My Magical Button to Delete Atheism

You're right, one of the atheist cults. Atheists have served Stalin or Trotsky or Pol Pot or Kim Jong-il or Ayn Rand or Mussolini, they've devoted themselves to eugenics or Zionism.

 

If you're worshipping something to which you ascribe supernatural properties, you're not an atheist.

Again, atheism or more correctly anticlericalism is not integral to totalitarianism - it's merely a means to an end.

 

And theists have devoted themselves to ideologies that are just as bad. And, correct me if I'm wrong, but none of the atheists you are speaking to here subscribe to any of the ideologies that you mention.

 

No, atheism is merely the belief in no God or Gods - those supernatural beings you seem to think cannot exist.

Nihilism would be the rejection of the organized worship of those supernatural dieties that you reject.

There is a difference, and one does not inevitably lead to the next.

Just as deciding that there is a God does not automatically make you a Christian does it? You could be a Hindu? A Muslim? You might even think he is Thor after watching the movie!

Atheists, or those that chose to be nihilists, seem to have no issues with totalitarianism when it is used to repress religious people now do they?

We have a century and half of that EXACT treatment of French diests in the Revolution, and Revolutionists suppressing religion .... in way that always seem to solidify the power of ONE unscrupulous man.

Odd don;t you think?

 

Ok, so what is wrong with following Jesus?

With the fact that Christians, deciding that there were spiritual matters and matters of governance at that the two should be separated? 400 years ago ... by Christians?

And, the issue is not that communists are not atheists, it is that atheism is a strong component of communism. It SHOULD have been the moral component that prevented these abuses as IT was the moral standard correct?

Just as Christianity failed in the Crusades.

Finger pointing? Well, we can do that all day long.

IT is ultimately mutual respect of many faiths, including no faiths, that has moved democracies forward and allowed ... innovation that drives our economic vigor.

Do you really think it is an accident that communist China has exploded upon losseing the doctrinal dictates of Moa? Of allowing creativity and innovation? Even a certain measure of dissent in the acknowledgement of real problems?

And look at the result.

Tolerance is the way forward, not finger pointing with one hand and washing away with the others.

For in the end, we are human. We get things right, and we get things wrong .... regardless of our ideology.

 

Yet again, most of the people you listed were known to be religious. And the killings had little to do with religion: most of it had to do with personal political paranoia or economic cluelessness.

Now -- you want to tote up all the wars in history, all the massacres, in which the bloodstained conquerors claimed God was on their side? The impact of Europeans on the New World, just by itself -- the genocide, the ethnic cleansing, the epidemics of disease -- millions and millions.

And that's before you get to all the OTHER damage which religion has done. The Catholic Church alone slowed down the progress of western civilization by centuries, bitterly resisting new social, cultural, technological innovations for centuries. And of course the catastrophic damage which religion has done to America in the last 30 years.

 

Nihilism normally involves the rejection of one or more major philosophical pursuit as being valueless. Moral nihilism says moral statements are meaningless, epistemological nihilism says that knowledge is impossible, etc.

I think you are probably the only person who uses the word "nihilism" to mean the rejection of organized worship, but I could be wrong. The typical use of the term is the belief that life or existence if valueless.

To my knowledge, this does not reflect the belief of any atheist on this forum.

[quoteThere is a difference, and one does not inevitably lead to the next.

Just as deciding that there is a God does not automatically make you a Christian does it? You could be a Hindu? A Muslim? You might even think he is Thor after watching the movie![/quote]Excellent points all around.

I can't see a true nihilist having a problem with totalitarianism, but I don't know any true nihilists. And I haven't seen too many atheists around here that would be okay with a totalitarian regime strongarming religious folk.

And that was wrong, just as similar actions by theists were wrong.

 

How exactly can you claim, in ignorance of actual history, that there was no deliberate assault on religion or that atheism was not a part of process in Stalin's purges?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin#Religion

Every ACTUAL history (those that actually make it through a legtimate peer review process), and having studied this period extensively, are very clear on these concepts. All of them.

Yet we should dismiss this, because there were 'political' elements in place were there?

Tell me, was there any sort of political process involved in the Spanish colonization and exploitation process? Considering that much of this ill gotten booty went into hiring an army to suppress the Dutch rebellion?

And oddly enought, this competition for colonies would result in the Euopren coloization of much of the known world? And certainly, there were no politics between the five great powers now were there? Must have been a Pope and a few guys?

And the Aztec, peaceful beings that they were, were clearly not bent on conquest and subjugation as were OTHER empires were they?

I believe we call this, quite deliberate, double standards.

 

This is very true. I personally found far more value in life when I became an atheist.

 

How does the peer review add up for religion?

