Continuing now with the final section of the case against God which I outlined here:

6) Belief in the “God” concept is worse than merely wrong or illogical. It inspires patterns of thinking and behavior which negatively affect us all. Whatever good this belief may have inspired owes nothing to its basic, dangerous irrationality and will survive our rejection of that irrationality.

E) Consider the effects belief in “God” has had on international conflicts:

Although many theists present “God” and religion as forces for peace, love, and brotherhood, it seems that “God” and religion have inspired, supported, and excused far more wars than they have prevented, halted, or condemned.

The Old Testament’s Yahweh ordered the Hebrews to wage countless wars of virtual extermination. The Messiah they awaited was to be a great military leader like David – not a prince of peace. Jesus – alleged to be a prince of peace – nonetheless is clearly quoted as having said “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword” (Matt. 10:34). He and the New Testament promise “God’s enemies” neither peace nor mercy but eternal hellfire. Paul’s admonition for slaves to obey their masters in all things (Col. 3:22) and his declaration that no leader rises to power without the blessing of God and thus all leaders must be obeyed (Romans 13:1-2) amount to slaps in the face to any would-be conscientious objector to war. St. Ambrose assured a magistrate named Studius who was troubled by the idea of Christian killing that he who wields the sword serves as God’s avenger against those who do evil. St. Augustine declared God is pleased with those who agree to military service. St. Aquinas and others came up with a theory of “just war” that’s so loose and subjective that’s it’s basically provided justifications and excuses for war ever since. Martin Luther declared in an essay entitled “That Soldiers, Too, Can Be Saved” that the hand that wields the sword is not really man’s but God’s. Christians, Aztecs, Muslims, and others have at one time or another all declared that those who fall in battle are granted an express ticket to paradise.

History reeks from the consequences of such “God”-inspired beliefs. Constantine and subsequent Christian Roman emperors had no qualms about using the military might of the state to defend and spread their particular “God” beliefs. Islam spread across much of the Middle East and the Mediterranean region in the 7th and 8th centuries thanks to its adherents’ willingness to wage war on non-Muslims. Christians – far from turning the other cheek – eagerly embarked upon centuries of Holy Crusades of their own. Spain and other Christian nations engaged in countless wars of colonialism with the full backing of the Roman Catholic Church. For over a century Europe’s Christians attempted to settle their bitter intramural “God” disputes by brute force in what historians now call “The Age of Religious Wars.” Devout, “God-fearing” Englishmen set about the task of creating an empire upon which the sun never set – an empire based on force and subjugation. Americans used war to conquer much of North America in the belief that doing so was part of a God-directed “Manifest Destiny.” The American Civil War was one of the bloodiest ever fought because both Northerners and Southerners passionately believed “God” was on their side. In Japan, Shintoism became an intrinsic part of the rise of a military dictatorship. When Hitler’s soldiers marched off to impose Nazi rule on country after country, they did so with the equivalent of “God Is With Us” on their belt buckles – and Christian chaplains at their side. As James Carroll notes in Constantine’s Sword, had American B-52s been dropping condoms on innocent peasants and villagers during the Vietnam War, the Vatican would have vociferously objected. Because they were only dropping napalm, little objection was ever lodged. (Indeed, according to Carroll, Catholics were among the most ardent supporters of campus ROTC programs.) When Christian Yugoslavians launched a brutal campaign of “ethnic cleansing” against Bosnian Muslims and others in the early ‘90s, creating scenes of horror and destruction not seen in Europe since World War II, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker blithely declared “We don’t have a dog in that fight” and refused to use American power to stop them despite having previously used that power to wrest Kuwaiti oilfields from the hands of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. Few, if any, American religious leaders objected. Around the world today, from Algeria through the Middle East to Afghanistan, Kashmir, Indonesia, and the Philippines, Muslim fundamentalists are waging wars they believe are demanded by “God.”

As tedious as all this is to read, rest assured it is much worse to have to live it. And as bad as all the above must have been to live through, it provides us with only a hint of the horrors “God” and religion may yet unleash….

