I think he realized early on that his argument was crap and decided avoiding it was better than trying to defend it. Not much better,…is it?
Bullshit yourself. Xians are fond of a sort of reverse No True Scotsman fallacy, which goes something like this:
No true Xian could possibly be a Nazi.
There are a lot of photos (http://www.nobeliefs.com/nazis.htm) that seem to show Xian Nazis. They wear priest suits, have big crosses around their necks, and are described as being Archbishops, Cardinals, priests and so forth, so they must be real Xians.
Therefore, just because they give Nazi salutes, march in Nazi parades, are photographed grinning at Uncle Adolph in what seems to be enthusiasm, celebrate Nazi weddings, give Nazi speeches, order every church in Germany to celebrate masses of thanksgiving for UA’s miraculous escape from asssasination, and so on, they aren’t really Nazis. We know this because no Xian could be a Nazi.
And Xian doctrine, I think, is mostly based on the Bible, which describes acts very similar to the Holocaust, only directly ordered by YHWH and presented as the acts of an omnibenevolent, loving god. And Jesus claimed to have been around watching it all (“Before Abraham was, I am.”) (“I and the father are one”) so apparently he thought that all that “leave nothing alive that breathes” stuff was just fine.
Just how is slaughtering some twenty one million (at least- the Exodus myth claims that 600,000 “men who carried the sword” left Egypt, which would imply at least three million Hebrews, and Deuteronomy 7:1 commands them to murder all of the men, women and children in “seven nations greater and mightier than thou”) to steal their land and posess their resources, any different than Hitler´s war for Lebensraum?
If the person is the follower of a non-theistic religion, then yes.
If there was a religion where killing innocents with guns was a main tenet, then we can easily agree that less people spreading that religion to their children is a good hing. Whether we can blame ideologies in the same way that we can blame people is irrelevant.
Of course it is. If people are spreading a harmful religion to children as being good then that religion is a problem.
I’m aware.
Again, it doesn’t matter if “blame” is the appropriate word. If hatred is being espoused by the Quran and Hadith, then yes, we can logically claim that Islam is not a good thing.
Huh?
You going by a definition of dogma I’m not familiar with?
Of course; I believe I’ve been fair.
There is no atheistic view, especially regarding persecution. Remember what seemed fair to you above? Practice what you preach.
Religion frequently persecutes those not because a reason has been concluded, but because “God says so.” Atheism spreads no tenets of persecution and atheism did not beget Communism. What’s your definition of dogma, anyway?
What didn’t you get? You said that atheism as an integral part of Communism and* “If atheism is unfairly judged by looking at Communism then theism must be unfairly judged by looking at religion.”*
Communism requires zero atheism and there have been plenty of theistic Communists. Religion by definition does require theism so your “shooting for accurate language and means of comparision” missed the mark.
I’m sure you’re right. It this were MPSIMS, or IMHO, or even the Pit, i wouldn’t care very much. I don’t have a problem if people want to use those forums to just give an opinion and be done with it, or blow off a little stream.
But i’ve always felt that Great Debates required a higher standard, and that if you’re invested enough in a topic to start a thread here, you have some responsibility to join in the ensuing debate, or at very least to offer some responses when people make direct rebuttals of your central argument.
I’m not talking about making it a rule or anything; it just seems to me to be a matter of decent etiquette.
Neoatheist is the equivalent of Neoconservative or Neoliberal as opposed to paleoatheists, paleoconservatives, paleoliberals. It’s the same thing as a person that modifies a car. It’s still the same car, but with a different look.
A classical example of neoatheism, which is strident, vocal and polemic towards religion is this, your statement:
“Worldwide atheism would in my opinion increase the general ethical tone of humanity; not because atheism is good, but because religion is evil and crazy.”
That is scary, irrational shit. Me thinks I’m getting a sulfurous whiff of fundamentalism.
Look out! Helter Skelter!!!
Just out of curiosity, if religion is so bad and atheism is so good, could you give me your vision of a world of nothing but atheism. Would crime rates plummet? Would war end? Would all the Wall Street bullshit that’s going on never happen? Would almost all people never lie, cheat or steal? Would nobody ever commit adultery again? Would all interpersonal conflicts be resolved by civil discourse and then go out for beers?
Seriously, I want to know what’s inside the head of the average neoatheist.
No; the argument is that faith leads to religions, and that those haven’t always played nice with each other. If atheism doesn’t similarly lead to communism or whatever have you, the analogy simply fails.
Well, prove that and you’ve got a Nobel waiting for you. Right now, all our calculations (using differential equations) assume continually changing variables, which means non-quantized spacetime, which means the distance between two moments may be arbitrarily small, which means infinitely many of them in a given interval.
I’m not denying the validity of their enjoyment, I’m merely pointing out that just such enjoyment doesn’t imply anything about god. Similarly, a person on drugs may find great enjoyment in conversing with two metres tall pink bunny rabbits, but that doesn’t imply anything about the existence of two metres tall pink bunny rabbits (I don’t want to draw up a parallel between religion and drug usage, btw, my argument is simply about the subjectivity of the experience). Infinity is not similarly subjective as a concept, whether or not you do math; indeed, mathematical expressions involving infinity would be just as valid if noone ever wrote them down, but if nobody had ever written down the stories about Jesus, his works would be unrecoverably lost today. That’s the difference between infinity and god; it’s not merely one of opinion. Again, the comparison is not apt.
