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Religion IS crazy!

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pavilion103 said:
My comments include those who
1. Believe there is no god
OR
2. Believe that there is a lack of evidence for a god
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Cool, now you know what an atheist is, provide me with an example where those two factors were the sole motivation behind someone killing another person.

I want an example where some one has decided to start killing just because they are not convinced a god exists, because thats what atheism is, a disbelief in gods.
 
Value Collector said:
And remember, I don't want an example of an atheist that has killed for some other reason, I want an example of an atheist who's disbelief in god was the prime motivation for killing.
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You are just so stubborn you can't see that your arguments are contradictory.

The Cultural revolution in China was not killing religious people for some other reason, it was BECAUSE THE PEOPLE THEY KILLED WERE RELIGIOUS.

Therefore, when you pare away all the bulldust, the Chinese communists were killing religious people BECAUSE of atheism; ie they were destroying the logical enemy of atheism, religion.
 

When you pare away all the bull dust, they were killing people who were a threat to the absolute power they wanted their regime to have.

I really don't get why you can't understand that Atheism is a single opinion on a single topic, it is nothing more than that. in fact the communists your describing were actually trying to install a national ideology of communism, which all though in not supernaturally based, its is still a form of religion and in some cases leader worship. Thats what they were fighting for.

Atheism is a very simple concept but people are very complex, we all have 1000's of opinions, just because one of your opinions is that no god exists, doesn't mean all your political actions are based on that one simple opinion.


But religion is different, if your opinion is that a certain religion is real, the teachings of that religion will inspire actions, and a lot of the religious texts when read literally, call for violence.

You can be atheist and also a white supremeist, if you go and kill a black man because you don't want black people in your town, thats the racism causing that not the atheism.
 
We need to be careful thinking atheists are opposed to religion and vice versa, because they have opposite views on a God's existence. Atheism doesn't stand for any belief system that prescribes a particular action so it can hardly be held responsible for promoting killing.

However history suggests there have been plenty missionaries killed who failed to indoctrinate those who would believe what they believed.

The other chestnut that people like to throw about is that religion has been the root cause of most wars and consequent deaths. If the empire building types like Stalin, Hitler, Mao Ts Tung, Pol Pot, Alex the Great, The Mongols, the Tartars, Romans, etc are taken out of the equation I wonder how the scales would look.
 
Value Collector said:
You can be atheist and also a white supremeist, if you go and kill a black man because you don't want black people in your town, thats the racism causing that not the atheism.
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But you can't be religious and a white supremacist ?

If a religious white supremacist killed a black man, it would have to be his religion at fault would it ?
 

I wouldn't say most wars are religion based, conflicts start for all sorts of reasons, religion does however make conflicts drag on for generations, when in its absence the divide would have been bridged, and it adds the the us and them mentality which makes it easier to keep the killing going.

As I eluded to earlier, leader worship is a form of religion, communism can morph into a state based religious ideology, look at North Korea a dead man is still the head of state, nothing they do is based on atheism.

Even world war 2 had religious elements, Hitler could only turn the people against the Jews because of pre existing religious mistrust, and the emperor of japan was seen as a god in the Shintoism beliefs.
 
Even world war 2 had religious elements, Hitler could only turn the people against the Jews because of pre existing religious mistrust
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I doubt that. Hitlers obsession was Aryan supremacy and Jews did not fit into the Aryan culture, so they were demonised as inferior.

What did religion have to do with it ?
 

I don't disagree with you. I have a fierce dislike of tribal infatuation over open mindness, criticism and common sense.
 
SirRumpole said:
But you can't be religious and a white supremacist ?

?
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Off course you can

If a religious white supremacist killed a black man, it would have to be his religion at fault would it?
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it depends on the reason you arrived at your racist views. If your racist views were a result of the teachings of your religion then yes its the fault of your religion, if not, then no, it's not your religions fault.
 
SirRumpole said:
I doubt that. Hitlers obsession was Aryan supremacy and Jews did not fit into the Aryan culture, so they were demonised as inferior.

What did religion have to do with it ?
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I was brought up in a house that had old skool Australians resident and there was a degree of Jew discrimination that harked back to pre WW times. Of course Shakespeare held a mirror up to the prevailing mood on Jews way back in day with his pound of flesh.....

