Harris sits down with Pinker for a discussion about the history of violence.

Sam Harris asks, “Need I remind you that the ‘atheist regimes’ of the 20th century killed tens of millions of people?”

Steven Pinker has a great response.

This is a popular argument among theoconservatives and critics of the new atheism, but for many reasons it is historically inaccurate.
First, the premise that Nazism and Communism were “atheist” ideologies makes sense only within a religiocentric worldview that divides political systems into those that are based on Judaeo-Christian ideology and those that are not. In fact, 20th-century totalitarian movements were no more defined by a rejection of Judaeo-Christianity than they were defined by a rejection of astrology, alchemy, Confucianism, Scientology, or any of hundreds of other belief systems. They were based on the ideas of Hitler and Marx, not David Hume and Bertrand Russell, and the horrors they inflicted are no more a vindication of Judeao-Christianity than they are of astrology or alchemy or Scientology.

Second, Nazism and Fascism were not atheistic in the first place. Hitler thought he was carrying out a divine plan. Nazism received extensive support from many German churches, and no opposition from the Vatican. Fascism happily coexisted with Catholicism in Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Croatia.

Third, according to the most recent compendium of history’s worst atrocities, Matthew White’s Great Big Book of Horrible Things (Norton, 2011), religions have been responsible for 13 of the 100 worst mass killings in history, resulting in 47 million deaths. Communism has been responsible for 6 mass killings and 67 million deaths. If defenders of religion want to crow, “We were only responsible for 47 million murders—Communism was worse!”, they are welcome to do so, but it is not an impressive argument.

Fourth, many religious massacres took place in centuries in which the world’s population was far smaller. Crusaders, for example, killed 1 million people in world of 400 million, for a genocide rate that exceeds that of the Nazi Holocaust. The death toll from the Thirty Years War was proportionally double that of World War I and in the range of World War II in Europe.

When it comes to the history of violence, the significant distinction is not one between theistic and atheistic regimes. It’s the one between regimes that were based on demonizing, utopian ideologies (including Marxism, Nazism, and militant religions) and secular liberal democracies that are based on the ideal of human rights. I present data from the political scientist Rudolph Rummel showing that democracies are vastly less murderous than alternatives forms of government. [Read More.]

While us atheists realize that Hitler’s world philosophy was shaped from Christianity and the bible, some people still like to say he was an atheist. He considered Jews to be atheists because they did not accept Jesus as the messiah. He hated Jews. He hated atheists. He hated a lot of people. As an atheist Jew, I take much offense to allegations that Hitler was an atheist. As far as the others go, I don’t have nearly as much personal angst. In any case, it wasn’t so-called atheist philosophies that shaped their policies.

The book: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

A full-page advertisement by 400 rabbis in today’s Wall Street Journal has put a spotlight on a trend many people see as alarming: the use of the word Nazi to bash opponents in public discourse. [Read more]

Tonight, Lawrence O’Donnell had two rabbis on his show with differing opinions on the subject.

The Holocaust was a horrific atrocity and watershed event in human history. The meaning of the word is being distorted and demeaned in political rhetoric and casual comparisons.

Over the last few years, U.S. political discourse has been saturated with opponents accusing each other of Nazi-like policies or behavior. Most recently, it was California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown who likened the attack ads of Meg Whitman, his Republican opponent in the race for governor, to the tactics employed by Nazi propaganda chief Josef Goebbels.

Brown later called me to say he regretted citing Goebbels. But most of the comparisons are made without apology.

Its quite sad how people can use the Holocaust as a metaphor for their measly political gain.

Last week, Sarah Palin criticized President Obama’s handling of the BP crisis in a tweet to followers recommending they read an article by Thomas Sowell that compared Adolph Hitler’s use of a financial crisis to give himself dictatorial powers to Obama’s role in creating the BP escrow fund.

Its disgusting. That’s all.

The continued misuse and trivialization of the word prompted Elie Wiesel, Nobel laureate and chronicler of the Holocaust, to discontinue using it. “Whatever mishap occurs now, they call it ‘holocaust,’” Wiesel said. “I have seen it myself in television in the country in which I live. A commentator describing the defeat of a sports team, somewhere, called it a ‘holocaust.’”

Wiesel is right. There are many injustices and manifestations of evil in our world, even in our own country, the greatest of democracies. Standing up to them is not only our right but our obligation. But that obligation does not include distorting and demeaning the word that has come to stand for the great evil that was the Holocaust.

Distorting the meaning of anything solely for your own political aspirations is lame enough as is. Let alone, the Holocaust.

Read the rest of the story.

EDIT: I posted this yesterday and didn’t have much to say about it. It sort of left me speechless. Some in my family are very conservative and are likely back up Palin. This notion crushes me. Especially since others on the opposite side of my family have died and survived through the Holocaust. I was speechless yesterday but not today. How do people like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck not only get away with such awfully irresponsible accusations but enable it to be encouraged? From Palin’s Hitler and nazi references to Beck using MLK to support his agenda, its disgusting and unfair. The fact that there any blacks and/or Jews left in that party is baffling; allowing themselves to be used in this way for the cheap political gain or approval of some white Christian who clearly does not understand actual facts, history, or the plight of said groups. This is at least true of those who continue to defend perpetrators of such inapt metaphors. Of course, that alone may not be enough to leave a party or its philosophy.

The following photos provide a pictorial glimpse of Hitler, how his Nazis mixed religion with government, and the support for Hitler by the Protestant and Catholic Churches in Germany. In, no way, does this gallery of photos intend to support Nazism or anti-Semitism, but instead, intends to warn against them.

Not that it really matters, but take a look at these photos with captions.

At U.S. News:

A month before a suspected white supremacist walked into the Holocaust Memorial Museum in downtown Washington and opened fire, the Department of Homeland Security warned that domestic right-wing extremism was the most pressing domestic terrorist threat that the country faced.

Conservatives were outraged that the DHS analysts had singled out antiabortion and antitax radicals for scrutiny. But the report was part of a series that DHS compiles on domestic dangers from all sides of the political spectrum, an area that’s taken a back seat to overseas threats.

…

The man authorities say was the shooter at the Holocaust Museum, James von Brunn, was a well-known white supremacist who had railed against blacks, Jews, and the power of the federal government. In 1981, Brunn walked into the Federal Reserve Board with a shotgun, according to news reports. In another incident in early April, three police officers in Pittsburgh were killed by another reported white supremacist.

This upsets me for obvious reasons. Additionally, as you may have seen in my recent post “Why the Proposition 8 Ruling Matters to Atheists“, I mentioned a visit to the D.C. Holocaust Memorial Museum. We went on a class trip to D.C. in high school. Among our amalgam of activities, we walked through said museum. And I walked alone. (I intentionally walked ahead of my friends, trailing behind other classmates. I wanted to be able to take it all in by myself.)