Well, could he appeal to god if there was no religion? That’s pretty much the problem I’ve pointed out earlier: if everyone involved in this religion thing is all about love, peace, and harmony, there’s no problem; but one rotten apple can spoil the whole crop, making use of the mechanisms religion imbues him with. Do you think Jim Jones could have gotten more than 900 people to kill themselves if he hadn’t bound them to himself using at least a pseudoreligious structure? You only need the public to believe in god, and somebody the public believes to relay to them god’s will, and that somebody has an incredibly powerful tool for mass control on his hands; who’s gonna stand up against the will of an all-powerful being, after all? Such a thing simply doesn’t follow from atheism.
So basically, your “neoatheism” is nothing more than a conversational tone. You are trying to make me, personally into some sort of movement.
Ah yes; first I get compared to mass murdering tyrants, and now a murderous cult. Perhaps you will accuse me of being a child molestor to round things out.
First, again, there’s no such thing as a “neoatheist”. Second, I’m not representing anyone but myself, much less the average of a nonexistent group. And third, I specifically said that atheism isn’t good, in the very passage you quoted.
It’s not a matter of atheism making anything better; it’s a matter of removing something that is inflicting immense harm. Religion.
Then we disagree on that.
Since it seems a ideology is being blamed I think it is relevant. People use many things to justify their actions Religion is one of several vehicles people use for both good and bad.
Who gets to declare it harmful? Which version of the religion? Christianity is a religion but it comes in a lot of versions. Some are very dogmatic some are not. Some parents teach their kids to think for themselves while some lay down very rigid rules for right and wrong.
Any so called Holy book is subject to interpretation. To some Muslims jihad is the inner war of spiritual growth. To some it is the war against the great devil America and the Zionists. So no, you can’t logically claim Islam is not a good thing.
Nope same one. Since the Bible and other Holy books are subject to interpretations and those interpretations can vary widely, the dogma is not in them. It’s in those who do the interpreting.
But as we tell our religious friends. Belief does not make it true 
Stop shifting the goalposts. You posted a technical definition of Communism which may not apply to the actual historical event that was being discussed. Within that historical context there clearly was an atheistic view that led to persecution regardless of the technical definitions of atheism and communism.
Again, comparing religion and atheism is an unfair comparison.
My definition of dogma is just as you posted. I don’t think I’m the one who doesn’t understand it. I’m pointing out that the rigid dogmatic mind set that seems to be the problem can exist equally well with either theism or atheism as a tenet.
Great, except we’re talking about a particular historical event rather than technical definitions so what I don’t get is how this is relevant to the discussion and what point you’re trying to make with this information.
Okay, atheism isn’t an integral art of Communism in all scenario’s. That’s interesting. Thanks for pointing that out. Was it in the historical context that we are talking about?
By the way, religion does not require theism. Just to be accurate.
So we couldn’t have a charismatic leader who believed atheism was good and religion was bad and persecuted religion and actually killed people and leveled churches? That kind of thing couldn’t happen. Right?
Yes but faith clearly doesn’t have to lead to dogmatic religion and persecution of others. The analogy doesn’t have to match in every respect to be valid. The point is that theism or atheism by themselves do not lead to good or bad choices and actions.
It seems harder to grok than I thought. I’ll try once more: theism, faith, what have you, leads to religion. It’s the cause of religion. Atheism, disbelief, however you want to call it, doesn’t lead to communism. It doesn’t cause communism. It doesn’t cause, in fact, anything. If you agree with this, how is it fair to label atrocities committed in the name of communism atheistic? Even though the two are correlated, there is no causative link. There is between atrocities done in the name of religion and faith, because without faith, religion wouldn’t exist, quite plainly.
And if you disagree, then you’d have to show how you arrive at communism from disbelief in the existence of god.
I doubt you can point to any political leader of any significance whose followers were motivated by their atheism and were atheists who carried out such a thing. Ruling out Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao and Hitler. Although no doubt you think you have some sort of gotcha here to weigh against the two millenia of Christian and Islam crimes. Which include Hitler and his good Catholic and Protestant Germans bringing the Christian demonisation of Jews to a head.
Yes, of course! That person could then simply take the reigns of the established atheistic power structures… oh wait. Atheism doesn’t have people that proclaim themselves the infallible arbiters of atheistic truth! Funny that.
It does, however, have to match in the one crucial point it is trying to establish: that there is a similar causative link between atheism and atrocities committed in the name of communism, and theism and atrocities committed in the name of religion. Which it doesn’t. Atheism is incidental to communism. Faith is required for religion.
Faith leads to religion. Atheism leads to nothing. Faith is therefore responsible for actions committed in the name of religion, because without it, there would be no religion. Atheism isn’t the reason for communist atrocities because it isn’t the reason for communism.
