Atheists behind the greatest cruelty, says Pope: Pope Benedict XVI has launched a powerful attack on atheism, saying that it was responsible for some of the "greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice" in history.
In the second encyclical of his papacy, the Pope urged Christians to put their hope for the future in God and not in technology, wealth or political ideologies.
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His 76-page document, Spe Salvi, comes in the context of rising secularism in Europe and a spate of books attacking belief in God, including the "The God Delusion" by the Oxford academic Richard Dawkins.
In the document, the highest form of papal writing addressed to the whole Church, Benedict XVI said that many people rejected religious faith because they no longer found the prospect of an eternal after-life attractive.
Instead, they had put their faith in human reason and freedom in the hope that the "kingdom of man" would emerge.
The Blasphemy Collection: The concept of blasphemy seemed for some decades to be in decline in the West, but not any more. It may be useful to look back at some recent cases of militantly religious outrage...
