Violence in the name of God

I am currently reading 'Can Man Live Without God' by Ravi Zacharias, and highly recommend it.

In chapter one Ravi addresses a common, yet ill-understood charge that many people lay upon Christianity: 'What about the thousands of people who have been killed in the name of religion?'

Before forcing the Christian to answer this emotion-charged question, the responsibility falls upon the atheist to explain all the killings that have taken place at the hands of those who have lived without God, for example Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and Mao. Those who are quick to lay blame for violence at the door of the religious, very often are not so enthusiastic about distributing blame to the irreligious.

People who bring this attack to religion have failed to recognise that history's large-scale slaughters at the hands of antitheists were the logical outworking of their Godless philosophy. On the other hand, violent crimes committed in the name of Christ would never have been endorsed by the Christ of scriptures. Indeed it was the self-focused, power hungry politicizers of religion whom Jesus most opposed in His life and teaching.

In short, whenever violonece has spawned in the name of Christ, it has been in contradiction to the gospel. However when violence is spawned in the name of atheism, it is the logical outworking of a philosophy void of morals or any basis for human value.

The frightening outworking of a Godless philosphy hang upon a wall in the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz. These are the words of Hitler - his vision of a generation of youth devoid of conscience:

I freed Germany from the stupid and degrading fallicies of conscience and morality... We will train young people before whom the world will tremble. I want young people capable of violence - imperious, relelentless and cruel.

Ravi completes the chapter in summary of Hitler's Nazi Germany, their heinous crimes and their inextricable link with antitheism:

"That this was conceived and nurtured in the mind of the most educated nation at that time in history and brought forth on the soil that had also given brith to the Enlightenment almost denies belief. But it was atheism's legitimate offspring. Man was beginning to live without God."