In fact, consider the following scenario: the population of Country A is devoutly religious, and their head of state is also their religious Head Honcho. What he says is not merely mortal, but divine law. Transgressions against the Head Honcho’s words are transgressions against the almighty himself. Naturally, this can be used to keep the public in line and have them do as they’re told very easily, seeing how there’s an eternity of hellfire waiting for everybody showing the slightest signs of rebellion. If Head Honcho says somebody is the enemy, he is The Enemy because god said so! And if Head Honcho says the enemy should be killed, then by god, the enemy will be killed.
Now, let’s have a look at Country B. They don’t do religion, simply, and their head of state is just that, a political leader. What atheistic measures does he have to keep the public in line? Do what you’re told or else, nothing’s gonna happen to you? Sure, he could resort to military or political means, and he probably has other oppressive means at his disposal, but those aren’t in any way atheistic in nature. His power doesn’t derive from atheism the way Country A’s Head Honcho’s power derives from religion. It can’t, in fact. That’s the difference. And it’s a big one.
I grok fine. You’re missing *my *point. I am not labeling those atrocities atheistic. I’m pointing out that both atheists and theists are capable of such atrocities so it seems that belief of non belief is not the culprit for atrocities.
Theism is not the cause of religion. Even if I thought it was I’d find your leap from theism to religious atrocities unreasonable.
That’s rather trivial, and I don’t think anybody would oppose that point. Of course, both atheists and theists can be dicks. It’s also not what’s being discussed here, or why I consider the communism comparison to be a bad one. The point as it was raised originally in this thread was:
or perhaps there was an earlier variant of this. This is what I opposed, not that both atheists and theists are capable of fucking shit up; if the latter was your only point all along, I apologize for attacking you.
Faith, however, is the cause of religion; theism then is merely the cause of theistic religions, though how theistic and non-theistic religions actually differ, epistemologically, isn’t all that clear to me – you could well call a belief in and worship of fairies non-theistic, but you could also equate them with the gods of that particular religion; same for all similar metaphysical entities.
But, leaving causes aside for a minute, once there is an established system of religious power, it is possible to abuse it, as I tried to show with my example above. Similar doesn’t work for atheism.
That’s all I’ve been saying all along – that while religion isn’t necessarily ‘the root of all evil’, its structures form a ready (and often also willing, owing to human nature) conduit for it. It’s like your example with the gun: no, the gun isn’t responsible for killing a person; it’s the person pulling the trigger. Nevertheless, you can’t shoot people if there are no guns. Atheism has no comparable structures, and at least I can’t see how one would form them.
Got locked out of the edit window:
The analogy would be that just because you still can strangle persons if you don’t have a gun, non-existing guns are to blame for stranglings the same way guns are to blame for shootings. But there isn’t anything there that can share some of the blame besides the murderer himself; in the case of a shooting, it’s the gun that made it possible in the first place. Non-guns don’t make stranglings possible.
Are you saying when people justify their evil actions on religion, it’s always just a scapegoat and they would have carried out their actions if they weren’t indoctrinated into their religion that preaches these actions as good things?
I do. You do. We all do. Are we not to judge?
The ones spreading hate and those that have a a holy book describing a hateful, vindictive, evil god.
I don’t know any that aren’t dogmatic.
What’s your point?
Yes, I can. It’s holy books are evil and a few interpretations softening a few of the messages don’t change all of the evil it contains. I’ve yet to find a Muslim that has interpreted any of the passages that unbelievers are fools and their reward will be in Hell any other way but the obvious.
That’s some rationalization you’ve accomplished there. If a book can be interpreted differently by different people then it contains no dogma? By that rationale, there’s no such thing as dogma.
Then show me where my criticism haven’t been accurate and reasonable.
Shifting the goalposts? I’m confused as to what goal you’re talking about. Atheism does not lead to Communism. Theism and irrational thought that goes with it almost always leads to evil religions.
That’s what I and others have been saying all along. Atheism is just being without belief in God/gods and it’s usually because of critical thinking and not accepting fantastic claims without evidence.
No. Atheism has no tenets. Religions do, and many of them are evil and harmful to the rest of us. Whether or not an evil group can adopt atheism as a “tenet” is not relevant unless atheism is the cause of an evil ideology coming into existence. Communism did not come into existence because of atheism and atheism does not cause other evil ideologies to come into existence. Theism does as does the irrationality that goes along with it.
I told you already. My point was that you said that atheism as an integral part of Communism and “If atheism is unfairly judged by looking at Communism then theism must be unfairly judged by looking at religion.”
Communism requires zero atheism and there have been plenty of theistic Communists. Religion by definition does require theism so your “shooting for accurate language and means of comparision” missed the mark.
No. The historical context that’s important is that Communism doesn’t naturally follow atheism and atheism does not and has not caused people to become Communists.
Semantics. Most of us define religion the way that the first hit on dictionary.com does. It would make sense that some Buddhists would like to label it as a religion though because of the special protection and government perks (in most Western countries) that go with it. It would be nice if I could get the government to buy into my weekly poker game being sacred.