What do you mean by control, and what are your criteria for it? Modern Europe doesn’t seem to be experiencing much mass murder right now, for instance. If you mean a society with no theists at all, then you’re making a rather narrow claim that doesn’t really have many implications.
Also, why do you think “atheistic” is the relevant category? Stalin and Hitler didn’t kill millions out of a lack of direction; they did so out of bad directions: Communism, and racist Fascism, respectively. Why aren’t their positive political beliefs, rather than their negative metaphysical ones, the primary reason for their actions?
The Greeks also don’t seem to have derived moral guidance in any meaningful way during the glory days of Athens. Their excellence/virtue ethic doesn’t seem to have made them less moral than, say, the Crusaders (or the contemporary super-religious Egyptians!). Does that count as a society “controlled” by atheists?
@ Jacob Stein:
What do you mean by control, and what are your criteria for it? Modern Europe doesn’t seem to be experiencing much mass murder right now, for instance. If you mean a society with no theists at all, then you’re making a rather narrow claim that doesn’t really have many implications.
Also, why do you think “atheistic” is the relevant category? Stalin and Hitler didn’t kill millions out of a lack of direction; they did so out of bad directions: Communism, and racist Fascism, respectively. Why aren’t their positive political beliefs, rather than their negative metaphysical ones, the primary reason for their actions?
The Greeks also don’t seem to have derived moral guidance in any meaningful way during the glory days of Athens. Their excellence/virtue ethic doesn’t seem to have made them less moral than, say, the Crusaders (or the contemporary super-religious Egyptians!). Does that count as a society “controlled” by atheists?