Nobody is usually more open to new facts than an atheist-just because you can’t come up with anything in the way of evidence today doesn’t mean we’ll refuse to look at any evidence you come up with tomorrow or the next day or the next. Unlike some religionists that have been raised to believe in spite of whatever facts may come their way, we are ready and willing to take a looksee before dismissing it out of hand.
If you’re going to grind your argument that fine then nobody ever committed a crime solely due to their religion either. The Inquisitors, for example, never killed anyone because of their Christian beliefs. They killed people because of their belief they should kill people who weren’t Christians.
Some atheists are like this (I feel it’s an accurate description of my own atheism). But other atheists are more “devout”. There was a thread here in which the OP asked atheists how they would react if they experience evidence that some religion was true. And several self-professed atheists said that they would refuse to believe in God even if he appeared to them personally and performed miracles in their presence.
Or, just, “That’s a bad law, so I’ll ignore it by buying booze from my friend who’ll sell it out of the back of his pickup.” It may be a bad law, but I would be using my disbelief as an excuse to break it.
I haven’t watched it, but I’ve heard reports that this was how the debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham ended. Someone asked, “What would make you change your mind?” Bill Nye said, “Evidence.” Ken Ham said, “Nothing.”
(Quoted only from a third-hand report. If this is calumny, I beg pardon.)
The Inquisition was inextricably entwined with religion. It was run by an explicitly religious organisation and punished others for having the wrong religious beliefs. It was justified by the religious beliefs of those involved. They meted out punishments because of their religious belief they should do so. You can say their beliefs weren’t “Christian” and that may be true by the standards of modern liberal Christian thought, but you cannot deny their beliefs were part and parcel of their religion.
To the extent non religious motives (power and material gain) underlay the Inquisition (as of course they did) religion was nonetheless used as a tool, something to which it lends itself particularly well. Clever people have always been able to use religion to manipulate others: it’s all fairy tales anyway, so if I’m the person who tells believers what the fairy tales are or what they mean I can control the believers:
*“Martyr yourself killing unbelievers, and you will go to heaven”
“God tells us to kill the unbelievers!”*
Try re-writing these from an atheist point of view, using just atheism as a basis for motivation. It just doesn’t work:
*“Martyr yourself killing believers and, ummm, well you’ll die I guess.”
“There isn’t any higher power to tell us to kill the believers!”*
You’re trying to create an equivalence that just isn’t there.
I can’t claim to have read every thread on religion on these boards so perhaps you are appropriately characterising what these “devout” atheists have said. However, I have seen this debate played out several times and IME you are likely to be mischaracterising their position. I’m not going to hijack this thread any more than we already have by going into the details, but basically IME these “devout” atheists point out two things: firstly, religion often posits a deity that has characteristics that are impossible, so no method of evidencing such characteristics is apparent. Secondly, the evidence the religious propose as being reasonably convincing basically never is: I can for example think of any number of more plausible explanations for someone appearing to me and telling me they are a god and seeming to perform miracles than “god exists”.
I don’t know. There is the general idea of a reformed/released prisoner having ‘served their time’ and ‘paid their debt to society’. I imagine that concept rests more easily with some categories of crime than others.
This vague notion is already a secular concept that many religious people happen to also subscribe to.
"District Court Judge Michele Hogan said she was sending him to prison in part because of the serious nature of his crime and because of his refusal to accept responsibility for his actions.
“When a woman tells you she doesn’t want to have sex, that means she does not want to have sex,” Hogan said. “You don’t hit her. You don’t punch her. . . . I’m very concerned that you’re not remorseful.”
In order to reply to the question, we have to understand what we in our current social setting mean by Blame.
The received position is that there is some element in any human being above a certain cognitive level that is the repository for societal blame. We do not blame objects for their behaviour at all, nor animals in the same manner as humans; we excuse the severely cognitively challenged and some people who are believe to be incapable of telling right from wrong at all.
The assumption then is that for an organism to be blamed for an action (and potentially forgiven or not forgiven) then they must have some such repository for blame. Christians might call this a soul, and others might call it a word implying that such an object is the controlling mechanism for behaviour- a definite initial cause of each piece of behaviour that may be blamable.
Our laws then go on to excuse other categories of human behaviour from blame. Exceptions such as:
1/ Automatism
2/ Reflex
3/ Duress
4/ Self Defence
5/ State mandated actions that otherwise might be culpable
a/ Military action
b/ Imprisonment, fining, Carrying out judicial killing, or other penaties
c/ Taxation
Other excuses have include Crimes of Passion, Crimes caused by Provocation, Crimes committed by one class that are not crimes committed the other way.
Basically each jurisdiction has very woolly edges to its concept of culpability; nowhere is there a reliable scientific justification for the current position which is essentially a socially constructed entity.
Most philosophers and Scientists are Determinists rather than Libertarians- they do not believe that such a repository for blame exists as an object in the real world. Some believe that it is socially constructed and this justifies using it as a construct whereas others believe that it is a mere chimera and does not exist at all.
Most ordinary people reject this set of ideas and believe that people are moral agents.
In order to forgive, one must first have blamed. If a repository for blame is a mere construct (useful socially but not an object in the real world) then forgiveness is merely construct and exists solely as an attitude and belief contingent on the existence of such constructs.
For most people who consider this subject analytically, rationally and empirically, there is no such thing as blame and forgiveness; they are merely statements about the utterer and not about the original performer of the action.
Personally I am a Hard Determinist and do not see any person as a repository for blame, and therefore have no reason to blame nor forgive them as I see their actions (however desirable or undesirable) as “as caused by the history of the world” as balls connecting on the pool table. Praise and Blame merely reflect what I feel about the value of the act to society and are not connected to the performer.
I do not ‘blame’ rocks, or trains, or animals or the mentally impaired, or the other excused categories for their behaviours in the same manner as most members of society also protect them from blame. But I extend this further and believe that even the most cognitively and emotionally intact person also lacks this idea of prime mover and hence they too are excused from blame and do not need forgiveness.
I think you’re avoiding an equivalence that is there. When the Jacobins or the Bolsheviks waged campaigns to suppress religion, saying their atheism was not the primary motive for their actions seems like a “no true Scotsmen” argument. Especially if you’re arguing that the Inquisitors were acting on the basis of their religious beliefs.
And the appropriate motto was “le cléricalisme voilà l’ennemi”.
I notice you cut out the parts of my post you couldn’t deal with.