Is Socialism The New Atheism ?
May 13, 2009 by admin
Filed under Moral Decay
Socialism is not merely the labor question, or the question of the so-called fourth estate, it is above all things the atheistic question, the question of the form taken by atheism to-day, the question of the tower of Babel built without God, not to mount to heaven from earth, but to bring heaven down to earth. — Fyodor Dostoevsky
I learned something from Barack Obama. No, I’m not being facetious.
The above quote from The Brothers Karamazov had puzzled me for a few years. I understood that many atheists happen to be socialists, and vice versa. I saw that Marxists, in order to cement their control over a country, need to suppress Christianity (”religion is the opiate of the masses,” and all that). But Dostoevsky, who had firsthand knowledge of both Communism and Christianity, insists on more.
Socialism, he wrote, is “the form of atheism to-day.” It is the image of the invisible un-god; the Lie made flesh and dwelling among us. Socialism is the malfunctioning machine housing the malevolent ghost.
I thought that was pretty harsh. And I didn’t perceive it to be entirely correct. Isn’t socialism just an economic system — one that could be embraced by naïve Christians as well as by atheists?
