Could you be monolithic religious & an evolutionist?
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Are you saying the communist leaders were NOT atheists?
Did any of them destroy places of worship or forbid the practice of religion?
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There is a widely used religious saying that "there are no atheists in foxholes" which would clearly indicate that no, none of these people were atheists - but indeed were god believers who just didn't show that they were god believers.
I suppose it now requires you to openly declare that that statement is fallacious.
Of course in either case communism still does not equal atheism.
Further to which, if I absolutely must, I would point you towards "christian communism", (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_communism). Are you claiming that these christians are also atheists? It's very doubtful, and thus we come to my point once more:
communism and atheism are two different things.
Anything you'd like to add?
Did any of the above mentioned murderous communist leaders destroy places of worship or forbid the practice of religion?
Have any Christian communists done so?
Its relevance to anything is.... what?
Given my last statement that there are no atheists in foxholes then we come to the undeniable conclusion that there is no such thing as an atheist, and so by default there's no such thing as an atheist communist. Even if there was, communism and atheism are two different things, (as explained).
But to be honest I fail to see why you're going to such lengths or what it's relevance is to anything. There have been and are bad atheists. There have been and are bad theists... What's the point? At the end of the day the biggest murderer in the history of the universe is god, (jewish/christian). The rest is small potatoes in comparison.
Now, I wont get into the salem witch trials, the inquisition the crusades etc because - the fact that millions of people were killed because of christianity does not mean that all christians are assholes, (they get that title by their own personal efforts).
To get back to the point: communism and atheism are two different things
That stands unless you are going to claim that the definition of communism is "lack of belief in a god". Are you?
What they do on their weekends is their business, it is of no relevance to anything. By the fact there are "christian" communists shows beyond any doubt that "communism and atheism are not the same thing".
Wake up.
why would god want to do that?
I tell you why....so you can claim the bible is the Truth?
it aint!
the bible writers didnt know THEN what we know now thanks to the scientific research and the fossil record,so they made up whole bunch of fantasy myths to explain everything,unfortunately they were very wrong,and even now dont want to admit their book is a load of nonsense...so they hate science and everything modern,they just want to keep people stupid so they can control them better.
thats why all the fuss about teaching shyt like ID in the schools.
its not science its horseshyt.
I'm going to have to support SamCDKey on this one:
Atheists have been far more destructive, and far less constructive, than Theists in world history.
The majority of the greatest men in history have believed in God. A majority of the greatest murderers and fiends have not.
Of course, a great deal many horrible men believed in God, also. But there hasn't been many great men that haven't believed in God.
Atheists have been far more destructive, and far less constructive, than Theists in world history.
The majority of the greatest men in history have believed in God. A majority of the greatest murderers and fiends have not.
Of course, a great deal many horrible men believed in God, also. But there hasn't been many great men that haven't believed in God.
Rubbish!
Really it doesn’t matter.
Atheists could have killed 1 trillion people OR polytheists could have killed 1 trillion people or Christian missionaries could have wiped-out untold numbers of people as 3 entire continents and who knows how many island nations were conquered .... it still doesn't matter in terms of: Is there the least bit of evidence that the FSM, Yahweh or PU are real?
Answer: No there is not.
Atheists could have killed 1 trillion people OR polytheists could have killed 1 trillion people or Christian missionaries could have wiped-out untold numbers of people as 3 entire continents and who knows how many island nations were conquered .... it still doesn't matter in terms of: Is there the least bit of evidence that the FSM, Yahweh or PU are real?
Answer: No there is not.
Snakelord:
The following men and women of reknown were religious to varying degrees. Just a small smattering, mind you:
Ramesses II the Great
Darius the Great
Leonidas
Aristotle
Socrates/Plato
Alexander the Great
Julius Caesar
Augustus
Seneca
Marcus Aurelius
Hypatia
St. Augustine
Boethius
King Arthur
Charlemagne
St. Anselm
St. Thomas Aquinas
Geoffrey Chaucer
Joan D'Arc
Ghenghis Khan
Nicholas Copernicus
Caravaggio
Leonardo de Vinci
Michelangelo
Galileo Gallilei
Thomas Hobbes
Renee Descartes
William Shakespeare
Edmund Spencer
Queen Elizabeth I
Sir Issac Newton
Louis XIV
John Locke
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Benjamin Franklin
The Marquis de La Fayette
George Washington
John Adams
Sir Walter Scott
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Napoleon Bonaparte
Admiral Lord Nelson
Hegel
Schopenhauer
Kierkegaard
Duke Wellington
Beethoven
Abraham Lincoln
Robert E. Lee
Stonewall Jackson
Ulysses S. Grant
Emperor Meiji
Alexander II of Russia
Otto van Bismarck
Benjamin Disraeli
Teddy Roosevelt
General Pershing
Aleister Crowley
Churchill
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Charles de Gaulle
George Patton
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Douglas MacArthur
J.R.R. Tolkien
C.S. Lewis
John F. Kennedy
The 14th Dalai Lama
Martin Luther King Jr.
