"One of my "favorite" freethinkers was Stalin."
Good for you. Stalin combined all the worst qualities of every tyrant in one most vile personality.
As Alan Bullock notes of Stalin in his dual biography, "Hitler and Stalin" (1992, Knopf, page 13), "a church education helped to form the mind of a man who was to become known for his dogmatism and his propensity of seeing issues in absolute terms, in black and white."
Do we blame the church for an aberration like Stalin? NO. Do we blame atheism? NO. Stalin was one in a billion. He was everything we call evil. Did he have a mental illness? Was he a sociopath? Probably. In such matters atheism, humanism, and freethinking are uninvolved. Whether psychotic or just evil, however--either overrides and overwhelms both religious and humanist categories.
Certainly...Stalin cannot be described as a champion of FREE THOUGHT, can he???? Stalin did the opposite of what rational humans beings with normal mental health do. He sought to erase all individualism and to make all servile to the State. He is not an embarrassment to atheism because atheism has nothing to do with such social pathology. He is however, an embarrassment and a terrible disgrace to all of humanity--surely an atavistic throwback to the ancient past when people considered their fellow man to be fodder under their feet. These atavistic genes surface from time to time in individuals--and I suppose they always will until the sun cools down and humanity is forever gone (although no respectable scientist could possibly conceive of humanity lasting anywhere near those final days). |
