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You Won't Believe in Christianity After Seeing This
Topic Started: Dec 9 2016, 06:18 AM (4,194 Views)
lazerbem
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OFG
Dec 13 2016, 04:20 AM
I think the problem here is that I'm not arguing that Atheists can't do bad things, or that they haven't done bad things in the name of anti-religion in the past, but that religious people commit horrible acts in the name of their religion more frequently (and more recently) than Atheists do in the name of anti-theism; therefore, I see religion as the bigger danger than a lack of religion.

This opinion is based entirely on what I've observed and read about, which I know is limited. If there are stats out there proving that Atheists commit atrocities with the same frequency that religious groups do, I'm unaware of them but not opposed to the idea of them existing.
That's the same kind of logic that would lead one to think that blacks are disproportionately more prone to violence than other races. Yes, blacks/religious people have been involved in more conflicts but to just look at that in a vacuum is incredibly wrong. Radical Islamists aren't just doing it because they're mustache twirling evil religious people, but because they want to form a new caliph and feel that the current state of affairs is weak. The Crusaders weren't just off to hate some Muslims, there was the geo-political scramble to control Byzantium while it was weak.

The problem with comparing atheists to religious is that not only are there far less atheists but the majority of them are disproportionately in stable areas that haven't been shredded due to poor foreign policy for the last few decades. Also, for a current example, North Korea is still around and has executed people for carrying a Bible.
Edited by lazerbem, Dec 13 2016, 12:20 PM.
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True, but another difference between Atheists and Muslims, for example, is that radical Muslims use a holy text as justification for their evil acts. Atheists have no text that tells them to kill.

I know that killing is just one interpretation of the Quran, but the fact that it does serve that purpose is a big difference between the two groups we're talking about here.
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Tinny
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That's kind of splitting hairs I feel, we've had plenty of communist revolutions which presumably involved killing people, many of which were atheistic in nature. They still kill for their ideology, and because of charismatic men that whip them up into a rage and once again, these are not solely motivated by religion and often have multiple factors in addition to something someone is saying that stems from some holy scripture. I don't think there's such a massive and meaningful difference between a charismatic warlord quoting his (likely rewritten) version of the bible to justify violence and a charismatic warlord making his own quotes to justify violence. Ultimately the man telling them to kill is a far greater factor to this than what ideology they happen to champion.

Unless the ideology is explicit pacifism, all make ideologues and religions have the capacity to kill. That doesn't mean they're inherently evil and destructive.
Edited by Tinny, Dec 13 2016, 03:15 PM.
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Lack of scripture on the subject is hardly a problem, you could ask the Soviet League of Militant Atheists for a pamphlet on how religion is a construct of the bourgeois and must die, or look at Pol Pots comments on religion. Heck, if a person is bitter enough, they could quote Marx as justification just as much as an Islamic radical could quote the Quran

Any ideology can be turned violent by a demagogue
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I get that, and I agree with what you guys are saying, but the point I'm trying to make is that religious ideologies are capable of twisting people in a way that a lack of belief is not. I never mentioned pamphlets or separate ideologies. What I am talking about is purely belief vs. non-belief. Ideology vs. non-ideology.

My general stance on the matter is that religion can be harmful. It can brain-wash its followers, as evidenced by films like Jesus Camp. It can produce evil. Atheism, or a lack of any belief, cannot do these things unless it is accompanied by some other belief or ideology. Hitler may have been an atheist, but his lack of belief in a deity did not encourage him to massacre Jews. I grew up a Christian, and I feel that it negatively impacted my life. It made me depressed, it made me fearful, and it brain-washed me into believing several harmful, discriminatory things. When I left Christianity, I feel like I became a much better person. Of course, the opposite could be said for someone else. Christianity may be the beacon of hope for someone, whereas it was a heavy burden for me. Much of my position on this issue is personal, and I'm open to other opinions.
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You could say something similar about religion, that's the problem. It usually isn't dangerous until put into a frenzy by charismatic individuals, be they homophobic priests or bloodthirsty warlords.

