Joseph McCabe

“ For it is just these leading men who are supposed to have persecuted religion that have made the Russian civilization what it is today. They would themselves be the fast to recognize the cooperative work of the mass of the people, but, plainly, it is the planning and directive work of men like Stalin and Litvinov that has had the chief share. They are Atheists to a man—or woman. The thousands of officers who link them with the labor of the people are all aggressive Atheists. ”

“ The Extent of Russian Atheism Similar lies were told about the League of Militant Atheists which was represented as an instrument of the government for the destruction of Churches and the degrading of the minds of the people with cartoons and caricatures. The League is, and has always been, a voluntary association with a few million members for the education of the people in Atheism. It has no power to close or destroy churches, and none have been alienated or destroyed except at the demand of the great majority of the worshipers or, in a very few cases, to meet specific civic requirements. ”

“ The chief basis of Atheism is the teaching of science, and we now see that that foundation is firmer than ever. Tens of thousands of times in the last 10 years people have been assured that there was a change of heart in the scientific world and that what Atheists and Materialists had claimed to be their strongest basis was ruined. ”

“ Distrust rational arguments, is the new appeal, for man is no mere logical machine. His interests and emotions are the things that matter in shaping his opinions. If these demand God, pay no attention to the syllogisms of the Atheist. Smile at the philosophers who tell you that they are agreed that all the old arguments for the existence of God from the order and beauty and power of nature are as illogical as the arguments of the old alchemists. ”

“ For the news is spreading, and is triumphing even over reactionary opposition that Russia is doing the finest and soundest reconstructive work of our time, and it is doing this, not only without God, but on a basis of militant Atheism. ”

“ Further, the success of Soviet Russia as deeply discredits the psychological as it does the sociological argument for the God-idea. Here were 160,000,000 people who had been for ages, apart from a small educated minority, as deeply rooted in religion, according to the religious view, as the peasants of Ireland or Mexico; and in less than 20 years half of them toss aside religion as cheerfully as one discards one's overcoat on the first day of spring. ”

“ The Religious Instinct Exploded These pleas of the rights of the religious instincts and the sociological value of the God-idea we will consider in themselves in later numbers. Here, in taking Russia as the first country in which there has been a phenomenal growth of Atheism, I would point out that its experience completely discredits all these new arguments for the God-idea. ”

“ In spite of all the frantic appeals and subtle cajolery of prelates and their rich supporters, who have often serious influence on universities, the proportion of men of science who believe in God has fallen. ”

“ The agricultural trouble is practically over, and the collective farms have triumphed. All the children of the nation are being educated in schools in which the entire curriculum and all the teachers are atheistic and materialistic; while Russia already surpasses Germany, France, and Great Britain in the proportion of youths and girls who receive higher (and always atheistic) education. ”

“ Our basis is sound. Science may almost be called atheistic; and there is no higher authority in the modern world upon which the people may rest their faith.
Hence God's apostles and publicity-agents strike a new note. We will later notice the miserable sophistry that tries to persuade people that if they have a "sense of God" or a religious intuition or instinct that assures them of his existence, they need no proof. ”

“ Correspondents like Duranty and Cummings, who know Russia and are recognized as impartial witnesses on such a matter as religion, all tell the same story. In the towns religion is "dead": that is to say, all but a small minority, estimated in Moscow at less than 10 percent, are Atheists. ”

“ The same thing was seen in France in the third year of the Revolution, and the facility with which half of the French people gave up their creed in a year, not under pressure of but in spite of the wishes of Danton and Robespierre, discredited the instinct- argument long ago. In every country today, in fact, as I showed in another book, the Churches are not ministering to a craving on the part of the people, as this theory of an ineradicable religious instinct requires, but are confessing the absence of such craving by appealing to quite other instincts. ”

“ The millions of members of the Communist party, who are the backbone of the workers in the task of reconstruction, are all Atheists. Until the 18th Century the leaders of every civilization in Europe, apart from Spain and Sicily in the Middle Ages, were Christians. We know what sort of civilization they created and maintained. ”

“ In 20 years the number of those who have ceased to be Christians and become Atheists in Russia alone is well over 50,000,000 and nearer 100,000,000; and the majority of the remainder are old folk who will die out or the very backward peoples of Asiatic Russia who are already being educated out of their superstitions. ”

“ Tourists who go there with the belief that the government has forcibly suppressed religion write home ecstatically about the "crowds of worshippers" they saw in a church here and there, and professional religious correspondents beat up reports of an apostle in one place or another who promises a religious revival. But Atheism steadily and rapidly grows. The dense mass of the illiterate peasantry who were the most refractory to Atheism are being educated so rapidly that in provinces where 98 percent were illiterate 15 years ago, now 98 percent can read ”

“ We speak on the ground of the most positive evidence when we say that only about one in 10 of the more distinguished men of science now believe in a personal God and that the majority of these believers belong to those branches of science which least of all equip a man to pass a critical judgment on the subject ”

“ As early as January 23, 1918, the attitude of the new state toward religion was defined in constitutional decrees, and one clause was:
"Every citizen is at liberty to practice any religion or none at all. ”

“ The younger men, especially in anthropology, psychology, physiology, ethics, sociology, paleontology, and biology, have seen the progress of research in the last 20 years afford a massive and entirely consistent confirmation of the position of the Atheist and Materialist. ”

“ In carrying out its Five Year Plan the League had risen from 400,000 to 5,500,000 members, and the young Atheists' Association had risen from 10,000 to about 2,000,000. Moreover, nearly 25,000,000 children were being educated in the entirely atheistic government schools. ”

“ That law was never altered, but in the year of the invasion of Russia by White and foreign armies large numbers of the priests (especially Catholic priests, who are for the most part Poles) intrigued with the invaders and in many ways made the task of the Soviet government more difficult. Any man who has any doubt about this should read their own confessions as quoted in Dr. ”