# Should we forgive (and forget) religions' past atrocities? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 25, 2010, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344 "2010-10-25T22:15:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Calculon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b5a626/32.png) [@Calculon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Calculon)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2010, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344/41 "2010-10-26T12:12:34Z")
> [@Latro](#): > > Even if you hold that religion was just a tool for murder, why not get rid of that tool? > It’s one means less to commit murder. > AK47’s are a handy tool for murder, therefore in the civilised world people are not allowed to carry AK47’s around. > Sure they can use axes or machetes or nationalism, patriotism, racism. Still you took one tool away, which makes it just a bit harder and that’s good. Because getting rid of the tool would cause far more harm than just letting it exist. I am generally curious about this, how do you suggest that we get people to give up their religious belief? Ask them nicely? How exactly do you see this playing out? How can we actively get rid of religion without trampling on people’s freedom? In history whenever groups have advocated getting rid of religion, the slaughter of religious people is not far away. It would be ironic to slaughter all the religious believers so that religion won’t exist to cause slaughters. Calculon. ---
**Author:** ![Calculon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b5a626/32.png) [@Calculon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Calculon)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2010, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344/42 "2010-10-26T12:23:56Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Nonsense. We see it all the time, believers who refuse to define their beliefs in any but the vaguest terms, who shift goalposts like crazy, who claim that God is unknowable in one breath and then claim they know what he is like or wants in the next. In this thread I think the biggest goalpost shifting is being done on what “religion” actually is and why it always leads to violence. People have been very adamant that we need to get rid of it, yet no-one has really been able to give a good reason why or even what precisely it is that we ahve to get rid of. > [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > That they are all based on the denial of reality and of reason. And that they have a history of being _grossly_ detrimental to society. So is it that basically anyone that does not chare your unique view on the world has abandoned reality and reason? Are you really that arrogant? Also, since we are talking about rationality and reason, can you give some rational, reasonable evidence that religion has been _grossly_ detrimental to society. I think it is really telling that the sorts of evidence for the evils of religion people cite are things like the crusades, or the inquisition, things that happened centuries ago. Are you actually interested in forming views based on evidence or do you just want to shout at religious people how evil they are? > [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > An organized system of beliefs that exists in denial of facts, rational thought, or both. And religion is destructive because denying facts and logic is destructive. It is in effect evil because it requires the denial of reality, which makes doing good nearly impossible even for the well meaning. And religious thought by nature goes hand in hand with utter ruthlessness. There’s nothing better for turning off people’s moral sense. So again it comes down to anything that you don’t agree with is a religion. Care to enunciate exactly what facts or logic religions are in denial of? Secondly it seems as though you are a moral realist (in that you believe objective moral values exist). How do you define that objective morality in absense of God? > [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > No, it is an attempt to defend ourselves from the relentless attempts of the believers to label all atheists mass murdering demonic monsters. Communists killed Christians for the same reasons Christians killed everyone who wasn’t Christian back when they could do so; the goal of both Christianity and Communism the the annihilation of all other systems of belief. They are quite similar in many ways. > > Atheism can’t drive anyone to do anything; it is simply disbelief in gods and has no commandments, no demands to make anyone do anything. It wasn’t atheism that drove the Communists to kill, that’s why you see that behavior from Communists and not atheists in general. Something believers trying to spread blood libel against us consistently ignore. I will grant you that Communism is not the sum total of atheism. There are other types of atheism. The way I see it atheism is the opposite of theism. Theism is merely the belief in God, atheism is merely the disbelief in God. Taken just like that neither view really motivates someone to do anything. However no-one just believes in these atheism and theism. Everyone adds extra beliefs onto these statements which define their worldview. On the atheist side Communism is one set of possible extra beliefs. There are others, such as naturalism or existentialism. Despite the differences between these beliefs the statement that “no atheists have committed atrocities because of their atheist beliefs” is false because Communists, being a subset of atheists, have committed attrocities to advance their communistic ideology. Calculon. ---
**Author:** ![Latro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2010, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344/43 "2010-10-26T12:29:03Z")
> [@Calculon](#): > > Because getting rid of the tool would cause far more harm than just letting it exist. > > I am generally curious about this, how do you suggest that we get people to give up their religious belief? Ask them nicely? How exactly do you see this playing out? How can we actively get rid of religion without trampling on people’s freedom? > > In history whenever groups have advocated getting rid of religion, the slaughter of religious people is not far away. It would be ironic to slaughter all the religious believers so that religion won’t exist to cause slaughters. > > Calculon. Education, I would say. It’s telling that you would think in terms of violence.. ---