The Cristero Wars were caused by a crackdown on Mexican Catholics due to an atheist leader despising the idea of organized religion. Is that so different from anu religious despot? I'm sorry for your bad experiences with religion but atheism can absolutely be used as a rallying cry.
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True. But atheism with no added ideologies has no motivator. Christianity has things like this:

http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/cruelty/long.html
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/women/long.html
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/int/long.html

Of course you already know this, I'm just trying to drive home my point about lack of ideology vs ideology. Any sort of ideology that promotes horrible behaviors should be considered potentially dangerous because no two people are going to interpret these scriptures the same.
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laserbem
 
Also, are you referring to the idea where it's Christ being said and not Jesus? There's a reason for that, namely that Jesus was a common name.
He could have mentioned both names. He appears—that is, it's not certain either way—to take Christ at face value. Perhaps just regurgitating the Christian's own supposed history.

I know, I know, "Tacitus would have loved to rub it in their face that their Christ never even existed", but it supposes that Tacitus would have even cared enough about them to try and confirm or deny such a thing, or even considered it enough to doubt, when just briefly noting who they were and why they're named as such.

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Also, Josephus did refer to Jesus by name in reference to being the brother of James.
So, we establish that Jesus himself wouldn't have been at all famous, else contemporary historians would have actually written about him, but Josephus thinks him so famous that his readers know who Jesus, the one called Christ, is, without him needing to going to it in the least? He already knows future readers are going to know exactly who that is without his help as a historian, does he?

Now, Josephus might very well have written that particular passage, but people have good reason to be sceptical. Maybe people are only sceptical because it's supposedly a passage about Christ, but it doesn't change that these texts have been left in, and literally rewritten by, the hands of Christians, with as much reason to make something up as the gospel writers had. With plenty of forgeries in the New Testament books and letters, what's a paragraph or line here and there inserted in to relevant historical text? For everything not regarding their religion, we can expect minimal bias or fabrication, if any, but in regards to their religion we must suspect interpolations. Others previously accepted have been pointed out to be as such, and there's good reason to suspect the rest.

As far as I know, there's no reason at all to question Tacitus' passage on Christ, but nor is it enough to conclude his historicity on the supposition that he had concrete proof that he just didn't reference.

OFG
 
Has atheism ever inspired mass genocide, suicide bombing, or wide-spread discrimination and hatred?
Nope, it hasn't. Have atheists partaken in these things? Yes, but saying they commit atrocities because they don't believe in a deity is like saying they commit atrocities because they don't believe in King Arthur. Absurd.

laserbem
 
You could try to play genocide olympics, but that's a very nasty road to go down.
Yes, I'm quite certain it would not be to your favour. If you're going to add up the death toll by an anti-theistic movement, then you can only count those that were killed for their religious beliefs, and not those that were simply killed under a Communist regime, for example. Most were killed for other reasons and with different motivations entirely.

While, not to forget all the child and human sacrifice in general that's occurred since time immemorial you'll have to add up on the religion side. All the witch hunt nonsense et cetera, too. I'd say you were very right to try and gloss over the issue, but I won't let you get away with implying even anti-theistic sentiment has done anywhere near the damage of religion and religious beliefs, let alone atheism.

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Point is that there have been quite a few radical atheist movements in history that sought to destroy a religion. Now, of course there were other motives to their actions too, but you could say that about religious radicals too(it's pretty much never only religious in cause)
No one has ever killed in the name of their being atheist. It would be like claiming a lack of belief in unicorns motivated someone to kill a Jew, and not their hatred for Judaism. They might despise Judaism, and themselves hold unbelief in unicorns, but it is their hatred of Judaism, not their lack of belief in a unicorn, that motivated their attack. If you're going to place blame on a larger, organised problem other than the individual's feelings and non-beliefs, you could only blame Judaism first for having existed to inspire hatred, than someone's lack of belief in imaginary things.

There is no atheistic holy book inciting hatred or dislike of certain groups; no atheistic call to war or promise for having participated. If anyone has ever believed atheism to have motivated them in to performing some manner of cruelty on another, it is their own delusion or entirely personal belief, or indeed other beliefs they hold—while there is a direct causal link of various forms of extremism and certain religious beliefs—and says nothing of atheism itself, for atheism is simply the absence of belief in certain absurdities. What you're trying to say is that other ideologies other than religion can be dangerous. We agree, and that's why we don't welcome them in our societies, and yet everyone constantly apologises on behalf of religion.

