[QUOTE=ITR champion]
With pleasure. The basis of Christianity is that individuals are individuals in the way that western society has traditionally understood, i. e. with the free will to make choices. The basis of Marxism is that humanity is arranged into classes whose behavior is determined, and history is set; no individual can do anything about it. Thus, in order to Marxism to become the dominant beliefs system, the central beliefs of Christianity would have to be wiped out.
[/QUOTE]
Gee, I thought Christianity had something to do with Jesus and salvation. I suppose you consider Calvinists as not Christian, right? :rolleyes:
[QUOTE=Voyager]
Gee, I thought Christianity had something to do with Jesus and salvation. I suppose you consider Calvinists as not Christian, right? :rolleyes:
[/QUOTE]
I’m sure Jesus would not consider Calvinists Christian. For that matter, Jesus would not consider St. Paul Christian; but that’s another discussion.
[QUOTE=ITR champion]
Thus, in order to Marxism to become the dominant beliefs system, the central beliefs of Christianity would have to be wiped out.
[/QUOTE]
If we accept this as true, it certainly seems to be a strictly one-way “need” anyway.
[QUOTE=Mojo Pin]
However, I disagree with you on point 3, and i guess I’ll just expand on the example you’ve given. The link between communism and atheism is a strong one, but you have used faulty reasoning in your point. The only reason why “Stalinists made the elimination of Christianity in Russia a primary goal” is because the new government could not afford for the loyalties of the country to be split. In other words, it was not some crazy atheist dogmatism that drove them against Christians, but the fact that 1. the new government had to show the old order who was boss, and 2. the church was extremely rich.
[/quote]
This seems to be the dominant form of response to my OP. Here’s my reponse to the response.
Many secular governments have been able to function smoothly in Christian societies. Plainly nothing prevents the religious doctrines of Christianity from existing side by side with the political doctrines of a government. Yet something about the militantly atheist regime of the Soviets made them decide that they couldn’t take a ‘live and let live’ approach to the Russian Orthodox Church. Simply put, the Church’s beliefs were too different from the Marxist ideas that the Soviets wanted to put into action. They understood that a large block of Christian believers would never accept seeing the entire country reinvented along Marxist lines, so that large block had to be eliminated first. (Of course the Soviet campagin to exterminate religion didn’t succeed.)
The “It’s one dogma vs. another dogma, so let’s reject all dogmas” viewpoint presupposes that humans exist in some natural dogma-free states, and that bad things only happen when some dogma sneaks in. But there’s never been a society that operates in that way. (I’m skeptical that there’s ever been a thinking person who did.) Humans need tenets and principles to operate. A mainstream Christian majority in a particular society provides a bulkwark against invasion by a foreign ideology, whether it be secular, religious, or even a fringe Christian movement. Hence a major atheist attack the Christian majority is necessary for an invading ideology to step in.
Some insist that Stalin, Mao, Hitler, et al were actually religious. Even though they didn’t believe in God and despised those who did, the theory goes, their systems of beliefs were basically religion without the God.
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You’ve already been given evidence that Hitler was not an atheist, and that National Socialism was not atheistic. There were some pagan stuff thrown in, bit pagans aren’t atheists either.
Why would we consider Communism to be religious in nature (even without the god?) Consider this:
Communism has a holy Bible - Das Kapital
Communism has a prophet and a saint - Marx and Lenin
Communism has icons - all those pictures of Marx and Lenin up everywhere.
(Chinese Communism had an NT - the little red book, and a new prophet/saint.)
Communism worked on faith. Fundamentalist Christianity always finds ways of explaining away any facts that challenge the dogma, Fundamentalist Communists kept on explaining away the failure of the Five Year Plans and why St. Stalin did a deal with Hitler.
As for why the early Communists were against the church: remember that the Czar was head of the Russian Orthodox church, and the ministers in it were loyal to him. After the Civil War (and I suspect the church was on the side of the Whites) why would they want an independent power base? They were right, considering what happened later in Poland.
So, strike one.
Cite or retract, please. In 30 years of posting about this, I have never seen any atheist claim that all atheists have been or will be good.
When a mass murderer happens to be Christian, no one blames Christianity for him. When the mass murderer is a leader of the church and working in an official capacity, I think we can. Since there is no head of an atheist church, and no one can claim to speak for atheism, all crimes by atheists are of type 1, not type 2.