Margaret Thatcher
Ronald Reagan
Mother Theresa
Tony Blair
Off hand, I can think of the following atheists:
Epicurus
Macchiavelli
Voltaire
Thomas Paine
Thomas Jefferson (although officially a Deist)
Charles Darwin (died at least an Agnostic)
Nietzsche
Sartre
Simone Du Bouvoir
Ayn Rand
Asimov
Hawking
Dawkins
I'd add Einstein and Godel, but their mystical views on many things seem to imply a religiousity too much for Atheism, and too little for religious. Let's put them in the "middle" category.
Moreover, the worse murders in history, Mao Zedong and Josef Stalin, were Dialectical Materialist Atheists. Hitler, a Christian-Germanic heathen, was a pussy cat compared to them.
I also received a pretty lame response in a thread I opened on this topic:
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=59167
Of course, this doesn't invalidate Atheism philosophically. It simply shows that Atheism does not equal human greatness.
The following men and women of reknown were religious to varying degrees. Just a small smattering, mind you:
Ramesses II the Great
Darius the Great
Leonidas
Aristotle
Socrates/Plato
Alexander the Great
Julius Caesar
Augustus
Seneca
Marcus Aurelius
Hypatia
St. Augustine
Boethius
King Arthur
Charlemagne
St. Anselm
St. Thomas Aquinas
Geoffrey Chaucer
Joan D'Arc
Ghenghis Khan
Nicholas Copernicus
Caravaggio
Leonardo de Vinci
Michelangelo
Galileo Gallilei
Thomas Hobbes
Renee Descartes
William Shakespeare
Edmund Spencer
Queen Elizabeth I
Sir Issac Newton
Louis XIV
John Locke
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Benjamin Franklin
The Marquis de La Fayette
George Washington
John Adams
Sir Walter Scott
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Napoleon Bonaparte
Admiral Lord Nelson
Hegel
Schopenhauer
Kierkegaard
Duke Wellington
Beethoven
Abraham Lincoln
Robert E. Lee
Stonewall Jackson
Ulysses S. Grant
Emperor Meiji
Alexander II of Russia
Otto van Bismarck
Benjamin Disraeli
Teddy Roosevelt
General Pershing
Aleister Crowley
Churchill
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Charles de Gaulle
George Patton
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Douglas MacArthur
J.R.R. Tolkien
C.S. Lewis
John F. Kennedy
The 14th Dalai Lama
Martin Luther King Jr.
Margaret Thatcher
Ronald Reagan
Mother Theresa
Tony Blair
Off hand, I can think of the following atheists:
Epicurus
Macchiavelli
Voltaire
Thomas Paine
Thomas Jefferson (although officially a Deist)
Charles Darwin (died at least an Agnostic)
Nietzsche
Sartre
Simone Du Bouvoir
Ayn Rand
Asimov
Hawking
Dawkins
I'd add Einstein and Godel, but their mystical views on many things seem to imply a religiousity too much for Atheism, and too little for religious. Let's put them in the "middle" category.
Moreover, the worse murders in history, Mao Zedong and Josef Stalin, were Dialectical Materialist Atheists. Hitler, a Christian-Germanic heathen, was a pussy cat compared to them.
I also received a pretty lame response in a thread I opened on this topic:
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=59167
Of course, this doesn't invalidate Atheism philosophically. It simply shows that Atheism does not equal human greatness.
Actually I was rebutting Godless' link: the problem with belief. There is no evidence that nonbelief is any different.
VagueLord said:
Did you actually see him in action?