Do you feel comfortable trying to defend religion by making the case that it's no worse than fascism or Stalinism?

Even when we're not busying ourselves with a disproportionate head count, religious people around the world have been busying themselves with things like trying or succeeding in preventing children from learning facts about the world they live in, with preventing same sex couples from having the same rights, and with trying to force women to ruin their lives and bodies with an unwanted child, and insisting that child be born in to a family that can't or doesn't want to look after it; the oppression of women, and forcing them to marry their rapist and have his child if need be, while forgiving him if he makes her his prisoner-in-marriage against her will; with the insistence that animals be killed as inhumanely as their god orders, and with the genital or other mutilation of infants and children.

Religion in general is overwhelming a negative thing. Everything you can say about religion today that it does good can and is done in the absence of it, while you can't say the same for everything it does bad. Killing aside, there are a number of cruel things that only religious people do consistently and in significant number, if at all. A world without it wouldn't be devoid of cruelty or war, but it would be far less cruel, more reasonable, and with no discernible loss of goodness.

Threatening others to give up their beliefs, or killing them for holding them is a form fascism just as wrong as Islam threatening or killing others for giving up their beliefs, obviously, but no one should be allowed to indoctrinate children in to religion, and all the horrors it entails, any more than they're allowed to indoctrinate them in to Nazism.

This is a response to the ludicrous idea that atheism is somehow every bit as bad as religion, and you shouldn't suppose anything I've said on the matter colours my view regarding a historical Christ. As I said before, I'd really—honest to God—rather he was a historical person, for the entirely selfish reason that I would think it to have been the event most interesting.
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* Sousen Ichimonji
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I think what's interesting about comparing secular violence and religious violence is that there has been soooo much more scope for religious violence through history than secular violence. For thousands of years of human society, religion touched on most parts of society, because religion was indistinguishable from culture, art, and even touched on language and science heavily. We've had so many religious conflicts over thousands of years. And yet secularisation only took off like 400 years ago and only began to have an effect on the way states were run like 300 years ago, and since then we've had atheist atrocities too. None of us will live long enough to be able to pass judgement on how peaceful secular societies are compared to religious ones.
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Sousen Ichimonji
Dec 13 2016, 07:31 PM
I think what's interesting about comparing secular violence and religious violence is that there has been soooo much more scope for religious violence through history than secular violence. For thousands of years of human society, religion touched on most parts of society, because religion was indistinguishable from culture, art, and even touched on language and science heavily. We've had so many religious conflicts over thousands of years. And yet secularisation only took off like 400 years ago and only began to have an effect on the way states were run like 300 years ago, and since then we've had atheist atrocities too. None of us will live long enough to be able to pass judgement on how peaceful secular societies are compared to religious ones.
But you seem to agree that we do have a point, right?
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OFG
Dec 13 2016, 07:39 PM
Sousen Ichimonji
Dec 13 2016, 07:31 PM
I think what's interesting about comparing secular violence and religious violence is that there has been soooo much more scope for religious violence through history than secular violence. For thousands of years of human society, religion touched on most parts of society, because religion was indistinguishable from culture, art, and even touched on language and science heavily. We've had so many religious conflicts over thousands of years. And yet secularisation only took off like 400 years ago and only began to have an effect on the way states were run like 300 years ago, and since then we've had atheist atrocities too. None of us will live long enough to be able to pass judgement on how peaceful secular societies are compared to religious ones.
But you seem to agree that we do have a point, right?
Oh yeah, absolutely. I'm not a religious apologist, though I'm sure I come across that way at times.
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lazerbem
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Dec 13 2016, 07:39 PM
Sousen Ichimonji
Dec 13 2016, 07:31 PM
I think what's interesting about comparing secular violence and religious violence is that there has been soooo much more scope for religious violence through history than secular violence. For thousands of years of human society, religion touched on most parts of society, because religion was indistinguishable from culture, art, and even touched on language and science heavily. We've had so many religious conflicts over thousands of years. And yet secularisation only took off like 400 years ago and only began to have an effect on the way states were run like 300 years ago, and since then we've had atheist atrocities too. None of us will live long enough to be able to pass judgement on how peaceful secular societies are compared to religious ones.
But you seem to agree that we do have a point, right?
You have a point in the same way that Stormfronters have a point that blacks are more violent than whites. In a vacuum of statistics, it's true, but taken into context, it's a lot more nuanced. Not saying you're a bigot, btw, just using an example.
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Nope, it hasn't. Have atheists partaken in these things? Yes, but saying they commit atrocities because they don't believe in a deity is like saying they commit atrocities because they don't believe in King Arthur. Absurd.

Just as absurd as saying religious people do it purely out of religion. There's always another reason behind it, a nuance.
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Yes, I'm quite certain it would not be to your favour. If you're going to add up the death toll by an anti-theistic movement, then you can only count those that were killed for their religious beliefs, and not those that were simply killed under a Communist regime, for example. Most were killed for other reasons and with different motivations entirely.

Really? So is that why the League of Militant Atheists existed? They were being targeted for their religion, that's just a simple fact. These communist regimes(And non-communist ones too, like the Cristero Wars) targeted religious people as an attempt to eliminate religion from their country.
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While, not to forget all the child and human sacrifice in general that's occurred since time immemorial you'll have to add up on the religion side. All the witch hunt nonsense et cetera, too. I'd say you were very right to try and gloss over the issue, but I won't let you get away with implying even anti-theistic sentiment has done anywhere near the damage of religion and religious beliefs, let alone atheism.

I don't gloss over genocide olympics, I just think it's a stupid way to classify things. How do you measure evil? Decihitlers? Kilostalins? Megapinochets? Going by kill count, then religion is hardly the main contribution to human suffering since over 93% of historical wars are non-religious in nature(and the largest human conflict, WW2, was secular in nature too)

And of course atheism has done less damage. Nazism has also done less damage than capitalism when you go by the numbers, and democrats have caused more suffering than republicans. Numbers are a terrible way to judge when taken in a vacuum of not only historical context but proportion.
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No one has ever killed in the name of their being atheist. It would be like claiming a lack of belief in unicorns motivated someone to kill a Jew, and not their hatred for Judaism. They might despise Judaism, and themselves hold unbelief in unicorns, but it is their hatred of Judaism, not their lack of belief in a unicorn, that motivated their attack

You are aware that religious murders also tend to have other motivation too, correct? Even ISIS is mostly vying for geo-political power in an unstable region.
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f you're going to place blame on a larger, organised problem other than the individual's feelings and non-beliefs, you could only blame Judaism first for having existed to inspire hatred, than someone's lack of belief in imaginary things.

...So it's the Jew's fault for being murdered by the raging anti-theist because he believes in something the anti-theist doesn't?

I suppose that women also deserve to be raped if they wear revealing clothing, and rich people deserve to be robbed, and black people deserve to be enslaved because of their skin color. This is a very foul line of thinking, I will say, putting the blame on the victim.
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There is no atheistic holy book inciting hatred or dislike of certain groups; no atheistic call to war or promise for having participated.

Perhaps not, but New Age Atheism as a whole espouses a global removal of religion, something that would almost certainly require war.
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If anyone has ever believed atheism to have motivated them in to performing some manner of cruelty on another, it is their own delusion or entirely personal belief, or indeed other beliefs they hold—while there is a direct causal link of various forms of extremism and certain religious beliefs—and says nothing of atheism itself, for atheism is simply the absence of belief in certain absurdities. What you're trying to say is that other ideologies other than religion can be dangerous. We agree, and that's why we don't welcome them in our societies, and yet everyone constantly apologises on behalf of religion.

Atheism has a sub-culture, otherwise, there'd be no point in addressing books and memos to atheists specifically on the subject of atheism.

Also, there's no apologizing on behalf of religion here. I acknowledge crimes justified by religion, just as much as I acknowledge the crime caused by American democrats when they sided with the Confederacy and justified the owning of humans as slaves. Again, you act as though because religion has caused sin, it should be totally wiped out. Well then, wipe out every ideology that has ever caused harm. You'll end up having no economics system, no government system, and no system of belief that is free of blood.
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Do you feel comfortable trying to defend religion by making the case that it's no worse than fascism or Stalinism?

