The Oatmeal, a Frightening Display of Simplification

Admittedly, I felt a little sad for picking on The Oatmeal last week. Generally speaking, it truly is an impressive piece of work, and I harbor no small amount of respect for the author. But then I read the following: 

Wow. Where does one even begin? Once again we've been presented a scenario in which the Christian is portrayed in less than flattering ways. The brilliant, independently-minded atheist, using airtight logic, destroys the reasoning of the intellectually-challenged theist (who just so happens to not possess a shred of independent thought as evidenced by the telling line, "my pastor told me."), all while calmly sipping away at his coffee (the body language in this bit says a lot).

It should be instantly noted that in the third panel, the atheist uses the exact same reasoning as many Christians by utilizing a defense that claims atheism did not cause those deaths, a "twisted little asshole" did. Apparently, when the Christian uses the same logic in response to the Crusades or the Spanish Inquisition (just because they identified themselves as Christians doesn't mean Christianity caused them to do terrible things), it doesn't count. It seems that double standards abound in the atheist mindset.

We are then informed that Hitler was actually a Christian, which, as anyone making an honest appraisal of history will note, is an utterly absurd statement. However, I will be the first to argue that labeling Hitler as an atheist may be equally untrue. The fact is, we can't say with certainty what exactly Hitler identified himself with. There are plenty of statements by Hitler in which he appears to be confessing faith in some sort of god, or in which he appeals to Christian sentiment, but there also exist many statements which seem to indicate that the man held a deep animosity towards both the Christian faith and the Christian god. At the end of the day, Hitler had Bibles in schools replaced with Mein Kampf, murdered millions of Jews, dabbled in the Occult, and was generally a really, really sick guy. It's pretty easy to conclude that whatever Hitler believed himself to be, he most certainly was not a Christian. Besides,  politicians are quite fond of saying anything and everything that serves their own purposes, whether truthful or not. And one thing we can all agree on, Hitler did a lot of lying. The tired and overused tactic of "Hitler was (fill in the blank)," is a cheap shot, plain and simple. As "The Straight Dope" so perfectly explains:

Hitler wasn't a Christian, he was a freakin' teapot! 

"...atheists looking for a quick cheap-shot may claim Hitler was a Christian; similarly, Christians looking for a quick shot may claim he was an atheist. Know what? Hitler was a vegetarian! Oooh, those evil vegetarians! He also recommended that parents give their children milk to drink instead of beer and started the first anti-smoking campaign. (So by the "reasoning" used in these types of arguments, if you are truly anti-Hitler, you should smoke heavily and only give your baby beer!) Better watch out, though he was an oxygen-breather, too! In other words, does it really matter whether Hitler was an atheist or a Christian or whatever? Just because somebody may hold a particular worldview (along with other views) doesn't make him a spokesman for that view, or even remotely representative of others who hold that view." 

The author then makes the point that Stalin and Hitler did not go to war in the name of atheism, as if that somehow relieves atheism of bearing any guilt for such actions. But doesn't the atheist repeatedly claim that he does not believe in anything? Rather he follows reason and evidence alone? Given this claim, in what universe would we ever see someone going to war in the name of atheism? Once the individual has denied God, something else will invariably take his place, whether it be money, power, or ideology.  And what have atheists gone to war over? Money, power, and ideology! Obviously no one is claiming that Stalin raised a banner with the word "Atheism!" brightly painted upon it just prior to implementing his various atrocities, but the strongly held belief that there was no god by which Stalin could be judged was absolutely pivotal in his complete disregard for human life. What the author so painfully fails to realize is that whether or not Stalin, Pol Pot, or Mao Zedong went to war in the name of atheism or not, their policies were directly influenced by their beliefs. It does, after all,  logically follow that if one accepts the tenets of Nietzsche (who was extremely pivotal in forming the mindset of Hitler, among others) and if one applies Darwinism on a social scale, human beings are not really worth much of anything. When the human has been reduced to the level of evolved insect, in what way is it not logical to squash said insects when they have become bothersome?

At the core of this discussion, however, is this fact: When one commits atrocities in the name of Christianity, they are acting in direct contradiction to the tenets of Jesus Christ. Search all you want, there is no zealous call to religious genocide within the pages of the New Testament. Jesus inspired his followers to engage in the counter-intuitive act of enemy love, an idea which is at once beautiful and repulsive. Yet, can we truly say the same of Stalin? Atheism has no tenets that cannot be completely revised by cultural leanings, so if the Communist Party of the Soviet Union decided it was moral to kill political dissenters by the tens of thousands, how can the moral relativist argue with them? 


It is yet again a wonderful twist of irony that the atheist would ever once consider criticizing Christianity for abuses against mankind. Given the massive bloodbaths which arose due to far too prevalent atheistic mindsets during the twentieth century, Christianity, though given a 2000 year head start, can never dream of equaling such travesties. The body count for which we may blame godless political ideologies is staggering (Stalin's purges resulted in the deaths of 61 million Russians, while Mao's Cultural Revolution saw 70 million, to cite just two). Does this mean atheists are nasty, mean-spirited people incapable of any moral good? Of course not. The argument has never been the capability for good within atheism, it is for the less than compelling reasons to do good within atheism. No reason for moral objectivity results in a malleable moral objectivity, which in turn can result in any number of evil deeds done in the name of good.


As we can see, the logic employed by The Oatmeal's author is less than convincing, and the criticisms leveled against Christianity are biased, misrepresentative, and naive. For the sake of intelligence and fairness, might it be incumbent upon the author to stick with what he knows? Like Nikola Tesla and how to pet a kitty?