Strike two.
I’ve already explained why the Communists were opposed to the church. Since atheism has no moral rules or requirements, I don’t see how one can do anything out of atheism. You might, might, argue that we don’t do things out of atheism - like go to church, pray, wand to oppress those different from us, or believe in bullshit myths.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
I’m sure Jesus would not consider Calvinists Christian. For that matter, Jesus would not consider St. Paul Christian; but that’s another discussion.
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[QUOTE=Voyager]
Gee, I thought Christianity had something to do with Jesus and salvation.
[/QUOTE]
And you would be correct. (The obvious relevance to this thread being that you can’t believe that Jesus saves individuals unless you first believe there are individuals.
[QUOTE=ITR champion]
This seems to be the dominant form of response to my OP. Here’s my reponse to the response.
Many secular governments have been able to function smoothly in Christian societies. Plainly nothing prevents the religious doctrines of Christianity from existing side by side with the political doctrines of a government. Yet something about the militantly atheist regime of the Soviets made them decide that they couldn’t take a ‘live and let live’ approach to the Russian Orthodox Church. Simply put, the Church’s beliefs were too different from the Marxist ideas that the Soviets wanted to put into action. They understood that a large block of Christian believers would never accept seeing the entire country reinvented along Marxist lines, so that large block had to be eliminated first. (Of course the Soviet campagin to exterminate religion didn’t succeed.)
[/QUOTE]
The Soviet Union was not just a secular society but it was a totalitarian one. Totalitarian governments don’t like alternate power structures. The Communist view of Christianity seems very close to the Islamic state’s view of Christianity - or the old Christian state’s view of Judaism.
Notice that the Nazis didn’t ban religion, since the churches were not united in opposition or had a role in the government of the Weimar Republic. They did kill church people opposed to them, of course, but not because they were religious.
[QUOTE=Lemur866]
But of course you are aware of all sorts of small c communist religious utopian movements? Like, say, early Christianity?
[/QUOTE]
I’m certainly aware of utopian socialist and communalist movements, none of which are mutually exclusive with theism, like as you said, early Christianity. And I’m also familiar with movements that combine theism with some elements of Marxist philosophy, like Liberation Theology.
[QUOTE=ITR champion]
And you would be correct. (The obvious relevance to this thread being that you can’t believe that Jesus saves individuals unless you first believe there are individuals.
[/QUOTE]
Are you saying that Communists don’t believe that there are individuals?
Communists do believe in the historical inevitability of the dictatorship of the proletariat. But Christians believe in the historical inevitability of the second coming and heaven on earth. (Even if not exactly like in Revelations.) So that is yet another point where Communism is like a religion.
As an atheist, I’ll go ahead and address these points. Others have already done so- and probably a lot better than I will be able to.
[QUOTE=ITR champion]
Some insist that Stalin, Mao, Hitler, et al were actually religious. Even though they didn’t believe in God and despised those who did, the theory goes, their systems of beliefs were basically religion without the God.
[/QUOTE]
As others have said, their continued power relied upon quelling all other, potentially competing, institutions. They never said, “Stop believing in your god”- they instead said, “Worship me (and/or the State) AS your god.”
[QUOTE=ITR champion]
Argument two is that atheists have done horrible things in past, sure, but they’ll only do good things in the future.
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As others have said, “Cite”? I’ve never seen any atheist say this, and I don’t really believe you have, either.
[QUOTE=ITR champion]
Argument three is that atheist atrocities don’t count because the people who do them aren’t doing them out of atheism.
[/QUOTE]
Funny, you never hear an atheist scream “Die in the name of non-existence!” as they lop someone’s head off. It’s difficult to be a zealot without actively believing in something.
Theists, on the other had, wage wars and blow up buildings in the name of their god (or, at least, use their god as an excuse to do so). Personally, I don’t think that religion is necessarily evil, but that it allows evil people to commit evil acts in the cloak of righteousness.
[QUOTE=Captain Amazing]
My original point was just that you can’t be theistic and a Communist.
[/QUOTE]
Tell that to generations of kibbutzim dwellers. From wiki:
Does that last quote sound familiar? It should; it’s from Karl Marx.