Religion is at its core just a facet of a persons's belief. I defend it by making the point that any kind of belief can be taken to an extreme
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religious people around the world have been busying themselves with things like trying or succeeding in preventing children from learning facts about the world they live in, with preventing same sex couples from having the same rights, and with trying to force women to ruin their lives and bodies with an unwanted child, and insisting that child be born in to a family that can't or doesn't want to look after it; the oppression of women, and forcing them to marry their rapist and have his child if need be, while forgiving him if he makes her his prisoner-in-marriage against her will; with the insistence that animals be killed as inhumanely as their god orders, and with the genital or other mutilation of infants and children.

It is very strange that you don't mention atheist firing squads in Albania killing LGBT people, the Nazis using racial scientific principles to justify their genocide, and atheists suicide bombing in India(the Tamil Tigers may not be focused on atheism, but religion is banned within the group so I feel it's worth noting).

Probably the funniest part here is that Albania was actually better off for LGBT rights under the Muslim Ottoman Empire as opposed to the state atheist Eastern Bloc. Bigotry doesn't hold over religious boundaries
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Killing aside, there are a number of cruel things that only religious people do consistently and in significant number, if at all. A world without it wouldn't be devoid of cruelty or war, but it would be far less cruel, more reasonable, and with no discernible loss of goodness.

Is that so? Do you think that guerillas would just toss down their weapons and bask in the euphoria? No, they'd keep fighting, they'd just keep the Allahu Ackbar part of it out and just go on conquering territory like their end game plan is. Would the WBC stop? No, they'd just say that gays are unnatural and defy nature, so about the same thing.

Keep in mind that only 7% of wars in all of history have had religious motives. And that's before today's more secular world too. Religion has very little to do with modern conflicts so much as geo-politics behind it does.
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Threatening others to give up their beliefs, or killing them for holding them is a form fascism just as wrong as Islam threatening or killing others for giving up their beliefs, obviously, but no one should be allowed to indoctrinate children in to religion, and all the horrors it entails, any more than they're allowed to indoctrinate them in to Nazism.

But they can indoctrinate them into atheism, because atheism is just the best? You could argue that humans are naturally atheist, but I don't believe this theory myself since we know that even the Neanderthals had some concept of spirituality.
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This is a response to the ludicrous idea that atheism is somehow every bit as bad as religion,

Ideologies are ideologies. They become good or bad with the way the person uses it.
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You are aware that religious murders also tend to have other motivation too, correct? Even ISIS is mostly vying for geo-political power in an unstable region.

I think that what he and I are trying to say is that atheists, aside from maybe one example that I'm aware of, do not kill for the sake of anti-religion. Christians and Muslims, however, do. Maybe not all of them, but a lot of them. They also hinder society in a way that a lack of belief does not, as OMG pointed out in his examples: abortion, women's rights, gay rights, or the rights of anyone different, for that matter. They have completely assumed power in the American government to the point where you almost need to be a Christian to maintain a position of power. While founded as a secular nation, America clearly is not 100% representative of that, and that is due to the unhealthy grip that Christianity still has on this country. Now, I can't say with certainty that we wouldn't have some type of problem with an Atheist country, but I'm willing to bet that peoples' rights would not be infringed as they have been under Christian leadership, unless we elected people who turned out to be malicious dictators.

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But they can indoctrinate them into atheism, because atheism is just the best? You could argue that humans are naturally atheist, but I don't believe this theory myself since we know that even the Neanderthals had some concept of spirituality.

Indoctrination is one of the main problems with religion. Every atheist parent I know of lets their children choose for themselves. There is no indoctrination present there. Of course, those are only the examples that I know of.
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I think that what he and I are trying to say is that atheists, aside from maybe one example that I'm aware of, do not kill for the sake of anti-religion.

Then what do you call it when explicitly atheist revolutions and governments try to purge out the religious in their states?
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Christians and Muslims, however, do. Maybe not all of them, but a lot of them

A lot of them meaning a minority. Most people in the world are religious, but most of them aren't going to murder you in the street just because of it.
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They also hinder society in a way that a lack of belief does not, as OMG pointed out in his examples: abortion, women's rights, gay rights, or the rights of anyone different, for that matter.

Can atheists not be bigoted in the same fashion? I gave an example of an atheist state were LGBT rights were so bad that the modern US looks like Heaven in comparison, an atheist state mind you that made things worse than the Muslim state in place before it.

