To be fair, I get LP’s point: like atheism, theism, at its purest, is simply a belief that a god or gods exist. That belief doesn’t drive anything either. It’s only when you start adding the trappings of specific religions and ideologies, such as the ideas that My God Is The Right God and You Must Worship My God, which are admittedly not at all rare among the world’s religions, that the drive to kill people over religion comes into play. So it’s not fair to compare religion to atheism, because it’s not comparing apple to apple, it’s comparing an apple pie to an apple.
Still, aside from that, communism only has atheism as a supporting tenet. It is not the core belief around which the ideology was constructed.
And LonesomePolecat’s going to roll in and say that theism doesn’t drive anyone to do anything either, since it’s the mere belief in a non-lack of gods. Never mind that his hypothetical ‘just theists’ are a scarce breed and that when speaking generally about theists it’s a very fair assumption that most of them have a considerably wider set of theistic beliefs than just a non-lack of gods. And there have been rather a lot of examples where some subset of their theistic and theistically-backed beliefs incited or facilitated and excused atrocity.
Whereas by contrast, there are no examples where a mere lack of god belief has incited anything. Even when angry atheists go crazy and start threads calling for the death of billions of religions people, that’s not caused by their atheism - it’s caused by their opinions of the theistic people, a subject that atheism doesn’t even tangentially speak on.
Of course, there apparently are some “just theists” out there too - usually calling themselves agnostics, though perhaps a few of those people who claim to believe only in the watchmaker crator god without anything added might not be lying about it. And of course, people with vague bare-bones mere-non-lack-of-gods theistic belief never are impelled to action based on it either. However pretending that these guys are the only true theists is No True Scotsmanning well over 99% of historical humanity.
There was (a short time ago) a very long and very interesting thread regarding the many shades of atheism. The simplistic definition you give would not have given it so much material.
The definition of ahteism you give does not work in the real world, only in a dictionary.
That definition is ideal because atheists can never do anything wrong because they are atheistic. If they do they are either not really atheistic or had another motivation, even if they themselves would mention their atheism as the driving force in the action. The atheistic infallible popes would excommunicate them, no-true-Scotsman them, and shrug of saying “see, atheism doesn’t make you do anything”; it might work in a cafe discussion, but never in the real world.
Because the real world is dominated by religious people hungry to find something to bash atheism with. So, they equate Communism and atheism so they can validate their own need to believe that atheists are all monsters.
I think you made a mistake in your last sentence, lemme correct it for ya “so they can validate their own need to believe that beleivers are all monsters”
Materialism is a lack of belief of supernatural phenomenon including gods. How on earth is this being spectacularly dishonest about merely lack of belief in gods. It’s for the exact same reason. No fairy dust, no midichlorians, no ghosts, no gods, just what we can observe. Seems to me you are one of the people who just can’t understand lack of belief in something.
Who doesn’t agree, other than you, that the core of Marxist philosophy is about capital, division of labor and class struggle? How this occurred was through human interactions with each other and the environment. Throughout history, societies evolved with certain divisions of labor. That’s materialist viewpoint that is tangential to the main point of communism.
They could have come up with the idea that capitalism derived from worker oppression was due to the devil who wanted to exploit good people throughout history. But Jesus will come down in the form of the Lord Lenin and the Holy Bolsheviks who will lead the good workers out of feudalism and industrial slavery into the Golden Age of the Holy Workers by crushing the evil capitalists. The Golden Age will be a classless utopia on earth with Lenin sitting at the right hand of the Father. (of course, that will be after a few holy wars and blessed dictatorships but we’ll make it) All this was prophesied by Marx the Baptist.
I doubtless participated in that thread, and contributed much material to it. Not that most of that’s relevent here, despite your odd attempt to use it as a diversionary tactic here.
The definition of atheist I us is the one I live by, in the real world. And it applies to every atheist I’ve ever heard of as well - largely because we’re not talking about the differing levels of certaintly in disbelief, which is the point upon which atheists disagree. The point of discussion is the degree to which non-god and its non-pronouncements are used as a justification for actions - which is zero all across the board, despite your active fantasy life.
You’ve never actually seen the real world, have you? Or at least, not the real world with atheists in it. Becuase you’re projecting like a motherfucker and making a fool of yourself doing so. Seriously, you sound like a man with massive thick hair telling a bald man how terribly difficult he must find it to keep his non-coif from getting tangled. Honestly, irrational and deranged. Pitiful.
The stuff you bolded has nothing whatsoever to do with materialism. Capital, division of labor and class struggle still exist even if there’s a god. Or maybe you think communism never happened, in the little fantasy world you live in?
Ohhh, trying new debate tactics… “you don’t know nuthin’”, “fantasy world”, “real life”…I’m touched; I wish there was a tear-in-the-eye smiley.
I love the part where you say that Marxism has nothing to do with materialism. Defining Marxism without historic materialism is so funny it makes my laptops antivirus start running.
You’re the smart guy who pointed out that we should start assessing baselines of fantasy with you pointing out your baseline is belief in a zombie carpenter. Given that, it’s actually unsurprising that the things you say have so little to do with reality. (For example, you seem to be laboring under the clearly deranged belief that my pointing out of your delusionary state only started with my prior post.)
And you’re also the moron who is strawmanning atheistic motivations with the enthusiasm reserved for people who truly have know idea about what they’re talking about, and thus have nothing holding them back. Well, nothing save perhaps intellectual honesty, but you’re not afflicted with that.
Says you, but you’re a moronic loon who consistently doesn’t know what you’re talking about, so I take your absurd pronouncement with a grain of salt. Despite how desperately you need this to be true.
I am a deluuuuuuuuuuusional, I build straaaaaaaaawwwwwmen, I’m a moroooooonic loon and I worship a zombie carrrrrrpenter while eating flaaaaaaatbreads. (written G#m - *rallentando *at the end.)
You seem to be labouring under the clearly deranged belief that you only stopped makng sense in you last post.
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(Let’s hear it again) I am a deluuuuuuuuuuusional, I build straaaaaaaaawwwwwmen, I’m a moroooooonic loon and I worship a zombie carrrrrrpenter while eating flaaaaaaatbreads.
You’re a deluuuuuuuuuuusional, you build straaaaaaaaawwwwwmen, you are a moroooooonic loon and you worship a zombie carrrrrrpenter while eating flaaaaaaatbreads.
You’re a deluuuuuuuuuuusional, you build straaaaaaaaawwwwwmen, you are a moroooooonic loon and you worship a zombie carrrrrrpenter while eating flaaaaaaatbreads.
You’re a deluuuuuuuuuuusional, you build straaaaaaaaawwwwwmen, you are a moroooooonic loon and you worship a zombie carrrrrrpenter while eating flaaaaaaatbreads.
Hmm, this is a fun debating style you have…
You’re saying that capital, division of labor and class struggle are atheistic concepts. These things otherwise don’t exist? OK, conversation over. :eek:
Exactly. The OP, no matter how crazy, is entitled “All religious people should be executed”. The need to push theism or deism here is is a distraction the fact that there are an incredible number of examples of religious wars and atrocities in the name of religion. It’s also a distraction from refuting the ridiculous claim that atheists killed 10s of millions of people simply because they were religious.
If there was some critical mass of atheists in the future that would be threatened by religious people, I suppose it’s possible to persecute a huge amount of religious people based solely on their religion. As already joked about in this thread, getting the critical mass is the hard part. Take away creator gods and people immediately start worshiping something else. :smack: