Do you like how Dawkins, Hitchens et al. represent atheists?

SAM said:
What I want to know is, are these patterns absent in atheists?
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Interesting question: we could start by comparing Taoists and Buddhists and Navajo and other religious atheists, to control for religion.

And we should compare theists from outside the Abrahamic tradition, to control for any unique attributes of that tradition.

And so forth.

Is there something wrong with such an investigation? Are we allowed to come to conclusions contrary to the assertions of believers, and maintain them in the face of strongly abusive protest, without being accused of arrogance?
 
iceaura said:
Interesting question: we could start by comparing Taoists and Buddhists and Navajo and other religious atheists, to control for religion.

And we should compare theists from outside the Abrahamic tradition, to control for any unique attributes of that tradition.

And so forth.

Is there something wrong with such an investigation? Are we allowed to come to conclusions contrary to the assertions of believers, and maintain them in the face of strongly abusive protest, without being accused of arrogance?
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Not at all, let me know when you reach some conclusions.:)
 
S.A.M. said:
Not that they must, merely that they did. You asked how Marxism-Leninism is based on atheism, I think a disawoval of religion and its presumed elimination is a pretty standard definition
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Lol. I'm retarded.
In that case I agree that athiesm and Marxism seem to go hand in hand, at least in theory.

Sure, from the marxists in Lebanon, to the original communist Palestinians, to the guys who made suicide bombing so popular, the anti-religious LTTE.
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Really? I did not know that, it's interesting. Do you have anything more I could read?

Yeah, ideologies have a way of getting out of hand, did these Christian communists also support the destruction of the churches and the gulags for the "purification of society"?
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*Shrug*
I was more thinking of people in the 1840s. I believe the sentiment was that Communism was closer to Christian ideals, love your neighbor and the poor, all that. I presume that they aimed for some sort of synthesis.
If memory serves, the communist revolution in Russia was vehemently opposed by the Orthodox Church, because they had so much money and land, and so many wealthy patrons.

Exactement. I'm glad you're not the polemic Dawkinist like many others I encounter here.
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That's one of the things that was rather unimpressive about the God delusion - he could have pointed out a lot of the "bad things" religion has lead to, and the best he really came up with was the Catholic sex abuse scandals?
The problem with religion (that I see it, and there may be others) is that the sentiment lends itself to authoritarianism - it's very easy to dominate people with this idea of God. Historically this leads to bad things like the Church's stranglehold over Europe, but then maybe that was a necessary thing in the development of our species.

This doesn't negate or necessarily discredit the idea of God, of course. I don't believe it is a particularly useful idea, but I think Dawkins overstates how harmful it is. And I say this even as a citizen of the USA, watching the malevolent force of Evangelical Christianity as it damages my country.

After all, rationalism has given us the means to destroy ourselves as a species, which religion has yet to accomplish.

They also did studies on infants who were deprived of human touch and kept in isolation, they systematically euthanised the weak, the ill, the "lower races", the homosexuals. It was a ritual purification of the genes. And I will still insist you look up their studies on the preservation of the Aryan "race":)
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I bolded the "ritual" part - trying for some bizzare version of "nature red in tooth and claw" is not the same as doing research on evolutionary biology.
 
The sentiment on the ascent of communism is interesting, how did the anti-religious brigade gain supremacy? And if it was intended to support equality, how did it result in authoritarianism everywhere? Perhaps that is the great mystery we need to explore, the relative ease with which power can dig deep into any society; with corporations running rampant worldwide, I do believe we are on the threshold of another kind of world hegemony.

As for the link between marxism and suicide bombing, there is growing evidence that suicide bombers come from secular, more educated segments of the populations, even where they have been associated with religious fundamentalism.

http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2006/08/03/cult-of-the-suicide-bomber/
Baer maintains that suicide bombing was marketed by the Iranians to the Lebanese in the 1980s. Despite the tendency to explain this tactic as a function of Shi’ite fanaticism, Baer makes clear that it was used across the board by the Lebanese resistance, including the secular Syrian National Socialist Party. When Baer asks its leader if his members expected to gain entry into Paradise after blowing themselves up, he shrugs his shoulders and says that their Paradise would be on Earth, a liberated Lebanon.

The role of secular activists in the Lebanese resistance is confirmed by suicide bombing expert Robert Pape in an op-ed article that appears in the August 3, 2006 NY Times:

“In writing my book on suicide attackers, I had researchers scour Lebanese sources to collect martyr videos, pictures and testimonials and the biographies of the Hezbollah bombers. Of the 41, we identified the names, birth places and other personal data for 38. Shockingly, only eight were Islamic fundamentalists. Twenty-seven were from leftist political groups like the Lebanese Communist Party and the Arab Socialist Union. Three were Christians, including a female high-school teacher with a college degree. All were born in Lebanon.