An atheist can absolutely be against abortion, women's rights, gay rights, or whatever.
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They have completely assumed power in the American government to the point where you almost need to be a Christian to maintain a position of power. While founded as a secular nation, America clearly is not 100% representative of that, and that is due to the unhealthy grip that Christianity still has on this country.

Why the focus on America? Religion exists world wide, and just because America hasn't gotten secular doesn't mean it's an inherent problem with religion. Many European countries have large religious populations, and yet, you don't see this problem. It's a problem with American politics most of all. Also, probably a lack of education, I'd suspect.
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Now, I can't say with certainty that we wouldn't have some type of problem with an Atheist country, but I'm willing to bet that peoples' rights would not be infringed as they have been under Christian leadership, unless we elected people who turned out to be malicious dictators.

Could be that our atheist president and Congress ends up being the best ever, like they're Gandhi or something(I know he had issues, just work with me here). Or they could end up being alt-righters who hate blacks and believe whites should dominate everything and the LGBT are filthy traitors. The spectrum for atheists is wide because atheists are people, and people have a wide spectrum.
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Indoctrination is one of the main problems with religion. Every atheist parent I know of lets their children choose for themselves. There is no indoctrination present there. Of course, those are only the examples that I know of.

They sound like nice parents and are doing nothing wrong. Hell, it doesn't matter to me if they do teach their kid that atheism is the one path.
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lazerbem
Dec 13 2016, 08:28 PM
Just as absurd as saying religious people do it purely out of religion. There's always another reason behind it, a nuance.
Not anywhere near as absurd... They kill because they don't believe in King Arthur or some other fictional being? You're being ridiculous.

So when people shout Allahu Akbar and themselves say it was done in the name of their religion, they're just wrong about that, are they? The next time someone murders their wife because she was cheating on him, we'll be sure to make it clear that such an outcome only happened because it's more nuanced than that. It's just as true. Not everyone that's cheated on murders their spouse, but it doesn't mean it wasn't the prime motivator for them going through with it.

You won't find anyone blowing themselves and seventy other people up in the name of Jainism. People can pervert any ideology, but some ideologies are simply, unquestionably, more conducive to making people do cruel things, and, far more dangerously, under the genuine belief that they are doing a good thing, even.

Religion and religious-like beliefs consistently have that power. Non-belief in space monsters doesn't.

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Yes, I'm quite certain it would not be to your favour. If you're going to add up the death toll by an anti-theistic movement, then you can only count those that were killed for their religious beliefs, and not those that were simply killed under a Communist regime, for example. Most were killed for other reasons and with different motivations entirely.
Really? So is that why the League of Militant Atheists existed? They were being targeted for their religion, that's just a simple fact. These communist regimes(And non-communist ones too, like the Cristero Wars) targeted religious people as an attempt to eliminate religion from their country.
I had to quote my bit to point out that it was a non-sequitur.

I said that even the death toll of religious groups to anti-religious groups would not be to your favour, and that you can't add up all the deaths committed by a Communist regime, but only those that were killed specifically in the name of anti-religion, but then you tried to point out that anti-religious groups existed? When did I say they didn't?

Your answer in no way follows my point there.

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I don't gloss over genocide olympics, I just think it's a stupid way to classify things. How do you measure evil? Decihitlers? Kilostalins? Megapinochets? Going by kill count, then religion is hardly the main contribution to human suffering since over 93% of historical wars are non-religious in nature(and the largest human conflict, WW2, was secular in nature too)
You seemingly brought it up as if to imply they're in the same league. Also, re-read my post, I never once said religion causes all human suffering, nor would a world without it be devoid of suffering. I heavily supposed that if it were to be removed from societies there would be only less suffering, with no discernible loss of goodness.

Sousen makes the point that we could never know whether this is true, which is like supposing people never would have known whether a society that doesn't accept slavery is one with less cruelty. How do you know people won't just be made to suffer in some other way, is basically the point there, and so it seems to follow for you that there is therefore no use trying to prevent beliefs that contribute to or spread existing cruelty.

