I'd say the current state of the Soviet Union belies your words.
The Stalin/Pol Pot/Hitler Killed Because of Atheism Fallacy
- Thread starter S.A.M.
- Start date
I'd say the current state of the Soviet Union belies your words.
What Soviet Union? It doesn't exist any more.
We were discussing theists. Hitler, being Catholic, was one. Any of his Lutheran friends were as well. Most "neo-Pagans" are theists. The statements you quoted were delivered to an audience of theists, mostly Christian, most of the Christian ones Catholic.SAM said:
You "think" ? You quote him talking to his theistic, Christian friends, about a political movement he created based on Christian beliefs and in violent opposition to Jews and atheists, a movement founded on his own personal passion and zeal and full scale efforts in religious conflict, and conclude he was a closet atheist on what evidence exactly?SAM said:
How do you manage to compromise your very own espoused idea of theism, that matches Hitler to a T even without his Catholicism and religious alliances and zealots rhetoric, and come to such an odd judgment?
Atheists count Stalin as an atheist, despite his childhood and so forth, because it fits the facts and because there is no reason to believe otherwise. That is how reason works.
No.SAM said:
I did not use the word "dominated", nor would I agree with its implications.
Hitler was more strongly supported by the Christian Church than by the scientific community. A large number of the best scientists of his own local scientific community actually fled his governance, many others resisted in various ways, and only some supported him voluntarily - among them especially the more religiously Christian ones, btw.
What was obvious about Hitler to the Jews, and to the atheists, was not nearly as obvious to the Christians. Any idea why not?
Exactly.
That was my point too. Despotism isn't very sustainable (unless it's religiously inspired). Religion is more insidious than any crackpot dictator, because it infects the minds of the people.
Russia had a long history of deifying it's Czars. That set them up for dictatorship and effects them to this day.
They never really left, that's a fact. They held private services on their own, throughout soviet times.
The Soviet regime, like the Third Reich, was built on a society well prepared for it with a State theism.SAM said:
It was exactly that - State theism, with a State supported Church and all that implies - that the Founders of the US most vehemently disapproved of and prevented.
To call them "religiously inspired" is of course nonsense.
In 1987 about half of all babies born in the Soviet Union were baptized Christian.SAM said:
Bu the Church did not have the power to force the teaching of religious dogma in the public schools, as it does now.
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There was never an atheistic Russia.
and they are all dead now,,
so stop crying over the past..
on the other hand YOUR Islamo-fanatics are STILL at it...what gives Sam??
www.thereligionofpeace.com
The Soviet totalitarian state set record highs for Russia in every demographic measure.SAM said:
The Russia before and after, both so far, compares as a backwards, disease ridden, poorly educated, crime infested, thug utopia. Nasty, brutish, and short-lived, on average.
But maybe that's due to the prevalence of theistic religion under the Soviet regime - it's not as though the Soviets ever destroyed the Orthodox Church. The State found it useful, actually, much as the Czar had. Now it appears to be making the same kind of deal with the Mob under Putin as the Catholic Church made with the Italian Mafia - or, dare we observe, the Wahabis with the House of Saud.
I can agree with this statement... but as to atheism being the reason thats just utter cr*p.
stalin and pol pot were communists and hitler was mad...all 3 had religious upbringings.
Stalin trained to be a priest became disheartened then returned to his religion!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin
Hitler was also deeply religious!!!!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler's_religious_beliefs
:scratchin: so his claims in mein kampf that God created the aryan race makes him an athiest..pfff
Pol pot was communist and Theravada Buddhist
http://www.freethoughtpedia.com/wiki/Was_Pol_Pot_an_atheist?
This is a repeat of ...
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=82168&page=4
Where it was pointed out that you were confusing communism with atheism.
I think Sam you have a blinkered view on atheism with only negative opinion
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Okay, I'll wait too, it will be interesting to hear, in view of existing evidence of mega-democides by stated athiests, how they answer this one.
LOL well perhaps 45% + of these deaths was due to famine caused by the failure of communist regimes absolutly nothing to do with atheism....
You have a problem with understanding atheism and communism and are getting the 2 mixed up so your so called existing evidence relates directly to communism and is from a pro-democratic website..
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/MIRACLE.HTM
there fore has nothing at all to do with atheism i.e. your evidence has no relation to atheists it is to do with communists.... can you not see that the two things are different.
distantcube
Registered Member
Okay, I'll wait too, it will be interesting to hear, in view of existing evidence of mega-democides by stated athiests, how they answer this one.
Here are some figures, as well
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM
Atheists are more competent than theists? I mean, damn, if Hitler had have been an atheist, he could have gotten rid of all the Jews instead of just 6 million!
Oh, come now
"Rejection of Pascal's Wager", by Paul N. Tobin.
Hitler was never an atheist. In addition to his Catholic upbringing and the Nazi's calls for "positive Christianity" (see Tobin), he also enlisted the help of members of Thule Gessellschaft, a German occult society.
And, hey, didn't you ever see Raiders of the Lost Ark?
Okay, okay. There is a difference between the idea that Stalin, Pol Pot, or Mao Zhedong were atheists and the accusation that they killed because of atheism. Throw whatever statistics you want onto the fire; until you demonstrate atheism as the cause of such deadly histories, the assertion that they "killed because of atheism" is, indeed, a fallacy.
