Enmos
Valued Senior Member
They both have one important characteristic in common...
Christianity is a Hate Group
- Thread starter Thoreau
- Start date
They both have one important characteristic in common...
The Abrahamic religions are Islam, Judaism and Christianity.
You might serve a little better also.
You are putting words in my mouth. I never said these examples are mass murderers because they are atheists.
The hypothesis is that religion causes most of the violence in the world; a world run by atheists would be a peaceful place. To test the hypothesis we look for examples of mass murdering atheists. We find examples, therefore the hypothesis fails.
Really?
I thought the hypothesis was that a world run WITHOUT monotheistic cults at the helm would be more peaceful.
I'm using your own words. "Atheism, not religion, is responsible for the mass murders of history."
You, then, are a liar.
Play word games to your heart’s content. You fail to refute this point because you cannot, resorting to personal attacks instead.
My point, that religion's followers have no exclusive corner on the market when it comes to creating suffering, is well established. Atheism it seems is at least as bad, if not worse.
It is obvious that Atheism cannot be true If it were, it would produce a more humane world, since it values only this life and is not swayed by the foolish beliefs of primitive superstitions and religions. However, the opposite proves to be true. Rather than providing the utopia of idealism, it has produced a body count second to none.
Even the Spanish Inquisition cannot compare to the ruthlessness and methodical efficiency these atheists conducted on a massive scale. While proclaiming freedom to the masses, they institute the most methodical efforts to completely eliminate freedom from the people, and they do so all "on behalf" of the proletariat.
You could argue these mass murders were not caused “because of atheism” but they were certainly enabled by atheism.
My point, that religion's followers have no exclusive corner on the market when it comes to creating suffering, is well established. Atheism it seems is at least as bad, if not worse.
It is obvious that Atheism cannot be true If it were, it would produce a more humane world, since it values only this life and is not swayed by the foolish beliefs of primitive superstitions and religions. However, the opposite proves to be true. Rather than providing the utopia of idealism, it has produced a body count second to none.
Even the Spanish Inquisition cannot compare to the ruthlessness and methodical efficiency these atheists conducted on a massive scale. While proclaiming freedom to the masses, they institute the most methodical efforts to completely eliminate freedom from the people, and they do so all "on behalf" of the proletariat.
You could argue these mass murders were not caused “because of atheism” but they were certainly enabled by atheism.
There are no "word games" afoot. You accused me of "putting words in your mouth," which is untrue to the point of being an utter lie. Nor am I making a personal attack -I was making a statement of fact. One who lies is a liar.
It's interesting you say that it's "obvious atheism cannot be true" since it would produced "a more humane world," yet you fail to document or cite how it is that this is "obvious."
The only thing you have that barely comes close to making this point is the dogmatic regimes of despots like Stalin, Pol Pot, et al who were successful at creating dogmas that fundamentally inserted them as the "god" for the societies they led. The despotic results of regimes like Stalin's has nothing to do with atheism nor did atheism enable such a regime -the people who chose to follow Stalin enabled his atrocities.
The evidence for this is clear: on need only look at current "atheistic regimes" and nations to find them among the lowest in crime in the Western world. Indeed, the nation in the west that has the highest incidence of violent crime is also the same nation that has the highest incidence of religious belief. Not only that, but the nations that have the highest incidence of atheism are also the more humane by most measures of the word, invalidating your entire statement of "obvious" truth about atheism.
In the end, those deluded by religious superstition seek to "demonize" and deride those that don't buy into their delusions wherever possible, particularly if those that reject their superstitions are rational and skeptical to the point of not buying into anyone's. That you seek to lie and deceive is evidence of this.
It's interesting you say that it's "obvious atheism cannot be true" since it would produced "a more humane world," yet you fail to document or cite how it is that this is "obvious."