“The A-bomb was a marvelous gift given to America by a wise God.” – Phyllis Schafly

When the United States observed the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima back in 1995, one thing quickly became overwhelming clear: Questioning the morality or the necessity of the decision to bomb was not welcome. Not when various authors attempted to promote books which did just that. Not when the Smithsonian Institution attempted to arrange a special exhibit about the event. Not when writing a letter to my local newspaper. Just as few, if any, “God-fearing” Americans back in 1945 questioned their country’s right to incinerate civilian population centers in wartime, few Americans could stand to have questions raised about the morality of that incineration even half a century after the fact. Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, killing some 3000 innocent people; that fact justified America’s killing some 140,000 civilians in Hiroshima (as well as another 70,000 in Nagasaki a few days later) – case closed. Indeed, according to Spencer R. Weart’s book, Nuclear Fear, a substantial number of Americans polled back in 1945 were sorry that Japan surrendered before more cities could be obliterated. Other polls indicate that over 90% of Americans considered themselves to be Christians….

Overwhelming American approval of brutal acts of war is by no means limited to the nuclear bombings of Japan. While America’s 60,000 Vietnam War casualties are commemorated, one by one by name on the famous memorial in Washington, little mention is ever made of the 1,000,000+ Vietnamese soldiers or 380,000+ Vietnamese civilians who lost their lives in that conflict as a direct result of American activities. (Figures taken from Francis Fitzgerald’s book, Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam, p. 571.) While every American pilot shot down behind enemy lines is now given saturation media coverage, little coverage has ever been given to the perhaps 2300 Iraqi civilians killed during the Gulf War – let alone the 22,000 Iraqi soldiers who were killed in battle. (Figures taken from Rick Atkinson’s book, Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War, p. 477. Some estimates of Iraqi casualties from B-52 carpet bombing, trench bulldozing, and other Allied activities run as high as 100,000.) One needn’t disagree with America’s allegedly noble goals in these wars to believe that such wildly unbalanced treatment of individual human beings is morally indefensible, nor must one be exceeding neurotic or atheistic to wonder “If a country as religious as America can destroy and dismiss the lives of others so cavalierly, what might it not destroy or dismiss? And to what extent does religion actually inspire such cavalier treatment?”

The closer one examines the record, the more I believe one will be inclined to conclude that belief in “God” and nuclear weapons ought to be kept as far apart as possible.

Consider:

—– American officials seem to have seriously considered using nuclear weapons many, many times since 1945. According to Allan M. Winkler’s book, Life Under A Cloud, President Eisenhower’s secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, was a devout Presbyterian who hated atheistic Communism so much he was willing to do virtually anything to halt its spread and destroy it – including boosting America’s stockpile of nuclear weapons from 1000 to 18,000 and threatening to unleash them in response to the smallest provocation under a policy of “Massive Retaliation.” Only practical considerations rather than any sense of “God”-given morality seem to have prevented their actual use during the Cold War. Indeed, those scientists and others who dared to raise moral concerns were often declared “un-American” and persecuted by the government.

—– American commentators and common members of the public alike have repeatedly expressed a desire and a willingness to use nuclear weapons in times of stress. The Iranian hostage crisis of 1979-1981 was one such time. So was the Gulf War (during which I can distinctly recall self-proclaimed “Christian” columnists such as Cal Thomas declaring that it was better to nuke Baghdad than to lose one American soldier’s life in combat). Incredibly, the downing of Pam Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland by a terrorist bomb in 1988 has even prompted some Americans to call for a nuclear attack against Libya (Newsweek, Feb. 12, 2001; p. 23).

—– As Charles B. Strozier makes clear in his book, Apocalypse: On The Psychology of Fundamentalism in America, vast numbers of Christian Americans believe in the inevitability of a nuclear Armageddon; many are actually looking forward to it – and some even seem anxious to help it along. Such thinking seems to have extended to members of the Reagan administration – and possibly to Reagan himself. Others smugly believe that “God” would simply never allow anything as horrible as a nuclear war to break out, and therefore see no reason for anyone to work to reduce its possibility.

Given America’s history, long insularity from the horrors of war, and “God”-inspired self-righteousness, few thoughtful people can look to the future with unbridled optimism.

And of course America is merely one apparently “God”-addled player in a world full of them. Seymour Hersh detailed Israel’s elaborate nuclear program and its apparent willingness to turn any potential future Holocaust into a universal event in his 1992 book, The Samson Option. Hindu India and Islamic Pakistan have each developed nuclear weapons and threaten to use them against the other despite the clearly horrendous and suicidal nature of such use. Islamic fundamentalists in numerous places are working feverishly to acquire the ultimate weapon with which to put “the Great Satan, America” in its place once and for all.

Having seen what mass horrors religion has inspired, supported, and excused in the past, I humbly suggest that it’s time we as individuals and as a nation turn to logic, reason, and simple human love unadulterated by the “God” concept.

(To be continued…)