The yawning emptiness without God

Peter Hitchens on the fatal consequences of the Soviet persecution of Christians

Stalin was the new czar, all-powerful and the foundation of the state.  But he could not be the new god, since the revolution had killed God and thus made any other deity impossible.  This happened thoroughly and purposefully.  So when Stalin died in 1953 the state only had power and intimidation, sausages and vodka, medals and war-patriotism to survive on.

When the violence failed and the intimidation subsided, the sausages and vodka were in increasingly short supply and no one was interested in more medals the state went under.  Since this moment any attempts at building up a civil society have failed.  There are many reasons for this descent into a coarse autocracy and the continued dependence on a Lenin Cult, just as there are for the role of organised crime, the general drunkenness, the widespread dishonesty, the cultural disintegration, the destroyed family life and corruption.

One of the most important is the absence of conscience and self-control even amongst the educated classes.  The league of militant godlessness has done its work only too well.  It was proved sufficiently that in the name of reason, science and freedom good societies need God to survive.  But as they have murdered, famished and silenced God, stopped their children from building a relationship with him and eradicated all festivals that remind people of him, they have created a vacuum that can never completely be filled with any (wo)man or anything that mankind can ever come up with.  (Peter Hitchens in his book “The rage against God“).

I close with a quote that is attributed to Alexander Solschenizyn: “Atheism is the basic evil of our time.  People have forgotten God and that is the reason for all the problems of the 20th century!”

Click to access the login or register cheese