“What these suicide attackers — and their heirs today — shared was not a religious or political ideology but simply a commitment to resisting a foreign occupation. Nearly two decades of Israeli military presence did not root out Hezbollah. The only thing that has proven to end suicide attacks, in Lebanon and elsewhere, is withdrawal by the occupying force.”
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And also this:

http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2007/03/nature-of-suicide-terrorism.html
Pape shows that suicide terrorism springs from perceived or actual occupations of one national group by a different and democratically governed one: Sri Lanka and India of Tamil regions (the Tamil Tigers), perceived Western proxy governments of Sunni Arab countries (Al Qaeda), a Shiite government allied to the U.S. invaders of Sunni areas in Iraq (Sunni insurgency), Israel of the Palestinian occupied territories (Hamas), etc. The strategic logic (as I liberally interpret Pape's theory) is that the suicide bombers credibly signal policymakers in democratic governments that the the national group cares far more about the conflict than the occupiers do -- and therefore are willing to sacrifice far more and make life far more difficult for occupiers. Pape points out that (at the time of writing of the book) the most suicide bombers came not from Al Quaeda or any other arguably religious terrorist group, but from the Marxist-Leninist (and thus atheist) Tamil Tigers. It can of course be argued that Marxism itself is a kind of religion, but at least Paper debunks the shallow idea that afterlife promises a la the "seventy virgins" are a necessary motivation for suicidal terrorism. I'd add that suicide terrorism grows from cultures that de-emphasize individualism -- thus the lack of, for example, ethnically European suicide bombers, but the historical existence of Middle Eastern and Japanese suicide fighters which Pape describes. We individualists have not been able to understand suicide bombers; they just seemed inexplicably crazy. Pape's analysis is an excellent antidote to this ignorance.
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More:
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/jul2005/nf2005076_7420_db056.htm

I will look up the scientific basis for the Nazi experiments and get back to you. I distinctly remember that the Max Planck Institute was involved but I misremember the details. :)
 
And there are lots of atheist suicide bombers. Kinda makes you think, na?
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You mean the Tamil Tigers? Their cause is nationalism, not atheism. They, like the communists and Nazis did not base their movements on atheism.
 
spidergoat said:
You mean the Tamil Tigers? Their cause is nationalism, not atheism. They, like the communists and Nazis did not base their movements on atheism.
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Yeah, just like the Muslims. (ie Lebanese, Palestinians, Iraqis, Iranians, Osama) the LTTE are fighting for separation from the Sinhalese, who are native to Sri Lanka.
 
You are correct that most of the violent movements in those nations are nationalistic ones, except Osama. Al Quida is a religious movement.
 
S.A.M. said:
The sentiment on the ascent of communism is interesting, how did the anti-religious brigade gain supremacy?
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Probably has a lot to do with the Church opposing the Russian Marxists. Once the Tsarists and their supporters lost, why not loot the Church for some extra cash? They're not going to support you, and you need to feed your people.

And if it was intended to support equality, how did it result in authoritarianism everywhere?
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Hah. If we could explain that, we could explain so much of what is wrong with our species.

Perhaps that is the great mystery we need to explore, the relative ease with which power can dig deep into any society; with corporations running rampant worldwide, I do believe we are on the threshold of another kind of world hegemony.
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Material for a new thread? I have a migraine and I'm feeling a bit stupid, but it's something I've been thinking on.

As for the link between marxism and suicide bombing, there is growing evidence that suicide bombers come from secular, more educated segments of the populations, even where they have been associated with religious fundamentalism.
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Bu-but- I thought they were all fundamentalist Muslim extremists who did nothing but chant "death to America," hate Jesus, and blow themselves up all day!
Seriously, thanks for the links.
 
spidergoat said:
You are correct that most of the violent movements in those nations are nationalistic ones, except Osama. Al Quida is a religious movement.
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He bombed the US embassies to force the US troops out of Saudi Arabia; he's also against the current Saudi regime.
 
spidergoat said:
You are correct that most of the violent movements in those nations are nationalistic ones, except Osama. Al Quida is a religious movement.
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True, but Reagan not arming the fucking Taliban would have done more to avoid that situation than a secular society ever would have....


(threadjack)
 
Probably not. He would still object to the Saudi royal family, and the existence of Israel (for religious reasons).
 
We haven't actually heard from him since US troops moved out of KSA, except for CIA reruns of old videos and hoaxes using actors, so what do you base your info on? Has he said anything on this matter post US troops withdrawal?
 
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