The only thing you have that barely comes close to making this point is the dogmatic regimes of despots like Stalin, Pol Pot, et al who were successful at creating dogmas that fundamentally inserted them as the "god" for the societies they led. The despotic results of regimes like Stalin's has nothing to do with atheism nor did atheism enable such a regime -the people who chose to follow Stalin enabled his atrocities.
The evidence for this is clear: on need only look at current "atheistic regimes" and nations to find them among the lowest in crime in the Western world. Indeed, the nation in the west that has the highest incidence of violent crime is also the same nation that has the highest incidence of religious belief. Not only that, but the nations that have the highest incidence of atheism are also the more humane by most measures of the word, invalidating your entire statement of "obvious" truth about atheism.
In the end, those deluded by religious superstition seek to "demonize" and deride those that don't buy into their delusions wherever possible, particularly if those that reject their superstitions are rational and skeptical to the point of not buying into anyone's. That you seek to lie and deceive is evidence of this.
One could argue that and one would be justified in doing so because these atrocities were not because of atheism. The cases cited by theists are always the same and always the communists. Communism, it need not be said, is more along the lines of religion than atheism. It is worship, but for the state instead of a sky fairy. That is not atheism, it is communism.
Say huh, what?
I find it absolutely hilarious that you should be so upset that I consider the honest, compassionate, trustworthy people who happen to be Christians the better sort than the Christian voice of public discourse.
Is it that you're not reading? That you're just out looking for a fight of some sort? Does the concept somehow confuse you? Or are you really asserting that those who would wield the Bible as a weapon against their neighbors are unjustly maligned because I reject supremacist bigotry?
John99 said:
I find it absolutely hilarious that you should be so upset that I consider the honest, compassionate, trustworthy people who happen to be Christians the better sort than the Christian voice of public discourse.
Is it that you're not reading? That you're just out looking for a fight of some sort? Does the concept somehow confuse you? Or are you really asserting that those who would wield the Bible as a weapon against their neighbors are unjustly maligned because I reject supremacist bigotry?
LOL LOL LOL LOL!
Hey, did you know that 95.7 percent of all statistics are made up right on the spot?
An atheist regime? Pulleeeese.
This is one of the silliest things I have heard of in a long time!
I don't have time to show just how silly, but just off the top of my head, Denmark, Norway and Finland are in the top ten atheist countries, and they are also in the top ten most crime ridden countries.
It is rather difficult to define what you mean by "atheist regime". How would you measure the amount of religious fervour in a country? I suppose one way would be to look at rates of church attendance. If you investigate this you will see higher church attendance tends to be somewhat correlated with lower crime rates. Perhaps you have some fantasy that the USA is the most crime ridden country? Not by a long shot.
If you really study this you will also find crime rates are primarily correlated with socio-economic conditions, much more so than anything else.
I will be gracious and not call you a lier as you do me. I will only suggest your reasoning abilities are clouded by your hatred of all that is spiritual.
Carcano
Valued Senior Member
Another silly rationalism. Indeed they were! Let me put this as simply as possible:
* Religions put God before Man as the ultimate authority.
* Atheism puts Man as the ultimate authority
These regimes could not exist were they not atheist.
Q.E.D.
On religious hatemongering
It should also suffice to say that Stalin was to Communism what Torquemada was to Christianity. Communism sympathizes with religion. At least, Marx did. As Mark Steel reminds:
One thing that religious people—e.g. Christian anticommunists—really seem to want to ignore is that the Communist motto ("from each according to their ability, to each according to their need") is derived from the Book of Acts. I keep making this point, but it seems to go largely ignored. I mean, it's fine with me if someone wants to disagree, or whatever. But, strangely, theists aiming to condemn atheism for inspiring Communism won't even acknowledge the point, much less address it. They keep reiterating the same old crap about atheism being responsible for Stalin, while most Christians would refuse the notion that Torquemada, or Kramer and Sprenger, (or David Koresh, the Medici popes, &c.) are representative of Christianity. Given that there is a stronger case for the relationship between Christianity and the behavior of such notorious religious figures than there is for a connection between atheism and Stalin, it seems insulting and demeaning atheists is more their style than actually putting up a useful, decent, rational argument.