 

Probably because our education system is still obsessed with depicting any and all Native Americans as "noble savages," despite the fact that it is a blatant double standard and, quite frankly, a little racist.

 

Yep, that would pretty much be what War wrote.

I call that trolling

Well, the thing is, there are, even on this board, many atheists who do not care one whit about religion. Mak, Shiva, Viv, pop immediately into mind. There are others, who very accurately cricticize religion ... legitimately, Red and Deadpriate pop immediately into mine. And then there are those who have almost demonically twisted views of religion, and despite clear ignorance on the subject in many cases, INISIST that these deliberate misrepresentations are the truth. If I listed their names .... well, at this point they report me for saying the sky is blue (because such a statement is clearly implying that I think atheists are too dumb to know this).

What would you call the later?

See above.

I fully admit that the actions of religion attempting to force in on others is wrong. Swore an oath to use violence to defend that very principle.

However, I see a great many people on these forum very soundly condeming religious failures, and then using all manner of excuses to say that atheism has .... never failed.

It has.

Does that invalidate atheism? Nope.

It just invalidates the hypocrisy of pointing at the Crusades and ignoring the concpet of secularism that came from the resolution of the 30 years war. Of the often charismatic leaders and politicans involved in Christian failures.

We are ALL human. Even atheists.

And pointing out the faults of others? That does not eliminate your own faults. Atheism is no different. It is not perfect, but it is.

 

I think there is some of that. But, in actual academic history? Not so much. If I ever attempted to present either side of that complex struggle as nobel .... I'd have a meeting with a doctor shortly thereafter.

 

Same here *virtual beer clinky*

 

Yep, that's pretty much the spirit of nihilism.

Whatever our other disagreements may be, I have no doubt about that. Let me be clear on that point.

So long as we agree on that last part, sure. Without a doubt, countless atheistic ideologies have failed. And, without a doubt, countless theistic ideologies have failed. Neither of those facts invalidate atheism or theism. By themselves, each make a rather modest claim (compaired to their various subschools) that must stand or fall on their own.

Warts and all.

 

Well Yard, I will admit something.

I kinda like you.

I disagree like hell with some of the things you say, but, you yourself are not a bad person. Atheism itself is in no danger from religion, just as religion, truth be told, is in no danger from atheism.

Teh evidence itself is not conclusive.

A person looking out, and not seeing something in a largely unepxlored and little understood universe? Skepticism in such circumstances is may be entirely warranted.

A person looking out, and seeing SOMETHING out there? Well, affirimation in the face of teh unknown is just as valid as skepticism.

Atheism itself? I have zero issues with.

The attacks on my religion? On Islam? Juddaism? And others? THAT I have problems with. And in that arena I can make a great deal of head way.

Does that invalidate atheism? Nope.

Does it turn good men into bad men? Nope.

Hopefully, at some point, it leads to mutual respect and understanding. An agreement to disagree and explore one another position not to convince ... but to see a different point of view and allow that point of views questions to push you a little further ... a little harder, and to make us all a little better in the process.

 

I then would be a metaphysical nihilist... I see no value in unnecessary, unverifiable, incomprehensible matters of capital-R 'Reality'. I am not however a moral nihilist... indeed, human values are very important to me. But I stress the HUMAN part of this equation; what use are values handed down by some alien thing from the great beyond?

As Nihilists (of this sort) reject valuation altogether, and totalitarianism typically enforces obeisance to its ideology/values under threat of imprisonment or death... I foresee problems here.

 

I understand the map perfectly.

China is full of atheists.

China is a communist nation.

This does not mean that everyone in China is a communist. The state is communist, the people vary.

 

It doesn't mean they are atheist, either. As Anansi_the_Spider just pointed out, the people of North Korea are not really atheists but merely "terrorized into submission to atheist ideology". And that's a direct quote.

 

Though of course the leadership of North Korea is devoutly atheist and eager to torture and kill those who reject atheism.

quote: The One Day campaign is asking people to sign a petition calling for religious freedom in the reclusive communist country, where all forms of Christian meeting, literature and Bibles are forbidden.
As one of the worst persecutors of Christians in the world, believers there are frequently detained, tortured and sent to labour camps because of their faith.
According to Release, entire families are known to have been imprisoned because one member of the family was found to be a Christian or in possession of a Bible.

LINK

 

Here's another article: North Korea Executes Christian For Distributing Bible

 

None of this shows that most "Atheists are Marxists".

 

It's amusing to see how you must posit that atheism is an ideology in order to say bad things about the absence of your particular ideology.

There's nothing like a need of an adversary to make people act irrational.

 

What great scientists would be lost?
Da Vincci, Einstein, Copernicus, Franklin, Galilei and every other great scientist that I can think of were all men of faith.

 

SCIENCE, not scientists. Science works regardless of what the scientist believes. That's the whole point of science!