I guess it depends on what you’re talking about.
The fact that rabid atheists haven’t caused destruction in the name of atheism the way that rabid religious people have isn’t because atheists are somehow better, it’s because atheism hasn’t had the power.
I dunno, maybe nobody was saying otherwise.
But atheism isn’t the central part of Communism, it’s more incidental. The harmful actions of Communist regimes mostly were to spread Communism, not atheism itself, unlike say the Crusades or the 9/11 attacks, which were done in the names of Christianity and Islam, respectively.
I agree with you on the persecution of believers though, which brings me to…
So did the believers who were persecuted get together and explicitly not tout Communism as a form of government, or was it assumed they were enemies because they were Christians? (honest question)
I so agree. I believe that every Thursday an invisible, pink striped gnome comes into my house and replaces all my possessions with identical ones. No one has been able to prove it doesn’t happen and it is arrogant for people to think they KNOW it doesn’t.
Oh dear, the “ooh the Universe is amazing so therefore you must believe there’s a point, and furthermore you’re arrogant so STFU” argument of the OP kind of lets it all down into a sticky heap.
It’s perfectly possible to be awed by the Universe without adding an unnecessary layer of complexity to its existence, you know.
Run yourself through the Total Perspective Vortex, Gozu:
“The Universe… the whole infinite Universe. The infinite suns, the infinite distances between them - and yourself, an invisible dot on an invisible dot, infinitely small. Infinitely small.”
Here’s what I know, though: Life is too damn sort to be basing how I live my life on a premise for which no evidence has been presented, because if we are expected to spend serious time considering such premises we won’t get anything of substance done.
Or are you saying that, among all premises for which there is no evidence, only yours is the exception to the rule?
Religion can be and is used as a means of manipulating others. Any number of megalomaniacs have dressed themselves up in religion, claimed to speak for a god and used that to convince others to do their bidding.
It’s a bit hard for an atheist megalomaniac to convince other atheists that they must do something because the god they don’t believe didn’t tell him that they should do so.
Furthermore, religion is a bunch of people who believe in a doctrine, and groups of people with something like that in common are a megalomaniac’s dream because they are (to a degree) herdable.
A bunch of people whose only common feature is a lack of a belief in something is like a bunch of animals whose common feature is not being frogs. Consequently, atheism does not amplify herdability.
If that was true, we would not be religious. Religion is about NOT understanding the universe, the meaning of life, or anything else. It’s about making up an egotistical fantasy world and denying any and all aspects of reality that contradict it.
So you have mathematical proof that Christianity has saved more lives than it’s taken ? You have proof that the good it’s done outweighs the evil ? I don’t see how that’s even possible; there isn’t enough good available to be done for that to be true.
When I look at Christianity, I see a grim, grey disease, a mind-virus of fear and despair and hate that has spread itself across the world, spreading by bloodshed and destruction and coercion and lies. Slaughtering millions, enslaving millions more, destroying cultures and art and languages. Crushing much of the world under it’s malignance, and corrupting the parts of the world it doesn’t control outright. It has spent two millennia making humanity as miserable as it could; it is the enemy of any form of happiness not gotten by harming others. It has twisted humanity beyond repair, as far as I can tell; we are creatures immersed in hatred, of ourselves, the universe and each other, and we will never rise above what Christianity and it’s spawn have made of us.
That is my honest opinion of Christianity; the “flip side” you refer to. I cannot imagine any good that could come from it that would make up for that.
Yes, they are rather Borgish, and the more religious they are, the more Borgish they are. And yes, they are forced to believe; that’s why people make a point of infecting children, before they are able to defend themselves.
While I respect your beliefs and cannot dispute them with evidence, I personally struggle with the concept of an invisible gnome being pink and having stripes. In my mind, this is a contradiction, which is why I struggle with the notion of having faith in it.
See that? See what I did? I made my disbelief clear, gave a reason, but did so respectfully. It was fun. I encourage all people, atheist or otherwise, to approach those with whom you disagree with that level of courtesy.
I am duly chastised. I will now delete the part of the Pledge of Allegiance which says there is no God, remove “We Don’t Trust No God” from our money, no longer come to your house and drop off atheist pamphlets, stop the “moment of noise” before school, and stop having the high-school football team get together to renounce God before games.
See, this is exactly the sort of thing I’m talking about; I’ll presume you didn’t intend to come off as condescending, but in this case you certainly do. Whatever morals I have come not from some fantasy about having to answer to some non-existent deity on some extremely unlikely judgement day, they come from the fact that I care about people, that I get no particular enjoyment from making them unhappy or doing harm to them, and because I prefer to believe that if I do not pre-judge others, and treat them with courtesy and respect, they will return the favor. I’m naive like that.
If God exists, and if I at some point I stand before Him and decide to deny His existance, all it means is that I’m denying a fact, and lots of people have denied facts before. It really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense that this supposed deity, the all-knowing and most powerful force in the universe, would have such a fragile and childlike ego that this sort of thing would throw Him a rage petulant enough to cast me into an eternal lake of fire, but if He’s gonna do that for something as trivial as denying a fact, well, I’d say there’s just no pleasing Him. On the other hand, since there is no objective evidence of any kind for this particular deity, my failure to acknowledge His existance denies no facts that I’m aware of.
Knowing there is no God is not anywhere in the same neighborhood of being an equal leap of faith as knowing there is one. The unprovability of God’s existence does not imply equal probability. An all-knowing, all-powerful being that must be highly complex yet did not evolve from simpler beginnings and always existed, which there is zero credible evidence for, is much more likely not to exist than to exist. Any nonsense about existing out of space and time does not make His existence a 50/50 proposition.
Well, my impression is that here on the SDMB atheistic zealotry is at least as prominent as any other kind. Other places, the proportions probably are a lot different.
My main objection to your objection is that it went something like this:
OP: I Pit people who do X.
First response: But people of type Y are so much worse.
That may well be very true, but that doesn’t mean that it’s okay to do X or that it’s wrong to be annoyed at people who do X.
My second objection is that you were being far less careful to avoid lumping all religious people in with the kind of destructive zealots you were denouncing than the OP was to avoid lumping all atheists together with the kind he was denouncing.
The problem with Angry Atheists is that they want to be right. They want to equate God theory with things that are ridiculous like the “Flying Spaghetti Monster” “Teapot in Space” “Invisible Gnome” etc etc etc.
As if believers are some how A. Stupid and B. Gullible fools that don’t think But the problem is that most believers DO have some sort of evidence or proof that makes them believe their is a God.
There are very few “blind faithers” in the world, its true there are some blind faithers but most people who wind up getting into a discussion with an atheist are not blind faithers but people who have given the matter a very good deal of thought.
The problem is for me with the atheist, he wants to be RIGHT. He wants his perspective and his worldview to be the TRUTH. When its just his perspective.
You look at a situation and see coincidence where a believer might see God. There is room for both views.
The atheist zealot that wants to stamp out the other view does so only because he is too insecure to hold onto his belief in a world where others hold onto their different beliefs.