**Author:** ![Calculon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b5a626/32.png) [@Calculon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Calculon)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2010, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344/44 "2010-10-26T12:43:18Z")
> [@Latro](#): > > Education, I would say. > It’s telling that you would think in terms of violence.. Not really. The reason I suggested violence is twofold. One is that historically violence towards religious people is usually where the sentiment of “we need to get rid of religion” ends up. Secondly education has been tried before and failed. There are plenty of smart educated people who also are believers in religions. In fact that is why I think we are starting to see atheists becoming more militant. I think that atheism is starting to lose much of the intellectual ground that it occupied in the middle of the 20th century, and as a result atheists are becoming more intolerant, anti-intellectual and shrill in their critiques of religion. So I didn’t bring up education simply because I don’t think it would work. Unless of course by “education” you mean “indoctrination”. Still I don’t think that would work either, unless you also backed it up with efforts to intentionally keep the people ignorant and also gave out harsh punnishments to anyone who became religious. Of course by that stage any pretense that you are doing this to make the world a better place has completely gone out the window. Calculon. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2010, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344/45 "2010-10-26T12:48:22Z")
> [@Calculon](#): > > I am generally curious about this, how do you suggest that we get people to give up their religious belief? Ask them nicely? How exactly do you see this playing out? How can we actively get rid of religion without trampling on people’s freedom? > > In history whenever groups have advocated getting rid of religion, the slaughter of religious people is not far away. Nonsense. That is, again, just an attempt to equate Communist fanatics with all atheists so you can pretend we are all mass murderers. > [@Calculon](#): > > In this thread I think the biggest goalpost shifting is being done on what “religion” actually is and why it always leads to violence. People have been very adamant that we need to get rid of it, yet no-one has really been able to give a good reason why or even what precisely it is that we ahve to get rid of. No, people have given definitions; you just don’t _like_ them. > [@Calculon](#): > > So is it that basically anyone that does not chare your unique view on the world has abandoned reality and reason? Are you really that arrogant? No, I said nothing like that; you are just (unsurprisingly) twisting my words. > [@Calculon](#): > > Also, since we are talking about rationality and reason, can you give some rational, reasonable evidence that religion has been _grossly_ detrimental to society. I think it is really telling that the sorts of evidence for the evils of religion people cite are things like the crusades, or the inquisition, things that happened centuries ago. Don’t be silly, naturally a thread on the subject of historical evils committed by religion would neglect more recent evils; those aren’t the point. I can go on and on about evils being committed in the name of religion right now, and have in the past. Religion is still committing massive amounts of evil today, as it always has and as I’m sure it always will as long as it exists. > [@Calculon](#): > > So again it comes down to anything that you don’t agree with is a religion. Care to enunciate exactly what facts or logic religions are in denial of? Many or all of the laws of physics for one. And there’s the fact that there’s no evidence for any of them. And the fact that they wildly contradict each other. And contain internal contradictions. And generally outright contradict reality; the Christian Problem of Evil being a classic example. And so on. They are all gibbering nonsense. > [@Calculon](#): > > Secondly it seems as though you are a moral realist (in that you believe objective moral values exist). How do you define that objective morality in absense of God? God is morally irrelevant, even if he was anything other than incoherent nonsense. Nor do I buy into objective morality, or care if it exists or not. > [@Calculon](#): > > I will grant you that Communism is not the sum total of atheism. There are other types of atheism. The way I see it atheism is the opposite of theism. Theism is merely the belief in God, atheism is merely the disbelief in God. Taken just like that neither view really motivates someone to do anything. However no-one just believes in these atheism and theism. Everyone adds extra beliefs onto these statements which define their worldview. On the atheist side Communism is one set of possible extra beliefs. There are others, such as naturalism or existentialism. Despite the differences between these beliefs the statement that “no atheists have committed atrocities because of their atheist beliefs” is false because Communists, being a subset of atheists, have committed attrocities to advance their communistic ideology. Wrong. Plenty of people are just atheists; very, very few people are just theists. Nor does being an atheist require the elevation of fantasy over reality; theism does. Nor for that matter is the argument about “theism” in the first place; it is about _religion_. Nor is the constant attempt to lump together atheism and communism anything but an attempt to demonize atheists. ---