Communism is a material principle of justice, just like capitalism, egalitarianism, and so on. It deals with the just distribution of benefits and burdens in society. It has nothing to do with religion.
[QUOTE=Lightnin’]
As others have said, their continued power relied upon quelling all other, potentially competing, institutions. They never said, “Stop believing in your god”- they instead said, “Worship me (and/or the State) AS your god.”
[/QUOTE]
Sounds awfully like the first commandment, doesn’t it (assuming I remember my commandment order well enough). Striking parallel…
[QUOTE=Lightnin’]
Funny, you never hear an atheist scream “Die in the name of non-existence!” as they lop someone’s head off.
[/QUOTE]
In the same vein, I don’t know that I’ve ever run across a criminal whose stated reason for committing his crimes were “There is no god, so morality is a lie and we can do what we want.” I suppose there must be some, but I’ve never heard about them. “I am carrying out God’s most holy mission” tends to be the more common theme.
>As an atheist I never use the “religion is evil” argument because it actually has no bearing on the central point of atheism: The existence or nonexistence of a god or gods.
I’m with Pochacco on this one. To go further, I’m an athiest, and don’t imagine that a person could choose to be an athiest, any more than they could choose to believe that water runs downhill (or uphill). My understanding of “belief” is that to “believe something” is “to think that it is true”. The only sense I could make of “choosing to believe” is that it is pretending, and not real belief. I really, actually think inside my own head that there isn’t a God. And about that thought, I further think it is a consequence of the world out there, not something inside me. As I read the world, it shows itself to be practically unlikely to have a god in it.
I do think religions often induce people to commit evil. Having people think that there is something more important out there than the sum of all mankind and all the animal kingdom is pretty dangerous. Obviously, having people think that killing in this lifetime will lead to an immense reward in the afterlife is going to lead to trouble. But I don’t see atheism as much of an incentive for anything.
For some reason there is no word for a person who does not believe in Ley Lines. There isn’t a term for people who don’t believe in water witching, or those who don’t think astrology is real, or those who don’t buy crystal ball fortunetelling. But suppose there were words for those people - what is it those people would be motivated to do? If you’re suddenly struck with a strong, core conviction that Hollow Earth theory is wrong, well, what would that make you go do???
When, during a discussion about how religion has inspired and promotes evil, theists bring up noted historical evil people who happen to have been atheistic, it just demonstrates that they don’t understand what’s under discussion (and possibly that they don’t understand what atheism is.)
There are few or no cases of heinous evil (beyond being rude) being inspired by or promoted by atheism. The best you can do is find a case where atheism was pushed as a result of something that was tainted with heinous evil, which is not the same thing. Communism might be an argument if athests were asserting that atheism made people better (and that’s 'better than agnostics, or whatever else the control group might be; not theists, which obviously have their own motivations), but that doesn’t happen, so such arguments are irrelevent to any actual topic.
The problem isn’t that the playing field isn’t level. It’s that the parking lot is on a different level than the playing field, and some people can’t tell the difference between one and the other.
[QUOTE=Priceguy]
I do claim that Stalin’s crimes, to use one example, were done out of Communism (or, more likely, simple megalomaniacal egotism), not out of atheism. He did not perform purges or send people to gulags because he was an atheist, he did it either because he was a powerhungry madman or because he felt it was the best or only way to form the society he wanted.
[/QUOTE]
I would be hard pressed to find an example of someone who committed atrocities just out of atheism, and I’m not sure whether such a thing is possible.
I think it is far easier to find examples (such as Stalin) who committed atrocities out of atheism plus something else. Without the something else, there wouldn’t have been the atrocities. Without the atheism (or, if religious belief had been present), there might or might not have been the atrocities, depending on what the person believed about God. It is certainly possible for religious belief to prevent someone from committing atrocities they might otherwise have committed, so in that very weak sense atrocities have certainly been committed “out of atheism.”
On the other hand, I believe that many (possibly even most) of the atrocities that have been committed in the name of religion have been committed out of religion plus something else, or maybe in some cases just the something else with the religion being used as an excuse or whitewash or after-the-fact justification.
And is it at least theoretically possible to commit atrocities just out of religion, without any something else? Yes, in the case of some religious belief systems; no for others.