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And of course atheism has done less damage. Nazism has also done less damage than capitalism when you go by the numbers, and democrats have caused more suffering than republicans. Numbers are a terrible way to judge when taken in a vacuum of not only historical context but proportion.
Atheism has done no damage. Non-belief in something does not precede violence for that non-belief - there's a gap in reasoning there. Like saying the non-belief in sabre-tooth tigers motivated the killing of a cat. Anti-religious sentiment has killed people. They're not a denomination, like Catholicism and Protestantism, as you seem to think. One is non-belief, and the other is the belief that religion should be attacked in some way.

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You are aware that religious murders also tend to have other motivation too, correct? Even ISIS is mostly vying for geo-political power in an unstable region.
You can discount all territorial or political wars performed by a religious nation, but not if it is a call to war for or with a promise pertaining to their religion. You might as well say the Charlie Hebdo attacks aren't really about religion because they have other motivations - people were offended by other people.

Religion is a motivator for various cruelties and abuses while atheism simply isn't, whether you care to admit it or not.

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...So it's the Jew's fault for being murdered by the raging anti-theist because he believes in something the anti-theist doesn't?

I suppose that women also deserve to be raped if they wear revealing clothing, and rich people deserve to be robbed, and black people deserve to be enslaved because of their skin color. This is a very foul line of thinking, I will say, putting the blame on the victim.
Once again, you hopelessly missed the point. IF you're going to assign the blame to some sort of larger, organised problem, and not to the individual's beliefs or feelings, you can not point to atheism (non-belief in a deity) as the problem any more than you can point to their non-belief in Harry Potter. They're not motivators. Anti-religious sentiment would be a motivator, but you want to try and blame atheism, which would be even more absurd than blaming Judaism for having existed in the first place to inspire hatred.

I'm not sure how else I could reiterate it, if it still doesn't make sense to you.

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Perhaps not, but New Age Atheism as a whole espouses a global removal of religion, something that would almost certainly require war.
Or, just not letting people indoctrinate their children? Letting them decide for themselves whether to be religious, without having it drummed in to them in childhood, when they have a vested interest in trusting the words (lies and delusions) of people in positions of authority?

Being intolerant of that requires no more violence or war than being intolerant of slavery, sexism, racism, or people indoctrinating their children in to Nazism. You can't be sure these things don't happen in the household, but it can be completely removed from all learning centres or workplaces—in the same way those other bad things are—and people can be reported for child abuse should they be found to be indoctrinating children in the home.

It's no more militant or fascistic than trying to suppress sexism or racism in societies—which you surely all agree with—and it only makes you wince because religion has built up this wall with the powerful lie and inanity that it is cruel to question or oppose it. Not more cruel than indoctrinating children in to a belief system they're too young to recognise, that come with various threats and horrors should they fail to remain loyal to it their entire lives and indoctrinate their children in turn, or that might inspire them to hold prejudices against other groups of people.

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Atheism has a sub-culture, otherwise, there'd be no point in addressing books and memos to atheists specifically on the subject of atheism.
There's no cruelty committed in the name of atheism. It can't be any more than you can commit cruelty in the name of not-believing in aliens. No idea what point you're trying to prove here - people that read books or go to events discussing whether aliens exist or not are going to commit cruelty in the name of their non-existence? If they are, they're f***ing delusional, as there is no logical correlation.

You keep saying atheism, and that's why I'm not throwing you a bone. Any comparison you might attempt to make between fundamentalists and moderates simply isn't there.

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Also, there's no apologizing on behalf of religion here. I acknowledge crimes justified by religion, just as much as I acknowledge the crime caused by American democrats when they sided with the Confederacy and justified the owning of humans as slaves. Again, you act as though because religion has caused sin, it should be totally wiped out. Well then, wipe out every ideology that has ever caused harm. You'll end up having no economics system, no government system, and no system of belief that is free of blood.
Slippery slope fallacy. "If you get rid of something that continually and consistently causes harm, and does no good that can't be and isn't done without it, you have to remove anything that ever has or might cause harm", is your argument here. As if it somehow makes religion a positive.

Also, even though religions aren't as flexible as political parties that can change far more easily and less violently with debate, and any political party that starts resembling a religious ideology is one that rational people fear and want to prevent from happening, the main problematic claim of yours is that non-belief in something is somehow every bit as bad, or capable of being as bad, as a troubling belief about someone or something else.

