As Soviet Union proved, embracing atheism can be a deadly endeavour

Published: June 06, 2012 4:00 PM
Updated: June 06, 2012 4:32 PM

Editor:

For several months, I have read Bill Ligertwood?s Rational Thoughts column regarding God, faith and religion.

I have great admiration for the time and effort he puts into expressing his atheistic views.

After reading many of his columns, I am reminded of Graham Greene?s character of Sarah in his novel The End of the Affair.

An agnostic, she converts to Christianity.

When asked why by her former atheist lover, she explains that, after reflecting on the time and effort he had put into denouncing a god he did not believe existed, she had become convinced of God?s reality.

Surely one would not spend such exertion denouncing nothing.

While I accept Ligertwood?s right to his opinion and expressing it, I find his knowledge of 20th-century history to be rather superficial.

In his latest column (?Ruled and fooled,? May 31) reflecting on the relationship between the ruling class and faith, Ligertwood states ?the combination of ruler and faith can be seen in the quasi-religions of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and the dynastic Kims of North Korea.?

Whether or not the Stalinist brand of Marxism is a quasi-religion (I do not accept that description of those thuggish states at all), I would remind Ligertwood the Soviet Union was the first official atheist state in world history.

This atheist state was responsible for killing 20 million of its own people.

Oh that we all could live in such an atheistic paradise.

Paul Corcoran

Kamloops

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