Atheism and Liberalism better due to lack of Nuts ?

Everytime some thread starts going the islam = evil… someone comes up with the argument that some bad apples doesnt mean the whole lot is compromised. Now we have crazy christians… wacko jews and a few buddhist violent monks. The other 99% naturally arent doing much. Still…

How many crazy atheists have we heard about ? How many pro-choice supporters killing anti-abortion activists ? How many Liberal activists engaging in conspiracies or killing politicians ?

We have seen the opposite plenty of times thou. Religiously inspired killers, killing of abortion doctors and right wing activists killing the Israeli Prime Minister and other examples…

Am I wrong ? Are there numerous examples of said killers ? Does this just mean the moderates are wussies who wont fight for their beliefs ? Or that what I am getting at it correct... that non religious, non extremists are better overall than other groups ?  Can the "bad" cases be dismissed as irrelevant ?

Well, there are and were left wing extremists who commit crimes, including murders…the Weathermen in the US, Baader-Meinhof Gang in Germany, etc.

Also, Madelyn Murray O’Hair, even though I think she was right in a lot of ways about religion, was pretty odd.

Liberals arent lefties… necessarily… even thou some call them commies… doesnt make them so.

I should have put examples of extremist lefties in the above post too.

Yerk. Stalin and Mao come to mind. Bad apples abound regardless.

Stalin and Mao were Liberals? Yikes.

Timothy McVeigh was an agnostic. Ted Kascynski was a whacko environmentalist. Stalin and Mao murdered millions.

There aren’t any groups made up of humans that don’t have nutcases in them.

Sorry.

Regards,
Shodan

Don’t forget ALF and ELF (Animal and Enviromental Liberation Front, respectively.), two domestic left-wing terrorist groups. They have a habit of torching SUV’s, releasing research animals, burning new housing developments, ect.

Have they killed anyone thou ?

(Stalin and Mao Liberals ? Wow… you guys are sick…)

Mr McVeigh and Mr Kascynski did kill people. Quite a few, if I remember correctly.

Stalin and Mao were extreme Communists, which is generally considered a “far left” ideology.

Oh, perhaps I should clarify.

In the United States, the dichotomy of liberal/conservative is generally used interchangably with leftist/rightist. It has quite a different understanding outside of the States, or so I hear.

If you have a different definition, Rashak Mani, perhaps it would help if you could say what you mean by “Liberal.”

Oh, and Shodan. Tell me you had to look up the correct spelling of Kascynski. :slight_smile:

Geez, if December had started this thread from the opposite viewpoint, there would be about 100 flames in here already.

No left-wing nuts? Please. Everything from animal liberation extremists to the weather underground, the Black Panthers, the SLA, the Baader-Meinhof-Gang, The Japanese Red Army, the Red Brigades, et. ad nauseum. For that matter, almost every terrorist organization in the middle east would associate itself with the left.

Today we have the Worker’s World party, the ‘Free Mumia!’ crackpots (Mumia Abu-Jamal himself is a radical who was convicted of shooting dead a police officer), various Marxist and Stalinist organizations who STILL haven’t learned the evils of Communism, eco-terrorists, and worst of all, the Baldwin family.

And if you’re going to include ‘right-wing activists’ killing the Israeli prime minister, do we get to include the Egyptian militants who killed Anwar Sadat?

How about other assassins? Oswald was a Marxist. Sirhan Sirhan was an Arab who apparently shot Robert Kennedy because of Kennedy’s support of Israel. I see the Unabomber and McVeigh have already been mentioned.

Who have you got on your list for right-wing crackpots again? A handful of idiots who bombed some abortion clinics?

Oh yeah… The ‘Crazy Christians’ and the ‘Wacko Jews’. Hard to argue with solid, non-bigoted characterizations like that.

Everyone who’s posted so far has disagreed with the OP. December might’ve gotten flamed, but as far as I know, Rashak doesn’t have the reputation and propensity for jerkiness that december had.

Was supporting Israel really a conservative notion in the 1970s?

By nature, you wouldn’t expect a moderate to be bombing places. That’s an extremist tactic for sure. Doesn’t make them wussies, it makes them, you know, possibly more sane.

Non-religious? No, there are plenty of bad eggs cited above. Non-extremists? Well, there’s the tyranny of the majority or whatever, but I don’t know of any middle-of-the-road terrorists. :stuck_out_tongue:

Even if you don’t consider them “liberals” (which you’ll probably define as non-violent people, or some such nonsense), Stalin and Mao were atheists. Also, I’d say if you had to assign modern nationalist groups and political leaders an ideology, it would be liberalism/leftism (I’m thinking here of IRA, ETA, Nasser, etc.)

Regarding Stalin’s and Mao’s atheism: A more apt way to put the question would be “Has there been any atheist who committed murder/terrorist acts and so forth because of their atheism?” I don’t think either of the above qualify in the same way that abortion doctor killers do. As far as extreme liberals go though, aren’t anarchists usually classed as extreme left?

Don’t forget about the FARC, **Fang.

The communist states did go pretty ape-shit on their various religious groups at various times.

Agreed. But I think their atrocities were provoked by political motives rather than religious ones. Of course religious leaders can also act out against people or things for purely practical reasons, but it can be difficult to tell just when that is so if they use religious arguments to justify their actions.

Religion is often a powerful motivator, and the threat of punishment/promise of reward that drives many fanatics to do things ordinary folks find reprehensible doesn’t have any equivalent in atheism so far as I can see. I guess it’s because I consider atheism a sort of zero-point with regards to telling people how to live their lives or make moral decisions. I don’t think it can make anyone do anything or justify any action whatever.

It’s a little hard to imagine anyone motivated by non-belief. O’Hair was an exception, but she wasn’t a criminal. Why would she qualify as a bad apple?

Certainly there are non-Christians and non-theists that are capable of violence. G. Gordon Liddy and Fidel Castro, for example. But neither were motivated by their lack of belief. And certainly, Liddy was not left-wing.

One problem that I do think is caused by extreme religious fundamentalism is repression. That can lead to emotional turmoil and acting out.

BTW, what violent Buddhists is the OP referring to? If I understand correctly, Buddhists are not theists anyway.

<i>Don’t forget ALF and ELF (Animal and Enviromental Liberation Front, respectively.), two domestic left-wing terrorist groups. They have a habit of torching SUV’s, releasing research animals, burning new housing developments, ect.</i>

They havn’t killed anyone yet, but it’s only a matter of time. I know they torched a building under construction recently, and three construction workers asleep in the buliding at the time werre lucky to get out.

Can I just add that liberalism isn’t necessarily the antithesis of religion, quite the opposite – especially outside of the US. So it is quite possible to be a religious nut and a liberal. :wink: