Pope Condemns Atheism

Pope Benedict issued a strong condemnation of atheism today and warned that advances in technology must be met with similar advancements in ethics. In his second encyclical, the pope said atheist ideologies have "led to the greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice," Reuters reports. "Man needs God," he wrote. "Otherwise he remains without hope."

The pope saved particular venom for Marxism, which he says created "a trail of appalling destruction" because of its view that people are merely economic pawns. He rejected the argument behind such ideologies of the 19th and 20th centuries, that man had to correct social injustices because God did not exist. Benedict also said that if technology is not guided by ethics, "it is not progress at all, but a threat for man." (More encyclical stories.)