The claim that "religions are the problem" is the founding myth of modern secularism. It is a belief held with the fervor of a religious dogma: that if humanity could only shed the shackles of faith, we would enter a new age of reason, peace, and tolerance. It is a comforting story. It locates the source of evil outside of ourselves, in an outdated institution that we can simply abolish. But this story has one fatal flaw: it is contradicted by the bloody and undeniable evidence of history.

The 20th century stands as a terrifying monument to the failure of the "world without God." For the first time in history, great empires were founded on the explicit rejection of the Judeo-Christian heritage. The Soviet Union, Maoist China, and other communist regimes declared that religion was the "opiate of the masses" and sought to build a scientific, rational utopia. The Nazis, while not strictly atheist, sought to purge Germany of the "weak" Jewish-Christian ethic and replace it with a worship of blood and soil.

These regimes were not "religious" in the traditional sense. They were the first truly modern, secular states. They were run by men who believed that they had transcended the "superstitions" of the past. They believed that by removing God, they were liberating humanity to achieve its full potential.

And what was the result of this great liberation? It was the most efficient and widespread slaughter of human beings ever recorded. Over one hundred million people were murdered by their own governments -- governments that had "freed" themselves from the constraints of the Ten Commandments and the fear of God. The Gulag, the gas chamber, the Killing Fields -- these are the monuments of the secular utopia.

As the theologian Henri de Lubac warned, "It is not true, as is sometimes said, that man cannot organize the world without God. What is true is that, without God, he can only organize it against man."

Why does this happen? Why does the removal of God lead so inevitably to the destruction of man? Because the Christian faith, for all the sins of its followers, provides the only ultimate check on human power. It declares that every person has a dignity that comes from God, a dignity that the state did not give and cannot take away. It declares that there is a Transcendent Justice that stands in judgment over every ruler. It declares that there is a law higher than the will of the Party or the Leader.

When you remove this transcendent check, the state becomes God. Power becomes the only law. The individual becomes a mere resource to be used or discarded for the "greater good" of the collective. Without the concept of the sacred, the human person is reduced to a material object. And objects can be manipulated, used, and destroyed without moral consequence.

The secularist who blames religion for the world's ills is like a man who tears down the seawall because he finds it ugly, only to be swept away by the ocean that the wall was holding back. Religion is not the problem. It is the fragile barrier that stands between us and the raw, unbridled power of the human will. The history of the last century is the story of what happens when that barrier is removed. It is not a story of liberation. It is a story of hell on earth.