Codo, on 2013-January-08, 03:16, said:
What are you talking about? Is this part of ancient history or was this a way to talk about the current desaster around Israel?
And why aren't you able to name the countries which are civilized enough to abaondon religion?
It hasn't happened yet. But we can hope. As I have said many times, and as with just about everything I write this isn't original to me, religious belief made sense in the 99.99% of human experience when we had no effective understanding of the physical world. Give us time.
Quote
You may take some history lesson or simply look at Wikipedia. There had been a lot of reasons for the crusades and for the big wars in the Middle Ages. If you had been right, you should have been able to show that there had been no fights between catholic states, but you cannot. Man make war. But anyway, these times are long gone.
Do you actually read what others have said, and try to understand the arguments, or do you simply look for isolated passages to which you can object, provided you ignore the context? Try re-reading what I have said. Obviously human conflict is multi-factorial and obviously many wars have been fought for purposes other than religion. Does that mean that religion is not sometimes a major factor, or that it is not frequently enlisted by the warring states/nations/tribes to motivate their forces? Didn't most armies historically seek the blessing of religious figures before battle, or consecrate themselves to their god(s)?
Quote
And where is your logical chain to religion here? Death penalty is by no means a part of religion. As written before, China is the land with the biggest number of death penalties. You won't accuse them of being overly religious, will you?
And again, somewhere on this planet there are always people who kill for silly resons, even in Pakistan. Do you mind to tell me the religious reasons the killer in the US have, who just run into schools and kill some pupils? Surely you believe them that God send them?
Now you are betraying yourself. Who ever claimed that all killing was religiously motivated? Not only are you a proponent of the no true scotsman fallacy but now you resort to the cheapest, most despicable strawman argument as well. Do you REALLY think that I said that the school killer(s) around the world are motivated by religion???? REALLY???? If not, wtf are you trying to do by suggesting that I am?
As for the death penalty not being part of religion, you must be profoundly ignorant of aspects of religion that many atheists know without the need to even resort to google. I can't quote the verses without research but the OT contains very clear commandments to the effect that practicing homosexuals should be put to death, and that if a man sleeps with a woman and her mother, they all should be burned to death and so on.
Yes, I know: very few would follow Leviticus today, but that's one of my points. Many religious people are hypocrites because they pick and choose which parts of their holy texts to follow. Yes, there are all kinds of mental gymnastics that people like you go through to justify this to yourselves, but I suspect you have no idea how silly it all seems to an objective observer. It even gets people like you to deny that your religion contains any commands to kill!
Islam has its own commandments, and I have only a tiny knowledge of specifics from the Koran, so the only one I know of with some certainty is the requirement to kill apostates. Of course, we all know about fatwahs these days thanks to Rushdie....the fatwah against him was specifically issued by a very prominent and highly regarded religious figure. I'm sure you'll revert to the no true scotsman argument to say that such pronouncements don't reflect religious teachings either.
Quote
All your examples are quite old and some demonstably false. But anyway, we had been here before. People kill. If you ask them, they usually claim that they have a reason which is not for the personal advantage. They always tell you something about God, Honor, fame, race, state.
I'm sorry that religious mayhem is down recently, so I have only a limited number of current examples. But I have to laugh. You admit that some killers assert they are acting in furtherance of their religious belief, but you deny that religion plays a role in their actions. Clearly you know far more than they do about their motivations! No, the truth is that you have a fixed belief that religion is anti-killing and therefore anyone who claims to have killed for religious reasoning isn't really religious. You're a profound fool if you truly can't see where that logic is flawed.
Quote
If this killing would stop after reaching atheism, I would support your fight for it. But unluckily it does not. Some of the biggest mass murderer in history had no real connection to religion. Stalin Pol Pot or Mao f.e. just fought for their own power, not for a God.
They need to tell their troops about the benefits of communism, or about the cruelty of the enemy or they have to promise wealth. They used the same words to motivate their soldiers then any leader in history used. They claimed any given reason to justify their fight. Well any one but one. They did not murder in the name of God. But their victims are as countless as the victims of people who claim to fight for a religion. So no, the superiority in atheism is not real. It is an Utopia.
Another recourse to straw man? Where did you learn to reason? If 10% of killings are caused by, say, beer ads on television, and 90% by other factors, does that mean that we should allow unrestricted beer ads? If religion is a tool used by leaders to get people to commit awful acts, and you seem to accept that it is, then surely the loss of religion as a force in society is a good thing, at least as far as reducing killings is concerned. Nobody....do I need to repeat this for you?...nobody suggests that religion is the only or even the single biggest factor in human conflict, especially on the personal scale.
Quote
<snipped>
So basically I just claim that atheism does not lead to a superior, more peaceful and better world. If you compare the realities you can see no upside, nor can you see one if you compare the theories.
In theory both religion and atheism should lead to love and understanding. In practice, both ways of living failed so far to reach the final goal.
Religions failed much more often then atheism so far. But religion was (and is) the dominating way of living in the world- so just out of the pure number, it must have failed more often. Before the raise of communism, I can not remember any states with a significant amount of atheists in history. Can you? So all the cruelties in the dark ages could not have done from atheists. They simply did not exist at that times....
You make a very common category error here. Atheism is not a movement, in the sense that it has a doctrine or a political or moral philosophy. Atheists don't form a cohesive whole. Surveys seem to suggest that most atheists are somewhat liberal in their social thinking, but that isn't, as far as I know, a result of any 'teachings' or 'party platforms'.
Atheism isn't really a positive position: we don't generally go around asserting that such and such should happen in the name of atheism.
We don't believe in a god. Few of us state positively that there is no god. Virtually all of us say that the evidence suggests that there is no god, but that we cannot prove a negative. If others want to believe in a god, good for them. Just don't let that impact public life...keep it private. No religious indoctrination in schools. Not tax exempt status or state subsidy, and so on.
As for how we live our lives, and how society should be structured: these are matters for debate based on views of morality and so on. As mentioned, most atheists happen, it seems, to be somewhat liberal, but not all. And this seems to be a correlation rather than a cause and effect relationship.
It is perfectly possible to be an atheist and a believer in libertarianism, or communism...these being two diametrically opposed political and economic philosophies. That is because a lack of belief in a supernatural being has no discernable role to play in how we think a society ought to function, other than rejecting a theocracy. Personally, there was a very short period of time when I think I was a socialist, but never a communist. Now I think I am a left of centre proponent of regulated free enterprise, with a significant role for government with respect to fundamental 'rights' that I would like to see granted to the people of any particular state. But I don't think that philosophy is a result of my atheism, since I don't see the relationship.
'one of the great markers of the advance of human kindness is the howls you will hear from the Men of God' Johann Hari
Help
This topic is locked
He made his money from a religious television show milking his audience for contributions, all to do the Lord's work (which apparently required he live in luxury).