**Author:** ![Latro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2010, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344/46 "2010-10-26T12:53:43Z")
> [@Calculon](#): > > Not really. The reason I suggested violence is twofold. One is that historically violence towards religious people is usually where the sentiment of “we need to get rid of religion” ends up. Secondly education has been tried before and failed. There are plenty of smart educated people who also are believers in religions. In fact that is why I think we are starting to see atheists becoming more militant. I think that atheism is starting to lose much of the intellectual ground that it occupied in the middle of the 20th century, and as a result atheists are becoming more intolerant, anti-intellectual and shrill in their critiques of religion. So I didn’t bring up education simply because I don’t think it would work. This holds largely for the US. Where you have, from what I gather, a bad educational system. It’s not by chance that you have a proportionally large number of religious nutters, and people who vote republican. > [@](#): > > Unless of course by “education” you mean “indoctrination”. Still I don’t think that would work either, unless you also backed it up with efforts to intentionally keep the people ignorant and also gave out harsh punnishments to anyone who became religious. Of course by that stage any pretense that you are doing this to make the world a better place has completely gone out the window. > > Calculon. This is called projection. wikidef: a psychological defense mechanism where a person unconsciously denies their own attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which are then ascribed to the outside world. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2010, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344/47 "2010-10-26T12:55:56Z")
> [@Calculon](#): > > Not really. The reason I suggested violence is twofold. One is that historically violence towards religious people is usually where the sentiment of “we need to get rid of religion” ends up. No, that’s just standard Christian persecution fantasies. Christians are the sort who think they are being persecuted if the people they are oppressing or killing fight back or complain about it. > [@Calculon](#): > > Secondly education has been tried before and failed. There are plenty of smart educated people who also are believers in religions. Not that many. And it also depends on the quality of the education; American science education is seriously deficient because it is designed to cater to Christianity. Nor does being “smart and educated” keep them from being intellectually crippled by being religious. > [@Calculon](#): > > In fact that is why I think we are starting to see atheists becoming more militant. I think that atheism is starting to lose much of the intellectual ground that it occupied in the middle of the 20th century, and as a result atheists are becoming more intolerant, anti-intellectual and shrill in their critiques of religion. So I didn’t bring up education simply because I don’t think it would work. > > Unless of course by “education” you mean “indoctrination”. Still I don’t think that would work either, unless you also backed it up with efforts to intentionally keep the people ignorant and also gave out harsh punnishments to anyone who became religious. Of course by that stage any pretense that you are doing this to make the world a better place has completely gone out the window. Now that’s a classic case of psychological projection if I ever saw one. That’s not atheism you are describing, it’s American Christianity. Anti-intellectual, ignorant, shrill, losing intellectual ground, intolerant, indoctrination, harsh punishments - that’s Christianity, not atheism. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2010, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344/48 "2010-10-26T13:36:06Z")
> [@Cyningablod](#): > > Cite? With pleasure. For the Spanish Inquisition, we have [an upper limit of 2,000 deaths](http://www.spiritus-temporis.com/spanish-inquisition/death-tolls.html). For Chairman Mao’s reign, different sources provide widely varying death tolls, but the very lowest I’ve ever seen is twenty million persons killed. That’s more than 2,000 murders per day. Keep in mind that’s using the higher estimate for the Spanish Inquision and the lowest estimate for Mao. If we used more accurate numbers, we’d probably find that Mao was doing a Spanish Inquisition every few hours for 27 years, on average. > [@](#): > > The Spanish Inquisition was _just one brief example_ of the atrocities wrought by religions around the globe, on every continent and in every nation, over _at least_ the past three thousand years. First of all, please provide a cite to justify this sentence. Second, concerning the Spanish Inquisition, while it’s not an institution that I’d particularly want to see returning, it was a much better insitution than the secular courts of its time. [A look at some facts tells us:](http://old.nationalreview.com/comment/madden200406181026.asp) > [@](#): > > The Catholic Church’s response to this problem was the Inquisition, first instituted by Pope Lucius III in 1184. It was born out of a need to provide fair trials for accused heretics using laws of evidence and presided over by knowledgeable judges. From the perspective of secular authorities, heretics were traitors to God and the king and therefore deserved death. From the perspective of the Church, however, heretics were lost sheep who had strayed from the flock. As shepherds, the pope and bishops had a duty to bring them back into the fold, just as the Good Shepherd had commanded them. So, while medieval secular leaders were trying to safeguard their kingdoms, the Church was trying to save souls. The Inquisition provided a means for heretics to escape death and return to the community. > > As this new report confirms, most people accused of heresy by the Inquisition were either acquitted or their sentences suspended. Those found guilty of grave error were allowed to confess their sin, do penance, and be restored to the Body of Christ. The underlying assumption of the Inquisition was that, like lost sheep, heretics had simply strayed. If, however, an inquisitor determined that a particular sheep had purposely left the flock, there was nothing more that could be done. Unrepentant or obstinate heretics were excommunicated and given over to secular authorities. Despite popular myth, the Inquisition did not burn heretics. It was the secular authorities that held heresy to be a capital offense, not the Church. The simple fact is that the medieval Inquisition saved uncounted thousands of innocent (and even not-so-innocent) people who would otherwise have been roasted by secular lords or mob rule. > > During the 13th century the Inquisition became much more formalized in its methods and practices. Highly trained Dominicans answerable to the Pope took over the institution, creating courts that represented the best legal practices in Europe. As royal authority grew during the 14th century and beyond, control over the Inquisition slipped out of papal hands and into those of kings. Instead of one Inquisition there were now many. Despite the prospect of abuse, monarchs like those in Spain and France generally did