Is Ariane Sherine committing genocide?
January 12th, 2009 at 18:28
You’ve probably seen in the news recently about the Atheist Bus Campaign, a group led by Ariane Sherine and Richard Dawkins who are putting advertisements on the sides of buses and on the tube saying “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life”. But what no one seems to have noticed yet is that the apparently well-meaning group are attempting to commit a crime against humanity and break international law.
For you see, the Atheist Bus Campaign is attempting to advocate a non-theistic worldview, and by extension, are hoping to erradicate religious belief. You might think this is a noble goal, but the United Nations don’t think so.
In 1951 the UN Convention on Genocide became legally binding and it has remained so ever since. The document outlines the definition of genocide like this:
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
The Atheist Bus Campaign, by buying advertising space on public transport, is committing acts intended to destroy in whole or in part a religious group: specifically, all religious people. And though Richard Dawkins hasn’t yet taken to roaming the streets of London yet shanking anyone who looks even vaguely pious, these adverts, like all adverts, are an attempt at controlling people’s behaviour – they’re deliberately inflicting on believers conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of religious beliefs.
And this isn’t even considering point (e) – surely by forcing kids to take science lessons and teaching them about reason, logic and evidence based empiricism kids are being systematically taught not to be theists. Therefore, keeping creationism out of the classroom is essentially a crime against humanity.
Interestingly too, this entanglement with the UN convention on genocide does seem to debunk one of Richard Dawkins’ major arguments that no atrocities have ever been committed in the name of atheism. Unfortunately for Dawkins, it turns out that it is he himself who is committing a crime against humanity in the name of atheism.
Sure, the UN convention on genocide has been criticised by legal scholars and philosophers for concentrating on the outcome rather than the means in defining genocide, but this is an irrelevant point – the law is the law after all.
See you in The Hague, Atheist Bus Campaign.
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