Do you like how Dawkins, Hitchens et al. represent atheists?
- Thread starter francois
- Start date
It's funny that you seem to think closet Christian is somehow more worthy of censure than closet extremist. Shahada, anyone? No shirking, now.
An ode to SAM:
-The Cassandra Complex, "Jihad girl"
Quite a few of those upset people can see that atheism is not a religion.SAM said:
And quite a few of them have noticed how theistic religion lends itself to the tactics and goals of those bloody atheistic leaders - and vice versa.
Just because a handy priesthood and built-in institutional justifications are not the only arrows in the despot's quiver, does not mean they are unimportant ones, or uncommon ones.
And just because a religion - in particular, a theism - even more to the point, an evangelical monotheism - does not in theory need an army and police to impose its order and remove its opposition both in word and deed, does not mean it will refuse the help. Theistic belief does much better backed by force than dependent on persuasive reason.
So we have the makings of a deal, wherever a theism and a despotism have set up shop in the same general vicinity.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Religion is more than just belief in the supernatural. The supernatural can be a parallel universe that interacts with ours in ways we don't fully understand but have some parity with. We can actually apply the scientific method to the dangers of black cats. If empirical observation shows that it's risky to continue along a path over which a black cat has crossed, we can stop doing that while we figure it out. This does not require us to redefine the parameters of our lives.
Religion does that by postulating not just a supernatural universe, but a creature living in it who makes it his business to butt into our business. Religion has gods, not just black cats.
I believe Xev and I, if not others, have already spoken to this issue. Please confront your accusers.
Hitler may or may not have been a good little Christian boy--like all the good little Christian boys in America who enslaved, persecuted and hanged black people. Regardless of that, the Holocaust was the culmination of approximately a thousand years of persecution of one religious group by another, throughout the European continent.
I have presented enough examples of atrocities committed: 1. by religious people, 2. and/or in the name of their religon, 3. and/or with the blessings of their religious leaders, that are without parallel in human history. E.g., the destruction of three entire civilizations, by my lights the absolute worst things that were ever done by one group of human beings to another, was motivated by Abrahamic beliefs, performed by Abrahamists, and blessed and/or directed by Abrahamist leaders.
Atheists have never had enough force of numbers or political power to even attempt such acts, so it's hard to imagine how you can say we have not only equalled them but surpassed them to the point that people are afraid of us!
Communism, as I've noted before, must be blamed on Christianity, with its economic principle that a culture can survive in which people are not remunerated for what they produce, based on the fairytale, "god will make it all okay so just keep praying and don't worry about the details." Communism could never have been developed in a Confucian or Hindu society.
Just out of curiousity and ignorance, which 3, and why not?
Thank you very much; I completely agree with this.
I disagree
http://www.straight-talk.net/evolution/hit.htm
He was contributing his bit to genetic engineering, but from the point of view of getting rid of the undesirables. He was after all, very impressed with the superiority of the Aryan race and was deeply impressed by Darwinian theories.
All for power, not religious salvation, same as the atheists who exploited their positions for power.
And yet a total of 4 or 5 atheist leaders have equalled, nay, surpassed the genocidal capacities of all the theists.
Sorry, it was not the Christians who were destroying the churches, torturing priests and nuns and banning religious practice. And we do have communism in our Hindu society, and it has been eminently successful in the Chinese society as well.
LOL, check out the shit on the site S.A.M quoted:
Do they invalidate the quotes from Mein Kampf?
Has you source quoted Mein Kampf honestly? Given the tendency for Creationuts to lie, distort and quote mine, I wouldn't trust a 'Jesus' site as far as I could throw it.
Although I find it funny that a Mooslim would post shit from a fundie Christian site. Life works in funny ways.
Although I find it funny that a Mooslim would post shit from a fundie Christian site. Life works in funny ways.
So, your source is a creationist site? These are people who don't even understand evolution, yet you cite them as your "reliable" source?
I suppose you also agree with this:
"Darwinian evolution is inherently a racist philosophy, teaching that different groups or races evolved at different times and rates, so some groups are more like their ape-like ancestors than others."