their best to make certain that their inquisitions remained both efficient and merciful. During the 16th century, when the witch craze swept Europe, it was those areas with the best-developed inquisitions that stopped the hysteria in its tracks. In Spain and Italy, trained inquisitors investigated charges of witches’ sabbaths and baby roasting and found them to be baseless. Elsewhere, particularly in Germany, secular or religious courts burned witches by the thousands. > > Compared to other medieval secular courts, the Inquisition was positively enlightened. Why then are people in general and the press in particular so surprised to discover that the Inquisition did not barbecue people by the millions? First of all, when most people think of the Inquisition today what they are really thinking of is the Spanish Inquisition. No, not even that is correct. They are thinking of the myth of the Spanish Inquisition. Amazingly, before 1530 the Spanish Inquisition was widely hailed as the best run, most humane court in Europe. There are actually records of convicts in Spain purposely blaspheming so that they could be transferred to the prisons of the Spanish Inquisition. After 1530, however, the Spanish Inquisition began to turn its attention to the new heresy of Lutheranism. It was the Protestant Reformation and the rivalries it spawned that would give birth to the myth. > [@](#): > > You really think that Communist (“atheist”) atrocities _from only the 20th century_ come anywhere CLOSE to matching the volume of tears shed, flesh flayed, and blood spilt by religions, over the millennia? :eek: As Sean O’Casey once said, “Politics has slain its thousands, but religion has slain its tens of thousands.” I’m pretty sure any history book is a cite for _that_! To your first question, I believe that the communist atrocities from only the 20th century vastly exceed those committed by religion over the millenia. In answer to your O’Casey quote, I’d just point out that politicians have slain their tens of millions, not just thousands. As far as history books, try [A History of Russia](http://www.amazon.com/History-Russia-Medieval-Contemporary-c-882-1996/dp/0822320967/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1288098385&sr=1-1), by Paul L. Dukes. He documents 23 millions death by Stalin and millions more by other Soviet leaders, and needless to say Stalin ran a distant third behind Hitler and Mao in the 20th century’s mass-murder sweepstakes. So maybe you should think twice before directing me to read “any history book” and find proof that these guys killed only “thousands”. > [@](#): > > But here’s an even more fatal flaw in the But-Mao-and-Stalin-were-ATHEISTS! argument: Neither Mao nor Stalin generally killed _because of_ their atheism; they slaughtered people simple because they were bloodthirsty political dictators. Mao and Stalin both proudly slaughtered religious believers because they believed that exterminating religion was necessary. In the Soviet Union, tens of thousands of clergy were massacred or sent to the gulags along with countless other believers. In China, during the Cultural Revolution, Mao attempted to exterminate all religious believers, some by murder, others by torture and forced labor. Those are not lone examples, but similar things have happened at various times in France, Spain, Portugal, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Germany, Guatemala, … For example, Randy Sullivan of _Rolling Stone_ reported on the Bosnian War and on how the atheist authorities in Serbia were especially irritated by the abiding Catholic faith of the Croats. In one instance, Serbian soldiers abducted a group of Catholic nuns from a convent, gang-raped them repeatedly, then held them prisoner until they could be sure that the nuns were pregnant, so that they’d have to choose between having an abortion or carrying a child of a Serbian rapist. > [@](#): > > Throughout all of history, religious violence has been self-generating; it draws its evil _from its own ideology_. Not so with “atheist violence”. Again, where’s the evidence? Since you have to go so many centuries back to find your examples of Christian atrocities, atrocities which are extremely small compared to those committed by secular governments more recently, doesn’t that rather suggest the opposite? If religiously-motivatved violence occurs automatically as you seem to think, why can’t you point to any examples of Christians committing mass violence in recent times? When I look around the world, I see huge amounts of mass violence and human rights abuse from secular regimes and institutions and not much chance of most of it ending anytime soon, so it certainly looks to be like that’s what is self-generating. > [@](#): > > Slippery slope and straw man, all in one. OF COURSE we don’t “stop” people from helping each other! :rolleyes: No anti-theist that I know, of even the fiercest stripe, wishes to eradicate works of charity performed from religious mandate or inspiration. I doubt that even **Der Trihs** would want to do that. Where did you get this silly idea? The anti-theist position is this: _We don’t NEED religion to help each other out, and all things considered, we’re better off without it, because of how easily it is wielded for evil_. First of all, you’re obviously not familiar with **Der Trihs**. Second, consider this. During the war in El Salvador when right-wing death squads fought against communists and both sides were willing to mass slaughter the populace with indifference, who stood up for the rights up the people of El Salvador, other than the Catholic Church? During the even longer and bloodier war in Guatemala, which went along basically the same lines, who stood up for the indigenous people of Guatemala, other than the Catholic Church? In the current situation in Honduras, who stands up for the rights of workers and the extreme poor, other than the Catholic Church and some Protestant groups? To anyone who knows the history of these countries, it’s obvious that thousand and possibly millions more people would have been killed if the Church hadn’t been there to fight for peace and human rights. The non-religious people who are supposed to help each other out without religion were simply missing in action. So is it your position that huge numbers of people in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and other countries should have been killed because the institution that saved their lives is “easily wielded for evil”? (Incidentally, as you can see in this thread, many of your fellow atheists do not think that this particular instance of assistance to the war victims in El Salvador was a good thing.) ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2010, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344/49 "2010-10-26T13:43:45Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Nonsense. That is, again, just an attempt to equate Communist fanatics with all atheists so you can pretend we are all mass murderers. And how would you characterize your attempt to equate political fanatics with all theists so you can pretend that theists are all mass murderers? I would characterize it as gibbering hate speech, but that’s just me. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2010, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344/50 "2010-10-26T14:16:54Z")
