It’s a common enough theme. The Pope is doing it now, blaming atheists for the world’s environmental problems:

Is it not true that inconsiderate use of creation begins where God is marginalized or also where is existence is denied? If the human creature’s relationship with the Creator weakens, matter is reduced to egoistic possession, man becomes the “final authority,” and the objective of existence is reduced to a feverish race to possess the most possible.

So, people are ruining the Earth because the don’t believe in god, which naturally means they will become materialistic and in so doing destroy the environment. Said the leader of a small city-state famous for accumulating massive amounts of wealth.

Even if you ignore the irony of the Pope blaming others for being materialistic (do you have any idea how much good could be done if the Vatican sold off its assets and used it to help people?), you are still left with the highly questionable chain of logic which claims that atheism causes “egoistic possession” which in turn leads to the environment being destroyed.

Over the years, I have encountered several conservative Christians who argued against environmental causes, pointing to scripture as the reason: “fill the earth and subdue it,” said god to man. I have encountered several religious people who see this as free license to cut down the forests, exterminate species, decimate fish stocks, deplete resources: god gave these to us to do with as we please. Many see the physical Earth as something that will be used up when Armageddon comes, so not to worry. Not all, of course, but the people who deny that there’s anything wrong, or the people who say that nothing needs to be done, happen most often to be the faithful.

Atheists, on the other hand, tend to be environmentally aware; Daniel Florien points out that he cannot recall meeting an atheist who was not in favor of protecting the environment, and I have to admit to a similar impression. Hardly all non-believers are activists in this, but the tendency is toward recognition of scientific findings and a sense of responsibility. Since non-believers don’t see a land of milk and honey after this one, they tend to be more focused on keeping the world we have in better shape.

The thing is, what the Pope is now saying about non-believers has all too familiar a ring to it; where religion screws up, they quickly turn and accuse atheism of worse. Ask a religious person about the horrors of war caused by belief, and they will quickly bring up Stalin, Hitler, and Mao, claiming that their atheism was responsible for more deaths than all religious atrocities put together. Of course, it does not even matter that Hitler was not an atheist or that Stalin and Mao were; the important fact is that atheist beliefs did not lead to the deaths they caused, and therefore their beliefs were irrelevant. One might as well blame all of those deaths on the Eastern hemisphere, or tight collars. When religion is blamed for violence, it is the direct result of religious dogma causing that violence. The Crusades and the Inquisitions were excellent examples of this, albeit just a few of the countless historical slaughters carried out in the name of religion, spurred on by religious beliefs and animosities. When Stalin killed, he did not do so in the name of atheism, nor did he act that way because of any atheist precept or line of reasoning. None of that, of course, stops religious people from bringing up Stalin, Hitler, and Mao when the question is not even one of comparing belief systems, but of defending their own.

All of this stems from a feeling of righteousness–not earned, not reasoned, but simply bestowed–or so they imagine. Of being the chosen ones, and everyone else goes to hell. It’s not just that they feel they’re right, they feel that their being right is the only possible way that there is. That all good things come from god, and that if you don’t embrace god like they do, then these things are not possible for you. And they don’t seem to understand how offensive this is to others. They instead simply see wrongness elsewhere, and cast the blame in that direction.

Take environmental issues: one huge element of this is overpopulation, a great deal of which comes from Catholicism itself and its insistence that contraception cannot be used. Even if the Pope never rescinds this, if he were at least able to recognize it as part of what causes environmental problems, it would at least add credence to his views. But instead he dwells on imagined evil by people he does not at all understand, people who believe differently from him, and therefore can not be good. Rather than at least look dispassionately at the real causes, he instead takes the opportunity to apply his bias and blame those who disagree with him on the flimsiest of logical threads.