You can run around the bush as much as you like, if there have been mass murderers of both denominations, the fact remains that you cannot make excuses for atheists (unless you claim that communism is itself a murderous philosophy) and paint theists with a broad brush.
That is just dishonesty.
For the destructive assertion do you mean Atheists (absence of belief in the existence of 'God') or anti-religionists (belief that religion is the 'enemy')? I would agree that atheists were less constructive for three primary reasons.
1) Atheists are often indoctrinated at a young age by a parental authority. That tactic has a 90+% rate of instilling a 'magical thinking' congnitive geometry. If 90+% of a population are not Atheists then there is a much higher probability that this population will produce more constructive behavior amongst its members and make it difficult for 'outsiders'.
2) Atheists historically have had no social network equivelent that religion provides. Without resource sharing and pooling, they lacked the power and influence that their theist counterparts had.
3) Atheists have historically lived in fear of being hurt or killed for heresy.
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Your list, while vaguely interesting, isn't really data concerning how atheists are more destructive and less constructive than theists. It is also of no worth to anything.. I can provide you with an equally long list of various atheist men and women, (and I cannot believe you forgot to include Twain in your short atheist version).
P.S "King Arthur"...
Yeah, but Robin Hood was an atheist, as was Peter Pan and the giant that lived at the top of the beanstalk. Beat that.
Highlighting two nasty people does not equal "greatest majority of murderers and fiends have not believed in god".
I took a look at a website with a list of their "top ten despots", (http://www.infoplease.com/spot/topdespots1.html#tam). It turns out that only 4 of the 10 did not have religious belief. By those accounts it would support a claim that the higher majority, (I would not be so naive to use the word 'greatest'), of mass murderers did have belief in god. You provided me with a list of 2, and then even remarked that one of the religious ones, (Hitler), was like a "pussy cat". You're being seriously dishonest.
You fail to show any such thing.
Please, stop being silly. I am seemingly the only one here stating openly that both atheists and religious people have killed others - while watching james refer to Hitler as a pussy cat and claiming that the "greatest majority", (something he thinks he can support with 2 names), of murderers were atheist. He's being foolish.
My statement was quite simple: Communism and atheism are not the same thing. Now, stop "beating around the bush" and explain to me how communism is defined as "lacking a belief in god". If you cannot do so then at least have the decency to admit your mistake.
An interesting sidenote:
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Oh, I must have missed something.. sorry for butting in!
Michael
I'm agnostic athiest personally, your rational sort of sounds agnostic theist?
Crunchy Cat:
Excellent points. Many have probably contributed to both the lack of atheists in world history and in the list of "great men and women", as well as lending themselves towards types like Stalin and Zedong.
Snakelord:
I think you would be hard pressed to even come close to the list I have provided, in terms of historical prominence. Noting that I have excluded much of history for the purpose of brevity. I could give you essentially every emperor, king, duke, prince, president, prime minister, philosopher, composer, artist, poet, inventor, scientist, et cetera, in the history of man until the 19th century, and even then, not exclude too many people.
And yes, I also forgot to include Russell, Confucius, Montaigne, and Melville.
I did not say greatest majority. I said the majority of the greatest fiends and murderers in history.
Collectively, the Communist movement killed more human beings in a shorter time span than any other movement in history. 150 some million in 80 years. Officially, every leader of every Communist movement was an Atheist.
The only religionists that comes close to matching the death toll are Hitler and Hirohito.
The list of "despots" provided are laughable. Robspierre? Papa Doc? Ivan the Terrible? Tamarlane? Pussycats compared to the Communist fiends of the 20the 20th century.
The atrocities of Stalin and Mao eclipse all else. Their followers such as Po Pot, Ho Chi Minh, Kim Il'Sung, and Kim Jung'il can even be counted as absurdly ineffective compared to them.
Then please, show me what Atheism has provided so as to affirm the greatness it produces?
Excellent points. Many have probably contributed to both the lack of atheists in world history and in the list of "great men and women", as well as lending themselves towards types like Stalin and Zedong.
Snakelord:
I think you would be hard pressed to even come close to the list I have provided, in terms of historical prominence. Noting that I have excluded much of history for the purpose of brevity. I could give you essentially every emperor, king, duke, prince, president, prime minister, philosopher, composer, artist, poet, inventor, scientist, et cetera, in the history of man until the 19th century, and even then, not exclude too many people.
