Christian apologists, citing a few twentieth-century regimes, often try to conflate atheism and authoritarianism. They ignore the fact that most atheists are secularists and don’t advocate for any form of state atheism. They also ignore the fact that the policies of the atheist states they cite, most frequently North Korea and the Soviet Union, were transparently motivated by a totalitarian desire to control their populations. We discuss secularism, freedom of belief, religious toleration, Christian communism, and separation of church and state.
Part two of the consciousness series is taking a little longer than expected, so I thought I’d continue the atheism and the 20th-century series back from episodes eight and nine.
Contact: emersongreen@protonmail.com
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Christopher Hitchens on Stalin [YouTube]
Church-State Separation — Christopher Hitchens [YouTube]
Michael Shermer — Intelligence Squared U.S. [YouTube]
The Gulag Archipelago — Alekandr Solzhenitsyn [Amazon]
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