Belief in something creates conscience. While it has been argued academically whether the human being is born to be good or bad, all manner of superstition has been created as religious exercise to make us good. We’ve even burned people alive to make them better and stretched them on a rack to heal their souls. Of course it is easy to find examples that describe cruelty in the name of religion. We have to look no further than the child that becomes a martyr after exploding himself in a crowded bus or market.
There are those with faith that are evil and those without faith that are good. To work organized evil the first step is to eliminate faith, then instill faith. Rhetoric but plain talk.
There could be no Christianity in Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, Khmer Rouge Cambodia or Communist China. It would create conscience. Could people with conscience murder the innocent? Gas them and put them in crematoriums? So evil were the Nazis that there are still people that deny it ever happened. So diabolical and evil that that aspect of human behavior is hard to understand. Not unusual there were people that knew it was happening at the time then went into denial when they failed to stop it.
We go to war. It is a practice invoked from earliest crisis in human relations. Motivation has often been evil. Greed, political ambition, territorial aggrandizement, all good enough reasons to kill others. One excellent excuse the United States has used has been to stop the spread of Communism. In recent years this has meant Chinese Communism. Whatever buffers each nation has used it has been war: U.S. vs. China.
Korea and Vietnam were wars the U.S. lost. No lessons were learned from earlier attempts by other nations to subdue the onslaught of Chinese Communism into these satellite countries. The French marched out defeated, still crowing cocks, flags unfurled after Dien Bien Phu. The U.S. marched in. Tuck tail, the U.S. sneaked out.
Soldiers and embassy officials escaped in helicopters, pushed allies away as they flew off in last minute panic. Bulldozers pushed war materiel into the sea to keep it out of the hands of North Vietnamese. When it was all done the North Vietnamese were left with the third largest air force in the world and stockpiles of war making goods U.S. forces left behind. In Korea peace came with a magical line drawn across a map. No border was increased or decreased, only lives were lost.
When the U.S. abandoned Cambodia, Khmer Rouge forces of Pol Pot took over. These were inspired Chinese Communists. They took children and removed any semblance of faith. Indeed, they took them before there was any real faith to begin with. Like the Nazi Bund and youth movements, the children became killing machines. They were able to, without conscience, beat their parents to death. And millions more as well.
In the Congo, Chinese Communist forces and their agents infiltrated along river border areas. They used indigenous belief in witchcraft to recruit child soldiers. Missionaries were murdered, people were killed. There were so many cadavers thrown into the river that crocodiles swam upstream to feed. Many Congolese would not eat river fish, despite their hunger, knowing they feasted on human flesh. Others relished cannibalism and a Belgian colonial law was reinforced. Meat at public markets had to be sold with skin and hair on. A way to prevent human meat from turning up for sale.
Faith and lack of faith, belief and lack of belief. Manipulations that enable the mind to draw a blank on conscience. The Crusades were launched to rid the world of Islam. Tapestries depict cruel warfare and maiming. Crusaders were defeated and Islam triumphed. Not before millions were killed. Many in the Arab world today consider the U.S. with NATO allies, mostly of Judeo-Christian religious tradition, to have embarked upon another Crusade. Fueled by fuel to be sure. Forgotten is the fact that U.S. intelligence armed Saddam Hussein to kill Iran. If you kill my enemy you are my friend.
The original precept after Kuwait was to rid the world of weapons of mass destruction. That misnomer has all but been forgotten, thousands of casualties later. Iran oil wells, 250 of them, are the shallowest and most productive in the world. Motivation enough.
Christians murdered whole villages of Native Americans during colonial expansion. Their lands held gold deposits. Blankets containing smallpox were given to tribes, a successful method of extermination, as effective as the Nazi death camps. Indian killers were lauded in the U.S. press in the 1800s. Many, like Generals Custer and Miles, aspired to run for president on the basis of their slaughters.
Russian Communists invaded Afghanistan. Faithless vs. Faithful. Thousands of casualties later they ran away in defeat. The U.S. likewise invaded and likewise will run away. There is no way a major power can sustain war against an idea. Alas, there it is: try to defeat faith by force of arms and more faithful will make martyrs from the will of believers. That indeed is the history of the followers of Christ. Persecution rendered the faithful stalwart and courageous. There is a place in history for martyrs despite the dire predictions Jesus made for denial before the cock crowed thrice.
What is it that allows horrible cruelty in the name of good? It is all in the mind. Faithless believe there is no afterlife, no punishment for wrong, only power prevails. Many faithful believe they will attain heavenly glory by committing acts of mayhem. If there were ever two opposite extremes it would be Chinese Communism and Islam. In both societies societal strictures are maintained by force. Power therefore is a common denominator.
Nazis had no faith, they were blatant murderers. The terrorists that flew hijacked jets into the World Trade Towers, Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania had faith and were martyrs. Martyrs to a warped notion of what their belief instructed them to do. Neither society was or is open to contrary views. You are or you are not. There is also that missionary zeal to take over the world.
Will Chinese Communists pose another external threat to world peace through their un-faith? Chinese Communist leaders use vast military forces to quell any dissent. Their forces torture any faithful, destroy any opposition. Are they just biding their time until they move on Taiwan? Until colonial desires augment border expansion?
With or without faith the history of human existence is pock marked with tragic excursions into inhumanity. It is often for land. Insoluble crises over turf. Palestinian homeland and Jewish state homeland security. It is a battle cry, something zealots retain to augment hatred.
Perhaps those without faith are also without hate, perhaps not. To be faithful can also mean to hate. We must learn to hate something; hatred begins in the mind. If only those with faith and those without would discover the power of love then wars and social disunity might cease.
