Albania was the first nation in the world to officially declare itself atheist, after World War II. Members of my family were there and they do not remember it as a happy time.
Penn Jillette has proof by assertion and snarky facial expressions to back up the Reign of Terror and the massacre of the Vendee in France, the mass closing of schools under the Third Republic, the liquidation of the kulaks under Lenin, the Great Purge and the Holodomor under Stalin, the Cultural Revolution under Mao, the killing fields of Cambodia, and, and, and,...
And in the 1980s, I came home from school to find my father sitting on the couch dumbfounded, with tears in his eyes, holding a letter telling of how his youngest brother had been shot trying to escape from the kind of society that achieved what Penn Jillette advocates. The look on my father's face was very different from the smug condescension on Jillette's. Bastard.
Here's a cute pattern to ponder. Many atheists claim that most wars have been caused by religion. For the past two centuries, religion has declined in influence in the West. Over that span, the wars only got deadlier. There was the French Revolution, followed by Napoleon, Europe steadily turning into a powder keg from the Great Game, the two World Wars, then the fate of the world hung in the balance with the Cold War. Something to think about.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_atheism#Albania
http://www.amazon.com/Banishing-God-Albania-Giacomo-Gardin/d...
Penn Jillette has proof by assertion and snarky facial expressions to back up the Reign of Terror and the massacre of the Vendee in France, the mass closing of schools under the Third Republic, the liquidation of the kulaks under Lenin, the Great Purge and the Holodomor under Stalin, the Cultural Revolution under Mao, the killing fields of Cambodia, and, and, and,...
And in the 1980s, I came home from school to find my father sitting on the couch dumbfounded, with tears in his eyes, holding a letter telling of how his youngest brother had been shot trying to escape from the kind of society that achieved what Penn Jillette advocates. The look on my father's face was very different from the smug condescension on Jillette's. Bastard.
Here's a cute pattern to ponder. Many atheists claim that most wars have been caused by religion. For the past two centuries, religion has declined in influence in the West. Over that span, the wars only got deadlier. There was the French Revolution, followed by Napoleon, Europe steadily turning into a powder keg from the Great Game, the two World Wars, then the fate of the world hung in the balance with the Cold War. Something to think about.