I mean, if they really want to have the argument, we'll have to figure out first what Stalin learned from Orthodox Christians.
SkinWalker said:
It should also suffice to say that Stalin was to Communism what Torquemada was to Christianity. Communism sympathizes with religion. At least, Marx did. As Mark Steel reminds:
One thing that religious people—e.g. Christian anticommunists—really seem to want to ignore is that the Communist motto ("from each according to their ability, to each according to their need") is derived from the Book of Acts. I keep making this point, but it seems to go largely ignored. I mean, it's fine with me if someone wants to disagree, or whatever. But, strangely, theists aiming to condemn atheism for inspiring Communism won't even acknowledge the point, much less address it. They keep reiterating the same old crap about atheism being responsible for Stalin, while most Christians would refuse the notion that Torquemada, or Kramer and Sprenger, (or David Koresh, the Medici popes, &c.) are representative of Christianity. Given that there is a stronger case for the relationship between Christianity and the behavior of such notorious religious figures than there is for a connection between atheism and Stalin, it seems insulting and demeaning atheists is more their style than actually putting up a useful, decent, rational argument.
I mean, if they really want to have the argument, we'll have to figure out first what Stalin learned from Orthodox Christians.
I'm not looking for a fight, beside you are a veteran in the wars against Al Quaker. Too tough for me. I couldn't fight your imagination anyway.
A mix of both. Probably in favor of the latter, though.
I'm not sure what you're attempted to spell there, perhaps it was another internet lol-speak thing. But I'm only using your words with regard to "atheist regime" -thus the scare quotes.
I'm referring to the various nations of the world who have leaders that are atheist or agnostic or for whom religion isn't a factor. The Prime Minister of New Zealand, for instance. Australia even had a PM that was godless in the 1990s as well as a Governor-General.
But the important thing is that there are nations for which religion is *not* a major part of the lives of their citizens, such as New Zealand, Denmark, Sweden, Japan, and Norway where violent crime is extremely low.
You so carefully noted that Denmark, Norway and Finland are in the top ten atheist nations, but you were misleading in your claim that they're the most "crime ridden."
If you take careful note, I mentioned "violent crime," which is the factor of importance. Focusing on violent crimes is important because Western nations, once violent crime has been reduced, have a tendency to report higher instances of far less serious crimes -which were always there, just overshadowed by violent crime.
The violent crime in the nations you chose are far, far lower than in nations that are more afflicted with religion. Indeed, the only Western nation that is overly afflicted with religion exhibits violent crime rates far higher than the rest.
For that, the nations you mentioned had the lowest violent crime rating. As a source, you can examine the Seventh United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems, covering the period 1998 - 2000 (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Centre for International Crime Prevention).
How to measure "religious fervor?" I rely on the sociological work others and don't actually do the measurements myself -sorry. But you can look over sociologist Phil Zuckerman's work (2005) and he's done a bit of work which is oft quoted by even religious adherents. Church attendance is one method to quantify, but it has its problems.
You keep saying "crime-ridden," but again I'm focusing on factors of violent crime. Why worry about every pencil cup stolen from every office cubicle? Violent crime has been demonstrated time and again to be the factor that once removed allows other crimes to be reported -many social factors are at play here, but sociologists have studied this effect extensively enough that the only factors important for our discussion is violent crimes. But we can even look at "morality" issues which are popular among religious nutters in the U.S.
Among the secular west, only the United States continues to have a high homicide rate (Beeghley 2003; Doyle 2000). Yes, the United States is an "out lier." It's a religious nation -the only among the industrialized nations- with a high homicide and overall crime rate. Nations like Columbia and Portugal also have high crime rates (Pew 2002). They're also religious nations. Many very religious nations in Africa are high in human rights violations. They're also very religious. South Africa consumes more cocaine than any other country in Africa (UN 2001); it's also the fifth most religious, under Senegal, Nigeria, Cote d'Ivoire, and Mali -four nations were human rights violations are a norm (HRW 2006).