I can't even get through the whole crap, basically just a deluded everyday garden variety racist
http://www.mondopolitico.com/library/meinkampf/v1c11.htm
And he did eliminate the socially "weak" and "undesirable"
And he seems to have been religiously neutral:
http://www.mondopolitico.com/library/meinkampf/v1c11.htm
And he did eliminate the socially "weak" and "undesirable"
http://www.rossel.net/Holocaust14.htm
And he seems to have been religiously neutral:
I've admitted each and every time when I was wrong. The above admittance is the first from you.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Civilization has arisen independently in only six locations on Earth: Mesopotamia (of which both Islamic and Christian cultures are only offshoots), India, China, Egypt, Aztec and Inca. The Muslim Arabs, under Caliph Omar of Baghdad, sacked and burned Egypt, overthrew its government, occupied the country, marginalized its people, and even took their name. (The true "Egyptians" were a Cushitic people closely related to today's Ethiopians.) They destroyed their libraries of written works but they were not able to destroy all of their cultural artifacts because many of them were of quite durable construction.
The Christian Europeans sacked the Aztec and Inca Empires, overthrew their governments, occupied the countries, and marginalized their people. The Aztecs had developed written language and their libraries were burned. Both empires had Bronze Age technology with extensive metal art including gold, which was largely melted down for its "heathen" images. Pope Urban specifically granted to the kings of Spain and Portugal each half of the territory of the New World. Had the natives been Christians the conquest would doubtless have occurred anyway, especially if they were not Catholic, but their cultures would not have been eradicated and they would have probably been left with their ethnic identities. Their art, in particular, would have been merely appropriated rather than destroyed, its value would have been appraised much more highly than its gold content, and it would now be displayed in museums. Their written histories and other documents would have been preserved.
Confucians believe in hard work and an efficient economy. They believe in the primacy of the family and the village and are skeptical of central planning. The rise of communism in China and Korea has entailed a certain subjugation of traditional Confucian values. In both countries the new system did not really gain respect until it had been around long enough to gain it by age, to become the new wisdom of the elders. Mao's Little Red Book became the new "sayings of Confucius." Koreologists say that Kim rules not by the communist principle of "dictatorship of the proletariat," but by the Confucian principle of "do what the old man tells you." Communism has only begun to work in China by loosening up and allowing the entrepreneurship that Confucius extols, and it still does not work at all in Korea.
As for the Hindus, they have a saying, "The world is full of holy men who seek to eat the food of those who toil."
We note the old Egyptian religion apparently had gods that were black cats.SAM said:
Any theistic religion is in practice indistinguishable from a superstition, to an unbeliever, if considered in itself and without its social backing - the differences are technical and sociological, having to do with existence of a formal creed, a priesthood, a great number of formal elaborations and believers, and army, the ability to coerce belief, pomp and circumstance, political power, etc.
Imagine if there were only a few people on earth who believed that for good fortune and God's favor one should occasionally kneel down and point one's rear end in the opposite direction from Mecca - no Koran, no imams, no mosques and crowds: What would that look like? Superstition?
On the other hand, imagine that at the vernal equinox a large, elaborately dressed group of learned and wise men made a special ritual out of carefully stepping over a crack or break in a consecrated pavement - symbolising respect for the mystery of birth, and the entry into the world of a new being, and the holiness of motherhood, in a tradition more than a thousand years old. How would that not be religious?
Superstition writ large cannot be distinguished from a form of religion, as far as I can see. And neither can theistic religion be distinguished from superstition writ large. Unless you can tell me how to do that?
But the actual Darwinian theories - even of Hitler's time - said nothing like that. Hitler appeared to have the same misunderstanding of Darwinian evolution we find so common in other theists: that it is a chain of cause and effect, in which the "fittest" are specified in advance and not culled because of their "fitness". In thus exhibiting a type of error so often identified with theistic "creator" reasoning, Hitler revealed again the religious roots and support of his ideology.SAM said:
But theistic religionists have a unique source of exploitable position not available to others - or that is Dawkins's point, anyway. Not that the desired ends are worse (although they may be) but that certain means to bad ends are more ready to hand.SAM said:
Hardly. Fraggle's point about the Spanish Catholic treatment of the New World reds is well taken, for one. Theistic genocide is seldom so described, for whatever reason. Besides, your presumption of Hitler's atheism, Marxist/Leninism's atheist roots, apparently even Japan's atheism in its brutality toward China, are not tenable.SAM said:
And more to the point: that is not Dawkins's claim. His claim is that theism justifies and even encourages such atrocities, that it increases the number and frequency of them in various (specified) ways, that it is used to support them - that it is a sufficient, not that it is a necessary, condition.