that doesn’t prove God doesn’t exist. But most importantly of all - they are trying to turn you away from God and sadly some believers do exactly that. And this is what I want to prevent from happening to you – so, the next time you encounter this claim, you know what you can reply with! And to the Atheists – God called you fools three times. But He doesn’t hate you – He loves you infinitely and wants you to get saved!