I tend to think Hitler used the universal European distaste for Jews to temper the resolve of his enemies.
 
SirRumpole said:
I doubt that. Hitlers obsession was Aryan supremacy and Jews did not fit into the Aryan culture, so they were demonised as inferior.

What did religion have to do with it ?
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The Catholics had for a long time preached a mistrust of Jews, regardless of his own opinions, he used this in his favour, take a bit of time and look it up.
 

So what was this distaste for Jews based on ? Their religious beliefs or the general idea that they had deep pockets and short arms ?

 
SirRumpole said:
So what was this distaste for Jews based on ? Their religious beliefs or the general idea that they had deep pockets and short arms ?

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I think it was the propensity to profit out of misery and the ghetto mentality of sticking together in communities, looking after their own rather than assimilating....sound familiar? It's a middle eastern culture that isn't confined to the Jews; afterall they are blood relatives of the Arabs through Abraham.
 

Good on you, Ves, as you can see, it has fallen on deaf ears.

I admire your posts too, Rumpole, thanks.

As much as I disagree with VCs posts, it has been good seeing someone bringing in the other side, balancing the debate.

I do agree a lot with your posts.
 

Tink, I think you have the deaf ears, no one has yet been able to provide an example of someone who has killed in the name of or for atheism.

Since you were one of the people that made this claim, I think you need to provide an exampl.
 
What is truly boring is the monotonous circular reasoning deployed by the religious and their apologists to vilify those much despised non-believers, the atheist bogeymen threatening to dismantle religious myth, diminish religious political power, destroy "Christian" values etc. The basic logical fallacy and simplistic reasoning can be summarized as follows...

1) Communists and Nazi fascists are atheists
2) Communists and Nazi fascists are evil because they have persecuted the religious
3) Atheists and atheism are therefore evil

For theists embracing this self-serving caricature of “militant atheism”, the only alternative thesis is to believe in imaginary God's who give us laws inscribed in magic books via their many prophets to be interpreted by earthly clergy so as to give us moral clarity and avoid hellfire in the afterlife. Atheism is moral chaos but religion is useful for order and goodness in society (that it's mythology matters not). Enquiring, questioning atheists be dammed, vilified and branded as Communists and haters, ad nausem.

Communism must supress religion because the perpetuation of its power is based on state worship and state control in competition with religion. In this context, non-endorsed religion represents an overt challenge to total state control of thought, behaviour and opinion. This is done as a consequence of communist ideology and not because they do not believe in alternative celestial dictators.
 
Now you are getting somewhere.

Invert the argument. Some religious institutions must supress non-religious types because the perpetuation of their [sic] power is based on.....

... it opens up a whole world of possibilities when you look beyond the God vs no-God debate (tunnel vision) and add on more dynamics (in accordance with reality and not theory) such as control, greed, power etc.

This thread, and pretty much every other one on the thousands upon thousands of internet forums, is filled with people who fail to see past the religion vs non-religion debate, and realise it is part of a bigger picture.

The questions "How many people have died in the name of religion...." or "How many people have been killed by Atheists" is too narrow, with answers that are easily manipulated by both sides, with numerous logical fallacies.

You cannot prove that someone killed another person or persons for a sole reason, because life isn't black and white like that. It's stupid to try to do so and equally disingenuous to ask it in the first place.

I may or may not have deliberately lured ValueCollector into making a few errors of his own. Others picked them up, despite making the same errors in their own arguments.

Historians (at least good ones), for instance, don't approach the Crusades as just a religious war, but a conflict fought on economic, social and political grounds. A multitude of causes and effects.

But hey, if you want to keep playing the "us" vs "them" game, enjoy it, but it's really not much more than entertainment and idle banter.
 
Value Collector said:
Tink, I think you have the deaf ears, no one has yet been able to provide an example of someone who has killed in the name of or for atheism.

Since you were one of the people that made this claim, I think you need to provide an exampl.
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It can't be any more clearer than what Ves pointed out.
 
Ves said:
But hey, if you want to keep playing the "us" vs "them" game, enjoy it, but it's really not much more than entertainment and idle banter.
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Oh no, its much more than that, it's a battle for hearts, minds and souls in the great hereafter, or not as the case may be.

 
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