> [@Calculon](#): > > In particular the US is still working through things like the practice of slavery and racism that is not as much a problem in the UK. Racism is not as much a problem in the United Kingdom as it is in the United States? ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2010, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344/51 "2010-10-26T15:33:41Z")
To my mind, 'foregiving" or “condemning” religion on historical grounds is a futile exercise. Religion as an institution is a part of human social evolution, like tribalism. I suppose it is possible to imagine human-level organisms developing civilization without religion or tribalism, but they would not resemble us much. We might as well foregive or condemn humanity for being what it is. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2010, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344/52 "2010-10-26T15:43:10Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > Secondly, and more to the point, it’s misleading because it is true in the strictest of senses - the Spanish Inquisition didn’t kill that many people (that we know of, anyway). Because that’s not what it set out to do. On the other hand, they kidnapped a lot of people. And stole their property. And held them in jail incommunicado for no reason. And tortured them, again and again until they either converted, or died. I don’t think they did. The common portrait of the Spanish Inquisition is not based on history, but rather on propaganda. During the religious controversies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Protestants found it useful to accuse the Catholic Church of all manner of horrendous crimes, often making up the ‘facts’ as they went along. Many of the fictions they dreamed up eventually found their way into mainstream history books. For example, your claim that the Inquisition tortured people to force their conversions is flatly false. Historian Yves Dossat did a study of historical records from of Inquisition cases in one Diocese and found that more than 80% of people who were accused were found innocent and released. Among those who were convicted, only a very small percentage were sentenced to prison. Defendants had the right to counsel from a lawyer, to know the charges against them and respond to those charges, to have time to prepare their defense, to present evidence for themselves, and to call opposing witnesses into question, all of which was in contrast to the secular courts of that time. [(Cite)]([http://www.catholicapologetics.info/apologetics/protestantism/holinquisit.htm#MYTH](http://www.catholicapologetics.info/apologetics/protestantism/holinquisit.htm#MYTH) 3) ---
**Author:** ![Revenant\_Threshold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@Revenant\_Threshold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revenant_Threshold)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2010, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344/53 "2010-10-26T15:45:15Z")
I think religion changes enough that it doesn’t really seem all that fair to lay any kind of responsibilty for atrocities (or triumphs) in the past at its feet. A Christian today might well be appalled by the beliefs of a Christian of 200 AD, and vice-versa. Too, we have the difficulty of seperating out both religion from context, and specific religion from general; as people have already said, we can’t simply look at the actions of a religious person or group and say that those actions were taken because they were religious. On top of that, we can’t even really look at a person’s actions and say what level of religious adherence is at fault; is a Catholic who commits atrocities doing so because of his Christianity, his Catholicism, his Catholicism of the time, his particular congregation’s views, his own personal beliefs? The further in we go, the more likely it is that there are causing reasons for their behaviour (because there simply are more potential reasons), but we have to generalise less too. Really, i’m uncomfortable with assigning blame or praise to anything so potentially nebulous as a philosophy. Nice as it might be to look at the world and see which are the problematic viewpoints, so that we know where to be extra careful, the truth is that atrocities are a result of people, not philosophies. Religion (or irreligion) is a vast enough subject that we really can’t just say “This philosophy is inherently a force for good/evil in the world”, or set blame to it which needs to be forgiven or forgotten. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2010, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344/54 "2010-10-26T15:50:21Z")
The Spanish Inquisition was really small potatoes, persecution-wise, and made (in)famous by Protestant popaganda. It was horrible, but not the be-all and end-all of horrors that it is remembered. Far more significant a crime was what we would now term the “ethnic cleansing” of Jews and Muslims from Spain, of which the Inquisition was merely the tail end effect. But it is questionable how much this had to do with _religion_ specifically, as opposed to simple ethnic conflict - that line is pretty fuzzy. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2010, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344/55 "2010-10-26T16:26:40Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > For example, your claim that the Inquisition tortured people to force their conversions is flatly false. More sleazy tricks from you. Yes, the Inquisition tortured people to force their confessions of guilt rather than to change their mind. Well, that changes everything, doesn’t it ? > [@](#): > > For example, your claim that the Inquisition tortured people to force their conversions is flatly false. Historian Yves Dossat did a study of historical records from of Inquisition cases in one Diocese and found that more than 80% of people who were accused were found innocent and released. You don’t get it, do you ? It could have been 100% and it wouldn’t change a thing. There could never have been any torture beyond the Comfy Chair and it wouldn’t change a thing. The people were being arrested and put on kangaroo trials for not believing in the right sky pixie\*. \*Or worse, for believing in the right sky pixie but not in the right way. You can not make that look anyway other than absurd and abject, no matter how you try. Trying does make you no better than a Holocaust denier in my book, however. ---