And yes, I also forgot to include Russell, Confucius, Montaigne, and Melville.
I did not say greatest majority. I said the majority of the greatest fiends and murderers in history.
Collectively, the Communist movement killed more human beings in a shorter time span than any other movement in history. 150 some million in 80 years. Officially, every leader of every Communist movement was an Atheist.
The only religionists that comes close to matching the death toll are Hitler and Hirohito.
The list of "despots" provided are laughable. Robspierre? Papa Doc? Ivan the Terrible? Tamarlane? Pussycats compared to the Communist fiends of the 20the 20th century.
The atrocities of Stalin and Mao eclipse all else. Their followers such as Po Pot, Ho Chi Minh, Kim Il'Sung, and Kim Jung'il can even be counted as absurdly ineffective compared to them.
Then please, show me what Atheism has provided so as to affirm the greatness it produces?
I think we'd agree that the majority of people in times past - whether famous, infamous or unknown had religious beliefs. That I will not dispute, but that is not where you are making the error. The error comes in the form of you claiming that the majority of greatest murderers were atheists by mentioning 2 names while calling any religious murderer a "pussy cat" as if that somehow makes things all better.
Now, kindly show that the "majority" of greatest murderers were religious. Two is not a majority james, you should know that. (Unless you're using a total of 2/3 murderers in which case 2 is clearly the majority. What number are you using when you say majority? 10 Murderers total, 20? 100?)
My apologies. Now kindly explain how 2 people can ever be considered a "majority" unless you're only prepared to take 2 murderers into account?
Officially was every leader of every communist movement a communist? Would it not seem apparent that instead of blaming their lack of belief in a god as the cause of all those deaths, that those deaths came from their society ideals etc? Needless to say, well apparently it is needed, lack of belief in a sky being does not compel a person to go out and kill one person or millions of people for that matter.
Atheism has nothing to say with regards to how life should be - that people should be equal, what politics work, how to treat your subjects etc.. No, atheism is simply a lack of belief in god - nothing else.
Atheism didn't kill anyone, in the 2 cases you cite - communism did. As I keep having to explain, communism and atheism are not the same thing.
There are people that kill that are atheists, people that kill that are religious.. Such is life.. I know, I know.. when it comes to anyone religious you label them as "Pussy cats", (how sweet), and think that somehow makes everything cosy, but that's silly.
In the meantime take a look at the quote regarding communism that I provided.
Yes yes.. *yawn* "pussy cats".. Sort yourself out.
A lack of belief in gods. That's all it is.. Needless to say there are many people of "greatness" that lacked a belief in gods - perhaps even compelled that greateness. The greatness of Twain for instance comes largely from his atheism. 'Letters From Earth', 'Adam's Diary', 'What is Man' etc.. He could never have written such classics had he not have been atheist.
[edit] What I unfortunately forgot to mention earlier is that "greatness" is subjective. Whos vision of greatness do we use?
As an example, there are many people here that consider George Best a hero, a man of extreme greatness - to such degree that they almost worship the guy. All I personally see is an alcoholic wife beater that had the ability to kick a pigs testicle around a patch of grass. I see no greatness in it at all.
Likewise if I use some of the names you mentioned:
Tony Blair for instance. I'm sorry but I cannot think of one thing that would even raise Blair above the level of serious scumpot. There is nothing he has done that would make him "great" whatsoever. You also include a couple of people that are merely famous by virtue of killing people - or more to the point, being able to tell others to go out and kill people, (Alexander the Great for instance). Sure, he conquered pretty much everyone, but I personally wouldn't consider that "greatness".
Now Bob on the other hand truly was a man of greatness. He gave his own life to ensure the survival of his child. Then there's Dennis who ran into a burning house to rescue 4 children trapped inside with no concern for his own safety. Neither Dennis nor Bob waged any wars, won any elections or wrote any books - but their greatness exceeds that of those who did, (as far as I see it).
Still, each to their own I guess, (which is why your entire list is worthless).
The creation of the nuclear bomb is an astounding accomplishment. Atheists don't tell anyone to use those nuclear bombs.. You need to learn to understand the difference.
P.S The Hiroshima bombing was ordered by Truman - a religious baptist.
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