Look, I recognize you're trying to prove a point about bigotry. But you need to realize that, especially in the case of redemptive monotheism—namely Christianity and Islam—religion raises human stakes to an abstraction. The eternal soul is the most valuable currency in human history, and the evidence of that fact's destructive potential is found littered recklessly through the last two millennia of history. Some kill for money, some for political power, and some for fear. Humanity is rife with psychosis. But the idea of Heaven, an eternal reward for the soul, is about as tempting as it gets. And the idea of Hell, an eternal punishment, is about as scary as it gets.
Think of it this way. An Inquisitor might stand over his victim, torturing her until she confessed so that he might then cause her agonizing death, and the whole time be thinking of the Gospel of Matthew. Whatsoever he does or does not do unto the least of Christ's brethren, so also he does or does not do unto Christ. Read Matthew 25. It is easy enough, when one is the Inquisitor, to say, "Well, I would hope someone would do the same for me."
That the religiously-derived atrocities of history might not represent the truth of any given faith is only relevant insofar as it is tragic. That these people did not understand what God was telling them, well, it doesn't do much good for them, for God, or for the religion.
Yet what they did, they did for God.
"Rejection of Pascal's Wager", by Paul N. Tobin.
Hitler was never an atheist. In addition to his Catholic upbringing and the Nazi's calls for "positive Christianity" (see Tobin), he also enlisted the help of members of Thule Gessellschaft, a German occult society.
And, hey, didn't you ever see Raiders of the Lost Ark?
Okay, okay. There is a difference between the idea that Stalin, Pol Pot, or Mao Zhedong were atheists and the accusation that they killed because of atheism. Throw whatever statistics you want onto the fire; until you demonstrate atheism as the cause of such deadly histories, the assertion that they "killed because of atheism" is, indeed, a fallacy.
Look, I recognize you're trying to prove a point about bigotry. But you need to realize that, especially in the case of redemptive monotheism—namely Christianity and Islam—religion raises human stakes to an abstraction. The eternal soul is the most valuable currency in human history, and the evidence of that fact's destructive potential is found littered recklessly through the last two millennia of history. Some kill for money, some for political power, and some for fear. Humanity is rife with psychosis. But the idea of Heaven, an eternal reward for the soul, is about as tempting as it gets. And the idea of Hell, an eternal punishment, is about as scary as it gets.
Think of it this way. An Inquisitor might stand over his victim, torturing her until she confessed so that he might then cause her agonizing death, and the whole time be thinking of the Gospel of Matthew. Whatsoever he does or does not do unto the least of Christ's brethren, so also he does or does not do unto Christ. Read Matthew 25. It is easy enough, when one is the Inquisitor, to say, "Well, I would hope someone would do the same for me."
That the religiously-derived atrocities of history might not represent the truth of any given faith is only relevant insofar as it is tragic. That these people did not understand what God was telling them, well, it doesn't do much good for them, for God, or for the religion.
Yet what they did, they did for God.
Geraldine now, stop shaking that cow.
For heaven’s sake, for your sake and the cow’s sake,
That’s the dumbest way I’ve seen
To make a milk shake.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .—Shel Silverstein
For heaven’s sake, for your sake and the cow’s sake,
That’s the dumbest way I’ve seen
To make a milk shake.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .—Shel Silverstein
If you look at the list of mass murders posted and reposted above, two things are obvious:
actual accountability is missing (deaths in China from starvation due to bureaucratic incompetence and bad weather are lumped in with deaths in Russia from starvation due to deliberate food deprivation by the State, and both are lumped in with the aftereffects of major warfare, for one example)
and actual agency is obscured (deaths in Vietnam are simply assigned to "Vietnam", for instance).
Combine that with the failure to compare the death rate with the population in either numbers or demographic structure, and you have a piece of propaganda - designed to mislead.
As with most such propaganda, they play loose with the details - the column labeled "millions" would have us believe that the PRC in China killed 76 billion people - and omit many things that would unavoidably introduce inconvenient considerations of motive and circumstance (add up the killings of civilians by deliberate firebombing in WWII, or the aerial bombardment of civilians in SE Asia by non-yellows, or the total of the client state mass murders in SA, or any of several events in Africa, and they would get lines in that list).
actual accountability is missing (deaths in China from starvation due to bureaucratic incompetence and bad weather are lumped in with deaths in Russia from starvation due to deliberate food deprivation by the State, and both are lumped in with the aftereffects of major warfare, for one example)
and actual agency is obscured (deaths in Vietnam are simply assigned to "Vietnam", for instance).
Combine that with the failure to compare the death rate with the population in either numbers or demographic structure, and you have a piece of propaganda - designed to mislead.
As with most such propaganda, they play loose with the details - the column labeled "millions" would have us believe that the PRC in China killed 76 billion people - and omit many things that would unavoidably introduce inconvenient considerations of motive and circumstance (add up the killings of civilians by deliberate firebombing in WWII, or the aerial bombardment of civilians in SE Asia by non-yellows, or the total of the client state mass murders in SA, or any of several events in Africa, and they would get lines in that list).