The abortion rate in Sweden (in 1996), one of the nations with the leading population of agnostics and atheists was 18.7% compared to that of Australia (22.2%) and the United States (21.3%). If we are to correlate this to religious adherence, then clearly the United States, where 81% of the population considered itself "religious" in 2001 (ARIS 2001), and Australia, where 74% of the population is religious (NCLS 2001), are both nations that should have lower percentages of abortion.
They don't. Moreover, the statistics cited for Swedish abortions in teens in a previous post are a bit misleading. The teen pregnancy rate in Sweden is among the lowest in the world to begin with. There's also the problem with failing to consider other mitigating factors, such as concurrent population growth, which was about 6% from 1996 to 2005 (BFS 2005). Looking at global abortion/pregnancy rates is also revealing.
In the U.S., in 1991, teen pregnancies per 1,000 were 98.0 and total teen abortions, also per 1,000, were 44.4 (Wolf et al 1991). The same year for Sweden yielded 28.3 per 1,000 pregnancies and 19.6 per 1,000 abortions.
Swedish abortions, with 50% increase among teens (National Board of Health and Welfare 2004) would put the rate at about 29.5 per 1,000, just over the U.S. rate of 28% (Ventura et al 2004). Recent data indicate a downward turn in teenage abortions in Sweden, however, with 24.3 per 1,000 in 2005 (National Board of Health and Welfare 2006). Of significant interest is the birth rate among teenagers in the U.S., which is the highest in the developed world, seven times as high as Japan's (UN 2005).
Japan is an interesting comparator, since reports of Japanese religiosity rate them at 64-65% atheist/agnostic (Zuckerman 2005). However, it consistently reports the lowest rates of abortion and pregnancies among teens: 6.3 and 10.2 per 1,000 respectively.
Whenever attempting to find correlations between "moral" behavior and religion, or lack of either, the same thing consistently becomes clear: those nations that are among the most superstitious experience the highest rates of amoral behavior.
Does religion cause bad behavior? That's certainly debatable, but there certainly is *no* evidence to suggest that the United States is in any danger of becoming less religious -it has, indeed, become increasingly backward in its superstitious nature- nor is there evidence that lack of religion, should it occur in America, would be deleterious.
References
ARIS (2001). American Religious Identification Survey. The Graduate Center for the City University of New York
BFS (2005). Struktur der Bevölkerung. Ständige Wohnbevölkerung [Periode 1970-2005]. Bundesamt für Statistik BFS.
Beeghley, Leonard (2003). Homicide: A Sociological Explanation. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
Doyle, Rodger (2000) The Roots of Homicide. Scientific American 283 (3), p. 22.
HRW (2006). Info by Country: Africa. Human Rights Watch [accessed 9/3/06]
National Board of Health and Welfare (2004). Abortions 2003. Sweden: Centre for Epidemiology, Official Statistics of Sweden.
National Board of Health and Welfare (2006). Abortions 2005.[PDF] Sweden: Centre for Epidemiology, Official Statistics of Sweden.
Pew (2002). Among the Wealthy Nations... U.S. Stands Alone in its Embrace of Relgion. Pew Global Attitudes Project [accessed 9/3/06]
UN (2001). The Seventh United Nations Survey on Crime Trends and the Operations of Criminal Justice Systems (1998 - 2000) [PDF]. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
United Nations. (2005). Demographic Yearbook, 2002. New York, NY: United Nations.
Ventura, Stephanie J., et al. (2004, June 15). "Estimated Pregnancy Rates for the United States, 1990-2000: An Update." National vital Statistics Report, 52(23).
Wolff, Michael; et al (1992). Where We Stand. New York: Bantam Books.
Zuckerman, Phil (2005). "Atheism: contemporary rates and patterns," in The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, Michael Martin, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.