Religulous
- Thread starter Syzygys
- Start date
S.A.M.:oke:
Same applies, if the Christian selectively mugs all non-Christians or tries to forcibly convert them to fit his vision of a better society.
Demod SAM already/
What editing of their comments? he should him and them talking. He didn't edit shit to make them look bad. Your just throwing a hissy fit because someone made the highly religious look like the foolish people they are. It should him and they people the question asked and their answers where is that editing to make them look bad.
S.A.M. the majority of deaths in the last century have been by self proclaimed atheists.
Actually they were totalitarian dictators to whom nothing but their own power mattered. Saying Stalin or Mao was an atheist is like saying Hitler was a Christian. God or no god was not their issue and it did not inform their decisions.
Actually they were totalitarian dictators to whom nothing but their own power mattered. Saying Stalin or Mao was an atheist is like saying Hitler was a Christian. God or no god was not their issue and it did not inform their decisions.
This thread seems to have stopped being about Religulous and started being about S.A.M. This isn't acceptable if you want to continue to have a discussion. I temporarily closed this thread, but by the time you've read this far, it should be opened again. If its to remain open, please take a moment to read the rest of this post.
I would like to point out that while S.A.M. was right that the most brutal regimes in recent history were also atheistic ones, there is much to be said about the motivations of these regimes. While it's easy to find genocides, mass-killings, and murders that are conducted with express and explicit religious motivations, there are no examples of democides that were conducted expressly or explicitly in the name of "atheism."
Neither Stalin, nor Pol Pot have given any historical, sociological or anthropological evidence that their democides were conducted because of atheism. Indeed, this makes no philosophical sense to begin with.
Still, this topic is always the elephant in the room with atheists, who are easily offended when the religious bring it up. And well they should be. We should all be cognizant of the power of ideology as well as religion. Its all too easy for the skeptic and the reasoned who happen to be atheists to blame religion for global atrocities, but I think we ignore the fact that these atrocities were committed by people who were human first, and religious or atheist second. And, while I stand by my statement that it's far easier to find examples of the religious who kill for religious motivations that atheists who kill expressly for atheism, I think we must also be careful what we wish for.
In the absence of religion, why do we think ideology might not exist and that this ideology might not be fucked up? Don't get me wrong. I speak out against religion and vociferously at times. There's too much that the religious do in the name of their religions in order to attempt to impose their beliefs on others. But don't think for a minute that human nature is informed by religion and ideology. It isn't. In the absence of religion, ideology will emerge and human nature has shown us that it's rarely peaches and cream.
I temporarily closed this thread for a moment so I could type a response with effort to get this back on topic. I'm not opposed to splitting the thread at about this point if the discourse is to remain on the current digression, but I also think that this digression has a bit to do with Maher's point with Religulous, so I'd rather like it to remain intact. I'd also rather not like to delete the off-topic posts above, such as calling for S.A.M.'s "demotion."
Her demotion isn't going to happen and I'm glad she takes the time to post here because, believe it or not, she forces atheists to carefully think their arguments before they type if they want to have the appearance of seeming cogent. If you allow yourself to get into a flame-war with her, then you've lost. And, as an atheist, you've demonstrated nothing to those that aren't sure which side of the theist/atheist "war" they should be. And there are a lot of people that fit this bill.
Religulous was intended to be funny. But Maher, the kook that he is, has a point that I think was important: are these the people we allow to have the nuclear codes? Maher took cheap shots, tricked people out of their interviews, carefully edited their responses to be funny/nutty, etc. But he's forcing us to look carefully at who we give the power to in our nation (in this case the U.S., but shouldn't the same hold true for any nation where the people have any sort of influence or power?).
If we aren't careful and if we don't pay attention, we're going to not just let the kooky-theists get the nuclear codes, but the kooky-irreligous. An atheist-ideologue would be just as bad in my book.
So, yeah, S.A.M.'s continued arguing that "Stalin/Pol Pot were atheists and killed more ..." is annoying. But it's supposed to be. They may not have killed so many because of atheism, but they were atheists who had fucked up ideologies. That's an elephant in the room that cannot be ignored.
I think you can no more make that case than you can indict vegetarianism because Hitler was a vegetarian. If there is no indication that Hitler was killing people because he was a xtian or a vegetarian, then you can't do more than complain that xtianity failed to have much influence on his morality or vegetarianism didn't seem to curb his lust for blood.
Further atheism has no stances or dogmas to promote. Is anyone really claiming they killed people because they failed to lack a belief in god?
However in a case like the inquisition, where the deaths are clearly being done to promote the faith there is a clear indictment against the faith so promoted.
You might as well complain that since they all wore shoes that shoeism is to blame.
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There are always ideologies to promote\impose on the masses...AKA victims, aka salt of the earth, aka poor slobs, aka not the elite.