Freethinking Heritage

Submitted by dennis middlebrooks (United States), Feb 15, 2008 at 09:25

What dId Soviet Russia have to do with freethinking and Enlightenment values? It was a monstrous rejection of these values!

It is now a standard ploy of the Religious Right to throw up the bogeymen of Stalin, Mao and Hitler (who was a Catholic, not an atheist) to smear atheism, secularism, and Enlightenment principles. The fact that what preceded Soviet Russia was 1,000 years of Orthodox Christian obscurantism and opression had far more to do with the crimes of communism than freethinking, Enlightenment values .

Stalin was raised in the Orthodox church, was educated by Jesuits (as was Castro!) and was briefly a seminarian. Millions of freethinkers died in the Gulag and atheists like Andrei Sakharov, Yelena Bonner, Scharansky, Gorbachev and Yeltsin were the ones who really ended Soviet communism. As for Mao, he was prededed by 2,500 years of emperor worship and mass superstition. Hilter was a Catholic who had the enthusiastic

As for secularism, I assume you also oppose capitalism, which is as secular as communism or socialism with its "invisible hand" and inexorable laws of the market place. Adam Smith was an Enlightenment thinker, and capitalism is contrary to many of the Gospel teachings.

The countries in the world today that fully embrace freethinking, secular and Enlightenment ideals are the most progressive and prosperous (e.g. Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark). That some of these nations, in the name of "tolerance", are allowing their societies to be subverted by Islamic fndamentalists is alaming.

And by the way, the government of the USA is based on freethinking, secular, Enlightenment principles even though most Americans may not believe it.

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