Theists: how do you account for psychopaths?

[Catholic_Lady]

As distasteful as it may be to a lot of people to try and compare themselves to someone who willingly set themselves to the task of destroying an alarmingly large group of people, and managed to go a good portion of the way in the span of less than 3 1/2 years, to just treat it with a little "there but for the grace of God go I," but I've come to realise that, if you want to try and stop evil, othering it is the worst thing you can possibly do. A film released the same year De-Nur gave his testimony concluded "If he and all of the other defendants had been degraded perverts, if all of the leaders of the Third Reich had been sadistic monsters and maniacs, then these events would have no more moral significance than an earthquake, or any other natural catastrophe."

You dismiss that idea, you fail to understand evil. You fail to understand evil, it becomes a Hell of a lot harder to take it on.

I read Rudolf Höss's autobiography. It is very interesting to get inside the mind-set of the person who orchestrated the logistics of it all. It was a nothing more than logistical problem to him, albeit a major logistical challenge. It made me realise more than anything else just how common people like him actually are. There have been several people who I have got to know since reading that book that I think could have done exactly the same thing given a completely different environment. This made me realise how evil doesn't come about because of a few people but because we collectively allow others to be dehumanised.

And dare I say it, I am most certainly reminded of this when speaking to theists who argue that it is only an external objective morality that has is stopping them from doing the same. It can make me glad that they have religion if that's the kind of people they are. But I also know that it would be given a different society, that same religion could be encouraging them to carry out such atrocities. And that worries me.

Who here has said they would dehumanize people if they didn't believe in God? From what I'm seeing, it seems most of us are saying we simply wouldn't believe morality was objective if we didn't believe in God - which is the stance most atheists take, so we would be no different.