**Author:** ![Cyningablod](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9fc29f/32.png) [@Cyningablod](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cyningablod)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2010, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344/56 "2010-10-26T16:41:21Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > First of all, please provide a cite to justify this sentence. No. Your demand here for a cite is absolutely specious and vacuously rhetorical. You know bloody goddamn well of the volume of wars and atrocities, both large-scale and personal, that have been wrought around the world in the name of or for the cause of religion. As has already been pointed out, the actual _body count_ of the Spanish Inquisition ALONE is not at all the whole picture, as you tried to portray it! There were untold tortures, confiscations, imprisonments, banishments… For fuck’s sake, _ **I** _ have been the victim of religious harm! :mad: As a matter of fact, it’s only thanks to the historical intervention of secular humanism that thinkers like **Der Trihs** and I are not dead RIGHT NOW, slain for our skepticism. Historically, in theocratic Christian regimes, this very discussion would be illegal. It is only thanks to secularism, that it is legal. The foreskins and clitorises of the 20th century ALONE, sliced off of unconsenting infants in the name of religion (note that nowadays, circumcision in the West continues based on pseudoscientific “hygenic” justifications) FAR EXCEED the number of any victims of any atheistic totalitarian regime, anytime, anywhere. That’s just basic math. > [@](#): > > Second, concerning the Spanish Inquisition, while it’s not an institution that I’d particularly want to see returning, it was a much better institution than the secular courts of its time. [A look at some facts tells us:](http://old.nationalreview.com/comment/madden200406181026.asp) This statement is a reflection of exactly the sort of moral sickness that religious belief leads to. “_The Spanish Inquisition wasn’t all **that** bad…_” :eek: Racists say the same thing about the Third Reich. > [@](#): > > To your first question, I believe that the communist atrocities from only the 20th century vastly exceed those committed by religion over the millenia. Communist. Not atheist. Thanks for making that distinction, and sparing me the tiresome task of having to point out to you–again–that the two aren’t at all synonymous. Point closed. > [@](#): > > In answer to your O’Casey quote, I’d just point out that politicians have slain their tens of millions, not just thousands. Seriously? You don’t understand that “thousands” is just a figurative term here, a placeholder for the sake of basic comparative illustration? Wow, MAJOR whoosh! (Politics, btw, is a _necessary_ evil. Religion is not.) > [@](#): > > As far as history books, try [A History of Russia](http://www.amazon.com/History-Russia-Medieval-Contemporary-c-882-1996/dp/0822320967/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1288098385&sr=1-1), by Paul L. Dukes. He documents 23 millions death by Stalin and millions more by other Soviet leaders, and needless to say Stalin ran a distant third behind Hitler and Mao in the 20th century’s mass-murder sweepstakes. So maybe you should think twice before directing me to read “any history book” and find proof that these guys killed only “thousands”. Again, you got **majorly** whooshed with the O’Casey quote. Why are religious folks always so narrowly _literalistic_?? > [@](#): > > Mao and Stalin both proudly slaughtered religious believers because they believed that exterminating religion was necessary. […] No. We’re done here. You already admitted that these were _Communist_ murders. > [@](#): > > For example, Randy Sullivan of _Rolling Stone_ reported on the Bosnian War and on how the atheist authorities in Serbia were especially irritated by the abiding Catholic faith of the Croats. In one instance, Serbian soldiers abducted a group of Catholic nuns from a convent, gang-raped them repeatedly, then held them prisoner until they could be sure that the nuns were pregnant, so that they’d have to choose between having an abortion or carrying a child of a Serbian rapist.[…] Again, I sit shocked, in disbelief at the reprehensible misrepresentations that religious apologists will engage in. A religionist using the recent BALKANS WAR as an indictment of atheism??? Seriously??? Do you really not understand the BROAD religious violence that was systematically waged there? Do you really not understand the ethnic and religious conflicts that formed the foundations of that bloody war? Or are you just trying to ignore them? You point out the microscopic speck in the secularist’s eye, ignoring the old-growth forest, in your own! This is pot-kettlism on a positively COSMIC scale. :eek: > [@](#): > > Again, where’s the evidence? Since you have to go so many centuries back to find your examples of Christian atrocities […] Nope. My missing foreskin alone, is more than enough. (_Surely_ you won’t be so specious and ignorant as to try to argue that modern American circumcision was not inspired by 19th-century Christian religious masturba-phobia, and modeled on an ancient, barbaric, tribal religious custom!) In a larger geo-context, examples of very recent, very modern religious atrocities ABOUND, of course. But I reckon you’d also try to find some sleazy way of dismissing the abuses of $cientology, the religious genocides of Rwanda and Sudan, the Jonestown and Branch Davidian and Heaven’s Gate murder/suicides, the physical and sexual abuses of thousands of children at the hands of Catholic clerics, the