RichardTheLionheart wrote:I agree, people fight over lots of things. If religion didn't exist there would still be money, territory, race or political ideology etc...
The problem with religion is the absolute belief of divine sanction and heavenly reward for waging warfare.
It adds almost infinite motivation for conflict.
by bcbob »
Is religion the root of all evil?
Nearly every war is born from disagreement of religious beliefs or at best religion is used as the excuse. If religion did not exist would the world be a peaceful place?
i doubt it, i reckon that if religion did not exist then we would not be any different...we would just find another reason for fighting.
bcbob wrote:Question - Is religion the root of all evil?
Nearly every war is born from disagreement of religious beliefs or at best religion is used as the excuse. If religion did not exist would the world be a peaceful place?
i doubt it, i reckon that if religion did not exist then we would not be any different...we would just find another reason for fighting.
IoshkaFutz wrote:There has only been one officially atheist country in history, the Albanian dictatorship of Enver Hoxha, which declared itself to be the world’s first atheist state in September, 1967.
However, there have been twenty-eight countries in world history that can be confirmed to have been ruled by regimes with avowed atheists at the helm, beginning with the First French Republic and ending with the four atheist regimes currently extant: the People’s Republic of China, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. These twenty-eight historical regimes have been ruled by eighty-nine atheists, of whom more than half have engaged in democidal acts of the sort committed by Stalin and Mao and are known to have murdered at least 20,000 of their own citizens.
The total body count for the ninety years between 1917 and 2007 is approximately 148 million dead at the bloody hands of fifty-two atheists, three times more than all the human beings killed by war, civil war, and individual crime in the entire twentieth century combined.
The historical record of collective atheism is thus 182,716 times worse on an annual basis than Christianity’s worst and most infamous misdeed, the Spanish Inquisition.
Psycho Bunny wrote:I was unsure - but Ioshka has made my decision for me - religion rots the brain, distorts the truth for its own ends, and cannot cope with criticism.
Religionists prefer to dress up lies as truths rather than acknowledge any doubts in their superstitious evidence-free clap-trap.
And anyone who disagrees is - by Ioshka's pathetic distinctions - a "Stalinist".
Ioshka - I would rather be a rationalist than a paranoid fantasist who has to slander those who do not share one's delusional way of thinking.
Sten wrote:Ioshka - how many of those so-called "atheist" societies actually deified their state leader? Do you consider mindless worship of a state leader and skeptical atheism to be the same thing?
bcbob wrote:i doubt it, i reckon that if religion did not exist then we would not be any different...we would just find another reason for fighting.
IoshkaFutz wrote:Sten wrote:Ioshka - how many of those so-called "atheist" societies actually deified their state leader? Do you consider mindless worship of a state leader and skeptical atheism to be the same thing?
This is the famous no true Scotsman argument.
Ioshkafutz wrote:Harris surreptitiously substitutes “unjustified belief” for “religious faith.” Now, “unjustified belief” is one of his many descriptions of religious faith, but obviously there are many unjustified beliefs that are not related to religious faith in any way.
The subset is not equal to the entire set, and since the two are not synonymous they cannot be exchanged in this manner; this is the logical fallacy known as the Undistributed Middle. Harris also implicitly swaps “an absence of rationality” for “religious faith,” once more swapping the specific subset in favor of the broader set that includes it.
sum wrote:Hello IoshkaFutz
I am an atheist. However, I do not recognise the traits that you associate with atheists. I would suggest, although I have not conducted any form of survey, that most atheists live by the Golden Rule and that is their morality. In every day life, I would not think that you could pick me out from the Christian community by the way that I live and relate to others.
I regard practical every day Christianity as the Golden Rule with a God as a figurehead. It is only in the rituals that you would notice any difference between me and the Christians. Atheists do have morality.
sum
IoshkaFutz wrote:But you equate the two (what you call blind mindless belief in God and blind mindless belief in living men) and yet they are not equal or else their results would be equal, instead they are incredibly different.
IoshkaFutz wrote:So one thing is certain, in the "blind and mindless" department, atheism is worse, far worse. If you're gonna be blind and mindless - as mortals often are - choose God.
IoshkaFutz wrote:That much - with the exception of Islam - we can safely say. Somehow - always with the exclusion of Muslims - their atheist blindness is more blind and atheist mindlessness more mindless.
IoshkaFutz wrote:If you state what the morality of atheism is, then perhaps we can argue. But seeing as you can't (you can only tell me what it isn't but not what it is), then you can always claim virginal purity and innocence.
IoshkaFutz wrote:Atheists by definition don't HAVE to believe in anything. So as with Muslims, they are not what they claim to be, but what they do. Otherwise they are always angels dancing on the tip of a pin.
For instance, they can claim materiality and immateriality at will. They can sponsor advertisements on buses and have long-revered holidays removed, but then can even handily deny their very existence.
IoshkaFutz wrote:Outside of God-belief, in the "real" world of individuals, families, groups, societies, is there anything forbidden to an Atheist? Not a single thing. At the moral level it's a huge void. So militant atheism is just a great big militant void. There's no sense even talking about it. Better to discuss single issues. Should a nurse get sacked for offering a prayer? Should a five year old kid get hassled for talking about Jesus?
Atheists are a picture with no frame, an army that can shoot at any real or perceived adversary, kill for any reason. And then they'll find all the seemingly logical and rational reasons to do it and deny it without even a trace scent of hypocrisy.
IoshkaFutz wrote:Being above good and evil, they are amazingly free to pursue their goals. If they have none, so much the better, but - as is often the case with mortals (perhaps on account of evolution) desires do pop up.
Time to modernize China! Presto whamo, kill off all the laggards! Who doesn't want to become more modern?
IoshkaFutz wrote:Time to keep the less productive races from diluting the gene pool (and statistically most of humanity's "best work" has been done by dead white men - so plenty will argue with long and convincing lists in their hands). Presto Whamo... Eugenics.
Quite popular with Bertrand Russel, atheist extraordinaire, great knower of things, the man you even have in your tagline.
What's that he says?
And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence.
- Bertrand Russell
"It seems on the whole fair to regard negroes as on the average inferior to white men, although for work in the tropics they are indispensable, so that their extermination (apart from questions of humanity) would be highly undesirable."
— Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals (1929)
Gotta like the "apart from questions of Humanity" business.
An error of youth undoubtedly. He didn't want to put the dark folks in the blender because they were good for hard labor in the tropics.
Bear in mind the date: 1929.
IoshkaFutz wrote:blah blah blah blah blah
bcbob wrote:Question - Is religion the root of all evil?
Nearly every war is born from disagreement of religious beliefs or at best religion is used as the excuse. If religion did not exist would the world be a peaceful place?
i doubt it, i reckon that if religion did not exist then we would not be any different...we would just find another reason for fighting.
sword_of_truth wrote:You can't compare numbers because there was a smaller population during the time of the Spanish Inquisition. You have to look at proportion.
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