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Religion is at its core just a facet of a persons's belief. I defend it by making the point that any kind of belief can be taken to an extreme
Unbelief can not, though. And some beliefs are simply more dangerous than others - not even all religions are equally as bad.

If you really mean what you say, then you'd have nothing against white-supremacy, since the belief that whites are superior is not in itself a call to violence, but a personal belief. Nothing against Nazism, since it is itself not a call to eradicate all Jews, but a banner under which it was done. Stop attempting to engage in sophistry and being willfully selective.

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Nazis using racial scientific principles to justify their genocide
The difference between science having been used for ill is that removing science would be catastrophic in the removal of all the good it does, too. It is quite genuinely a double-edged sword. Everything good—I made this point before—religion has done, can be done in the absence of it. Removing it from societies will only remove all the negative, with no discernible loss of good, whereas you can't say the same for science.

You find me one good thing that only religious people do; and we're not talking about about something only a religious person has done, but that only religious people do. Unlike atheism, or science, cutting it out of societies would only reduce suffering and cruelty.

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Is that so? Do you think that guerillas would just toss down their weapons and bask in the euphoria? No, they'd keep fighting, they'd just keep the Allahu Ackbar part of it out and just go on conquering territory like their end game plan is. Would the WBC stop? No, they'd just say that gays are unnatural and defy nature, so about the same thing.

Keep in mind that only 7% of wars in all of history have had religious motives. And that's before today's more secular world too. Religion has very little to do with modern conflicts so much as geo-politics behind it does.
Find me where I said there'd be no more cruelty, violence, or war in the world with an absence of religion. I double-demon-dare you.

Cutting it out of societies would only reduce suffering and cruelty, with no discernible loss of goodness. And, you've just completely ignored all the hate and motivation to certain violences the indoctrination of people in to certain religions yield. Did and do those prejudices and impulses exist independent of religion? Yes, but certain religions spread, condone and motivate those prejudices, and anyone that genuinely believes they don't is patently absurd.

But again, anti-semitism and white-supremacy exist independent of Neo-Nazism—and it can give the members a sense of belonging, identity, community, or even security—so why not tolerate Neo-Nazism in our societies? Nothing about their views say they must do violence. If religion weren't supposedly sacred—the lie it cries to defend itself from criticism, while it goes about continually indoctrinating children en masse to ensure its survival—we wouldn't tolerate it any more than we tolerate the KKK, or other beliefs that spread and motivate hatred or fear.

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But they can indoctrinate them into atheism, because atheism is just the best? You could argue that humans are naturally atheist, but I don't believe this theory myself since we know that even the Neanderthals had some concept of spirituality.
You don't indoctrinate people in to atheism. I can't tell if you're being absurd on purpose at this point.

Atheism is the default; it is no more an ideology than not believing in unicorns is an ideology. People come to believe various things, either through life events or indoctrination. Indoctrination is as morally wrong as spreading sexism or racism in its most benign form, and it would be good for society, and a net good for everyone living in them, to teach people why believing in non-existent things is irrational by giving them the tools to make up their own minds about these things, by being critical, and not taking the words of ancient, often prejudiced, bigoted people's unquestioningly, or even the words of other atheists without thinking it through for themselves.

That would be a better society, yes, and the only way you'd disagree is if you think forcing young children in to a religion, making them scared of irrational non-existent threats, or an actual life-threat, for not agreeing or living as slavishly devoted and uncritical in thought as you and some imaginary beings insist they do—and that some religious parents have a right to mutilate the genitals of their children—and then them doing all that to their children under the ridiculous, ingrained belief that it's for their and their children's own good, is an acceptable thing.

You might object that not all religions are like that, but my entire point remains, and your idea that all ideologies are equally as acceptable looks weaker still.

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Ideologies are ideologies. They become good or bad with the way the person uses it.
Not all ideologies are equal. If you truly believe that then white-supremacy should be a-okay in your book. Some are just simply worse than others. Atheism isn't an ideology—anti-religion would be—but it is far, far superior to religion in terms of net good. That is, atheism (non-belief in a deity) does or motivates no wrong.

Your claim that it does remains farcical.
Edited by Sandy Shore, Dec 14 2016, 12:28 PM.
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