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mcbride -> RE: Believer(s) of god are plague to this world. (10/20/2009 9:32:23 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: UncleNasty
I am not aware of any organized group of atheists ever persecuting Christians, or any other religious group. The religious persecution I am aware of has come at the hands of another religious group.
I'll try to answer as briefly as possible.
The French Revolution was explicitly atheist. "A strident unbelief became a real political factor in public life, " says Cambridge University, with a certain amount of understatement. From 16,000 to 40,000 were executed during the Reign of Terror. Churches were burned, thousands of priests murdered, and the law passed 21 October 1793 made "all suspected priests and all persons who harbored them liable to death on sight." To rid France of religion, the governing Convention introduced the Cult of Reason, having already renumbered the calendar to make it "Year One".
There was much more to come. When the western département of Vendée failed to support the Convention, an army was ordered to exterminate every man, woman, and child in the area, because they were, in the words on the Convention, "superstitious savages". Between 117,000 and 250,000 people were massacred. There were, documented, by the attackers, as one writer describes, "mass executions by grapeshot fired from cannons, specially constructed boats towed out to the middle of the Loire and then sunk, the mass bayoneting of men, women and children, [and] the smashing of babies' heads against walls."
All Communist states are explicitly, fundamentally atheist, based on Marx's belief. In the first year of the Russian revolution, the state seized all church property, and in the early 1920s, 28 Russian Orthodox bishops and more than 1,200 priests were murdered. The state set up a number of organizations, like the League of the Militant Godless to actively persecute believers.
Of the roughly 50 million killed by Mao following China's 1949 revolution, it's not clear how many were killed because they were believers (there are lots of varying numbers on line), but the same pattern played out, with all religious activity suppressed and property seized. Religious belief is still considered incompatible with Party membership.
Under the Khmer Rouge, all religions were "absolutely forbidden". Buddist, Christian and Muslim places of worship were destroyed, and half of Cambodia's Christians were murdered.
You might also look up Mexico, where priests and other Catholics were murdered en masse, mostly during the 1930s, North Korea, and Cuba. For an American version, try the Know Nothing party, a mixture of Protestants and atheists who violently attacked immigrant Catholics, and the "Forty-Eighters".
I hope that helps to answer your question.
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