forced clitorectomies of African baby girls, the murder and dismemberment of albinos in Africa, and so on, and so on, and so on… All 20th century. And all the just off the top of my head. I didn’t even do any Googling. **ITRc** , you have singlehandedly pushed me further towards anti-theism than Harris, Krakauer, Hitchens, and Dawkins EVER could. :mad: ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2010, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344/57 "2010-10-26T18:10:21Z")
> [@Cyningablod](#): > > No. Your demand here for a cite is absolutely specious and vacuously rhetorical. You know bloody goddamn well of the volume of wars and atrocities, both large-scale and personal, that have been wrought around the world in the name of or for the cause of religion. There have been a small number of “war and atrocities” committed “for the name of religion”, small in number and consequence compared to those committed by secular people and institutions who were proud of their total rejection of religion. However, in post 24, you said such atrocities had been committed “in every nation” and “for at least the past 3,000 years”. I think that what you said is false, and I’m asking you to provide a cite to back it up. If you’re unable to do so, then I’ll feel quite safe concluding that what you said in post 24 is false. Please don’t retreat do that silly, old ‘you know bloody gaddamn well line’. If what you said in post 24 was actually widely known, then providing a cite for it would be trivially easy for you. > [@](#): > > As has already been pointed out, the actual body count of the Spanish Inquisition ALONE is not at all the whole picture, as you tried to portray it! There were untold tortures, confiscations, imprisonments, banishments… Since **Kobal** declines to provide a cite to back up this claim, why don’t you provide one? > [@](#): > > For fuck’s sake, I have been the victim of religious harm! As a matter of fact, it’s only thanks to the historical intervention of secular humanism that thinkers like Der Trihs and I are not dead RIGHT NOW, slain for our skepticism. This claim is flatly untrue. Skeptics have lived and freely expressed their views in countries with Christian majorities for millenia. If you want me to believe otherwise, please provide a cite. > [@](#): > > This statement is a reflection of exactly the sort of moral sickness that religious belief leads to. “The Spanish Inquisition wasn’t all that bad…” When, exactly, did I say “the Spanish Inquisition wasn’t all that bad”? I don’t recall saying that; in fact, I said the exact opposite of it. I said: “The Spanish Inquisition is not an institution that I’d like to see return.” If the best that you can do is try to pin fake quotes on me, maybe you should try harder. > [@](#): > > Communist. Not atheist. Thanks for making that distinction, and sparing me the tiresome task of having to point out to you–again–that the two aren’t at all synonymous. Point closed. Stalin, Mao, Castro and all were communists and also atheists. As I’ve and others have already pointed out, they specifically murdered, tortured, and imprisoned huge numbers of Christians and other religious believers because they believed that the extermination of religion would be a good thing. If you’d like to actually respond to this fact, rather than just saying “communist” over and over again, you’re welcome to do so. > [@](#): > > Seriously? You don’t understand that “thousands” is just a figurative term here, a placeholder for the sake of basic comparative illustration? Wow, MAJOR whoosh! Well, that leads us straight back to the claim that religion has caused more wars and atrocities then secular institutions, which I’ve yet to see any evidence for. > [@](#): > > No. We’re done here. You already admitted that these were Communist murders. I’ve done nothing of the sort; please stop misrepresenting me. Among the tens of millions who were killed, tortured, imprisoned, or exiled during the Stalin years, some were chosen because of Stalin’s economic dogma and some because of his atheistic dogma. > [@](#): > > Again, I sit shocked, in disbelief at the reprehensible misrepresentations that religious apologists will engage in. A religionist using the recent BALKANS WAR as an indictment of atheism??? Seriously??? Do you really not understand the BROAD religious violence that was systematically waged there? Do you really not understand the ethnic and religious conflicts that formed the foundations of that bloody war? Or are you just trying to ignore them? You point out the microscopic speck in the secularist’s eye, ignoring the old-growth forest, in your own! This is pot-kettlism on a positively COSMIC scale. Let me get this straight. Yugoslavia was ruled by two atheist dictators from the end of WWII until 1997, [Tito and Milosevic](http://www.incommunion.org/2004/12/12/the-serbian-orthodox-church/). Like their fellow atheist dictators in many other countries, they werre murderous, and particularly murderous towards religious believers. The common figures I’ve seen are 250,000 murders for Tito and 105,000 for Milosevic. Now, apparently, you’re telling me that because these atheists murdered so many Christians and Muslims, this apparently proves that religious people are violent? That’s kind of like blaming the Polish for all the violence they commited against Germans in 1933-1945. You point to “ethnic and religious conflicts” in the Balkans generations before the Bosnia War. There were a few religious conflicts, though most violence was more from tribal groups clashing over land and ancient feuds. That has nothing to do with the war in the 90’s. The war in the 90’s began because Milosevic refused to allow the Catholic Croats and Bosnian Muslims to seperate from Yugoslavia peacefully. He attacked them, they–quite reasonably–fought back. > [@](#): > > Nope. My missing foreskin alone, is more than enough. (Surely you won’t be so specious and ignorant as to try to argue that modern American circumcision was not inspired by 19th-century Christian religious masturba-phobia, and modeled on an ancient, barbaric, tribal religious custom!) Huh? American circumcision was based on medical advice, with scant ties, if any, to the ancient Jewish practice. There are [medical arguments both for and against it](http://aappolicy.