Certainly. But you must demonstrate that the motive was based solely on the abstract principle of theism, and did not take place within the context of any specific religion or religious ideology.
Right. That monolithic artistic block will put people to death for dissing Shakespeare. I’m not an artist, and certainly not a musician, or even an art critic, but what I’ve read doesn’t exactly match this picture.
For you playing along at home here is Revenant Threshold’s post in the cited thread:
As far as I can tell he’s saying that it is not impossible for there to be an atheist drive for religious fairness in the future, and just because something hasn’t happened in the past doesn’t mean it won’t happen in the future. That’s a far cry from saying it will.
You’re really, really stretching. Unless RT is using some secret code I’m not aware of, that is.
The Flood, the killing of the innocent first-born sons in Egypt, Sodom, the killing of children because they teased a bald guy-do any of these count?
I suppose a person who thinks that when Bible saying the world was created in six days what is really meant was that the universe and the world were created billions of years apart would consider your interpretation reasonable. Using the same rigorous logic, I can probably come up with an interpretation saying all your posts actually support atheism.
http://www.aryannations.org/ This is a nice site steeped in the bible and Christianity.
Nope, we’re talking about what human beings did, m’kay?
You mean like if God told his chosen people to take over another country, kill all the men, and keep the women as wives? That sort of thing?
Sure, if you can show that it didn’t happen within the context of any religion. You must demonstrate that the abstract principle of theism was the sole motive. You see, I’m immensely skeptical that anybody was ever killed solely for the sake of an abstract principle. That’s why it amuses and disgusts me to see atheists insisting that the gulags and the Ukrainian famine are somehow not valid examples of atheists committing atrocities.
The gulags are better examples of white people committing atrocities. I mean they were all white, right?
Stalin was white. Period. Anyone who says that white people aren’t genocidal is a fool.
See, your argument is just as stupid as mine. We should start a club!
Atheism is a tool of a totalitarian government. Like the banning of privately held guns. You don’t want a social support structure like religion pulling people away from the party line.
If I understand what you’re saying – and to be honest, I’m not sure I do – then you’re insisting that atheists must acknowledge that these atrocities were committed by atheists in the same way they were committed by people with brown or black hair. They were atheists, they committed the atrocities, therefore they were atheists committing atrocities.
It certainly can’t be that you’re insisting that they committed these atrocities because they were atheists, because you just said you were skeptical that anyone was killed for the sake of an abstract principle.
If you don’t accept the Bible story, then you should probably say the atrocity never happened. If you do, the Bible clearly says the killing was at the express word of god. Now someone could have just said that, but same difference.
That doesn’t mean that killings weren’t done for nonreligious reasons. Alexander the Great sacked cities who were obnoxious in resisting, and while religious himself he wasn’t evangelical in the least, and I’ve seen no evidence he ever had anyone killed for the sake of his religion. But those pagans were so primitive.
As for more solidly fact based atrocities, the pogroms were definitely religion based. The Jews didn’t really have anything worth taking - their sole offense was sitting there being happily non-Christian.
Wow, i’m glad I ended up opening this thread.
It is what other people have said; my post wasn’t saying “Atheists have done bad things, but hey, don’t worry, we’ll only do goodness and sunshine and light in the future!”, but was a response to this comment in particular of yours (which I quoted then) -
(my bolding)
All I was saying is that past behaviour doesn’t dictate future behaviour. That atheists might rise up en mass and protect religion in the world - and they might not. All I was suggesting was the possibility of it.
I point out in return that if you took our disagreement to not be about the specific case of mass atheist rising up to protect religion, but about atheist failures in general, it appears your own post accepts the idea that it is not necessarily “impossible, but it certainly suggests” that athiests will never do anything but continue those failures. IOW, if indeed you truly believe that what we were talking about was “atheists in the future will make up for any athiest failures in the past”, you yourself have declared that entirely impossible.
Why don’t you give me a theoretical example, because from where I’m standing you are not only moving the goalposts, you’re hiding them.
Seems to me people aren’t claiming they weren’t atheists comitting atrocities, but that they weren’t comitting atrocities because they were atheists. I’m not entirely sure who I would agree with. But this is a misunderstanding or a misrepresenation.
Are you trying to dissociate specific examples of theism from theism in general? Like, you can only be a theist if you only believe in completely generic, entirely detailless theism? If you believe in a god that has, for example, a name, then it’s no longer theism to you.
Because that’s the stupidist thing I’ve heard yet in this thread. So it cannot possibly be your argument. Please enlighten me as to what your argument actually is.
Just out of curiosity, would the atheists in this thread agree that by the same logic atheism has never brought humanity anything good?
Well, almost. You seem to view Communism and atheism as one thing, which led to atrocities:
Communism/atheism -> atrocities
However, what most of us here are saying, is that the dogmatic ideology of Communism led to both atheism and atrocities:
Communism -> atheism
Communism -> atrocities
In fact, you seem to hint at this understanding in the second half of your paragraph, apparently without realizing it. You cannot take this set of relationships and say that atheism led to atrocities.
Huh? Where’d you get the When Atheists Attack idea? We’re not wanting to attack you - we just want you not to discriminate against us. And incidentally, I do happen to wish that more of you Christians would lose your faith; I’d prefer to live in a country with more rationalists. But that’s not an attack. And what invading ideology would that be? Are you saying that if/when US Christians are convinced that they’re wrong and the atheists were right, that the US is easy pickin’s for a Communist takeover?
I think you’re making the same mistake LP is. If I understand it correctly, he’s saying that no-one’s killed because of their theism, but rather their particular religion. Which seems fair to me. I can’t off the top of my head think of any atrocities comittied by people in the name of theism, either. Plenty of theists have done bad things, but probably not for theism.
No. Holding irrational beliefs is a negative thing. Releasing those irrational beliefs is a relatively positive thing.
I’m reminded of Marshal McLuhan stepping out from behind the theater placard in Annie Hall. 