The Will to Power – a response to Atheism and Stalin

i read an interesting post from Spanish Inquisitor here. read it for yourself, because i dont want to be unfair to his position. but here is how i would summarize the two main points that he proposes:

1. people don’t kill because of a lack of belief in something. If they kill at all, they do it because of a positive belief in something.

let me address them separately. in response to the first point, i want to say, i agree. in fact, i think this is very similar to the point CS Lewis makes in Mere Christianity. you see, Lewis argues that any person does not do evil for the sake of being evil, but because it achieves some good for themselves. even a person who commits evil purely for evil, will do so because they derive some sort of sick pleasure out of it. so they are actually doing it for pleasure, which is a good thing. relating this to Inquisitor’s point about Atheism, i think people will not kill another person because they don’t believe something, because even in claiming they believe nothing, they have become a nihilist.

so take, for example, the protagonist in Crime and Punishment. he believes there is no such thing as morality (that is for those who can transcend societal boundaries), which essentially is the belief there is no inherent order to our world other than, as Nietzche put it, “The will to power”. however, this lack of belief is, in fact, a belief. it is a nihilistic belief about the world. Spanish Inqisitor concludes that it is never for no reason that a person kills, i concur.

interestingly, i think it is exactly the will to power that spurred Hitler and Mao Zedong and Stalin and Pol Pot, etc, to action. it is this desire, this thirst, which can never be quenched without the blood of innocents spilling on the streets. it was this same lust for blood that led the Spanish Inqisition and many other massacres that “Christians” have promoted. here is where i think we find ourselves, there are two ways, the way of death and the way of life…and as it has been said, “the difference between the two is vast.” but the way of life is not always those who claim to be disciples of the Way, Truth and Life. and inversely, the way of death is not always those who reject Him.

the way of life is only found through Messiah and not through those who claim to be His followers.

2. No one died because they refused to embrace atheism. Many died because they were deemed enemies of the state.

this statement also points to the real struggle not being of “Atheism”, but of power. and i think, again, Inquisitor makes his case well. he is justified in saying that people died because they were “enemies of the state”. but i think he lacks a critical insight into the way of the world. i don’t doubt at all that Stalin had less interest in destroying those who didn’t embrace atheism than he did for those who rejected his power. the problem here with Inquisitor’s logic is that Stalin’s power was founded upon the projection of Atheism. Mao Zedong was the same. now, in light of years and other rulers, these two nations have allowed freedom to be or not to be religious. but under Mao and Stalin, there was no choice.

i read a great book called Red Azaleas in college. it was written by a Chinese woman who had been through the Cultural Revolution. it is a fact that Mao tried to destroy any and all religion, except for Atheism. this was not some broad Atheism, per se, however. it was a Mao-centered atheism. he placed himself on billboards and books, pins and ribbons. there was nothing in the country that didnt have Mao. this is similar to what Saddam Hussein did as well. there was a running joke in Baghdad during Saddam’s reign about the thousand faces of Saddam.

however, this is Atheism, nonetheless. it falls within the scope of its broad doctrines (as Inquisitor points out, Atheism is quite broad in its range of beliefs). the reason i believe that many of these ruthless dictators’ real campaign was for Atheism, was not for Atheism’s own sake. it was a means to an end. as Machiavelli recommends to the Prince that he use religion to his own ends to gain and keep power, so do these men use Atheism. yet, it is Atheism. for instance, they believed they were capable of replacing God (or gods or whatever the various religions of these countries taught) with themselves. essentially, it could be called Humanism. however, it certainly is not a religion in the strict definition of the word. religion comes from Latin’s religare, which implies a binding belief. these men tried their best to destroy any such binding beliefs. they knew, wisely, that such “religious” beliefs could cause them to lose power. some “religious” person might contend that the ruler was acting contrary to the dictates of that specific religion. and, as a consequence, that ruler would lose power.

so in seeking complete power, they not only sought Atheism, but were its strictest promoters. they may not have been philosophically “Atheist”, but they used Atheism as the means by which they were to obtain and maintain absolute power. this was their will to power.