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/pediatrics;103/3/686), so listing it as an “atrocity” is a desperate grasp at a straw that only a desperate person would make. As for “unconsenting infants”, we stick unconsenting infants with needles for medical reasons all the time. So the infants get a few minutes of pain; it’s part of life. > [@](#): > > In a larger geo-context, examples of very recent, very modern religious atrocities ABOUND, of course. But I reckon you’d also try to find some sleazy way of dismissing the abuses of $cientology, the religious genocides of Rwanda and Sudan, the Jonestown and Branch Davidian and Heaven’s Gate murder/suicides, the physical and sexual abuses of thousands of children at the hands of Catholic clerics, the forced clitorectomies of African baby girls, the murder and dismemberment of albinos in Africa, and so on, and so on, and so on… All 20th century. And all the just off the top of my head. I didn’t even do any Googling. I could, of course, move through the list, pointing out instances of your untruths and distortions. (For instance, there was never any religious genocide in Rwanda; there was an ethnic genocide.) But you’re obviously trying to lead us off track here. As anyone can see, your attempt to prove “religion” to be evil has changed direction. Whereas you formerly insisted that religious people were “easily turned to evil” all the time, you now have to pick mainly at minor cults and distractions. Being a mainstream Christian I’ve nothing to do with Scientology are any of that crap, and in fact it all serves to remind me of why I made the wise choice to be a mainstream Christian. To attack Christianity for the deeds of Scinetologists is like saying: “Republicans are evil, thus all politicians are evil, thus I’ll spend my life attacking Democrats.” > [@](#): > > ITRc, you have singlehandedly pushed me further towards anti-theism than Harris, Krakauer, Hitchens, and Dawkins EVER could. Your attempt to blame Christians for the atrocities committed by atheists isn’t doing much to convince me of the merits of atheism, now that you mention it. ---
**Author:** ![sqweels](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f19dbf/32.png) [@sqweels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sqweels)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2010, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344/58 "2010-10-26T18:42:31Z")
A lot of you here are missing the point. IANAA, but atheism is not a group you join, it’s a form of independence. Atheists are not responsible for each others’ actions the way religious people are because atheism is not a certain something, it a lack of something. If you’re a Catholic, then you’ve chosen to associate yourself with the organization that perpetrated the Spanish Inquisition. If you’re an atheist you have no more to do with Stalin and Mao that you do with the Spanish Inquisition. ---
**Author:** ![Yeticus\_Rex](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/a698b9/32.png) [@Yeticus\_Rex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yeticus_Rex)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2010, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344/59 "2010-10-26T19:07:23Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Consider the Jim Jones cult and other ones where everyone dies; no one profits, everyone dies. Who is the one using the people there? > > It is the religion itself that is using them, which doesn’t care that it is destroying itself in the process because it is a thing, not a person. A mindless psychological disease with no foresight, parasitizing its human hosts to their death. Again…people using people…Jim Jones used them in spite of his own death. He is the one that developed the method for their deaths…religion ([dare I say of the “Communist” stripe?](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown)) along with cyanide and koolaid. It also could be argued that his charisma rather than his “religion” was a better tool to get the masses to drink the poison. Your other argument about “psychological disease” that religion is just plain wrong. People suffer from a variety of mental illnesses and do horrible things without religion being involved. There are religious people who are peaceful throughout their entire lives where religion is involved…I only have to go as far as my mother-in-law to see that. Therefore, the two are not mutually exclusive. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2010, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344/60 "2010-10-26T19:17:05Z")
> [@sqweels](#): > > A lot of you here are missing the point. IANAA, but atheism is not a group you join, it’s a form of independence. > > Atheists are not responsible for each others’ actions the way religious people are because atheism is not a certain something, it a lack of something. I’m not seeing the logic here. If I choose to be a member of the Democratic Party, then I’ve chosen to associate with the Democratic Party, but it does not make me responsible for what the Democratic Party does. Moreover, it does not make me responsible for what the Republican Party does, nor the Libertarian Party, the Green Party, and so forth. So how would me being an Episcopalean make me responsible for the choices of the Episcopalean leadership, much less the leadership of other denominations or other religions? Here’s a further consideration. If someone were to bash members of the Democratic Party based on the fact that they joined a party which defended slavery in the mid-19th century, we’d all agree that that person was desperate, and clearly scraping the bottom of the barrel as far as excuses for attacking the Democratic Party. Similarly for anyone who brings up the Spanish Inquisition in order to bash the Catholilc Church, only more so, since the Spanish Inquisition is much farther removed in time from us than the Democratic Party’s support for slavery. On the other hand, if a person does devote himself to attacking the Democratic Party and blocking everything it does, then he _is_ responsible for cases where he helped block an action of the Democratic Party. Likewise if **Cyningablod** devotes himself to attacking all religions and, imagining for a second that he succeeded, then he would be (jointly with others) responsible for the huge numbers of deaths and other disasters that would befall in those areas of the world where religion is a main provider of food, medicine, education, and other necessities, and where religion is a bulkwark against secular tyranny. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-forgive-and-forget-religions-past-atrocities/558344.md?page=4)