We'd Be Better Off Without Religion

Ah, so atheists today are enlightened?

From 1932 to 1937 Joseph Stalin declared the 'five-year plans of atheism' and the LMG was charged with completely eliminating all religious expression in the country. Many of these same methods and terror tactics were also imposed against others that the regime considered to be its ideological enemies.
Persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union - Wikipedia

Thats some enlightenment, kill em all let G/god sort em out!

Hitler was set up so he had no choice and was forced to go into war by zionist J-Ws, britain dropped the first bomb that started world war 2, not hitler.

 

Enlightened individuals realized that the Overlords used religion as a tool for oppression of the people. Religious is also a useful tool to rally insurgents .. and if you are a dictator you don't want that.

but to answer your silly question - no idea whether one atheist is enlightened as opposed to another. Could be all kinds of reasons why one is an atheist.

 

Differences of opinion creates divide. Differences of opinion should not equal hatred. Hatred is known by its contempt and disrespect of people. Our political system of more then one party creates divide. You can still respect others even if you differ from them. The only way to insure no division is to allow no differences of opinion. North Korea and the old USSR did pretty well creating a non divisive society. Officially Islamic countries are not...divisive. Racially and culturally monotonous countries like Japan are less divisive.

 

Good that you now realize that your initial claim was false - not all divisive statments are hateful.

 

That wasn't atheism. That was nationalism, a secular religion. Traditional religions were competitors to their totalitarian approach, but nationalism was the fuel that made this approach possible. About as much as I can generalize over the characters mentioned. Hitler wasn't an atheist at all.

Atheism is just an absence of belief in gods, and so includes everybody who is not a theist including agnostics. It doesn't tell you to do anything other than not personally have supernatural imaginary friends for various possible reasons.

 

My claim wasn't false. The post I was referring to was hateful.

 

Killing 11% of the world population (not in the Americas or other continents) is a good thing? How so for the environment? Isn't it you that doesn't like genocides and yet this was okay. I suppose the 100 million in the 20th century is okay for you because it helped the environment. What's happening right now? There have always been by far more Taliban than American-NATO troops in Afghanistan. If you are talking about the pathetic Afghan army running away, agreed. That was pathetic.

 

By far more were killed in history by atheists and people like Khan and Hitler that were into the occult and this "spirituality" that people today say they are. More spiritual than religious crap. It's just another form of denying God. Historians agree that Mao, Stalin and Hitler killed 100 million people. You deny education?

 

Dude - the rational that you gave for the post being hateful was that it was divisive .. a statement which was proven false - not necessarily true = not all divisive statements are "hateful"

I have nothing else to go on - because you have given no other rational to back up your claim .. so until you qualify your claim further - it is false - as not all divisive statements are necessarily hateful.

 

What part of

did you not understand.

and now you move the goalposts - as Atheists - are by definition - not into spirituality. Your claim that spirituality is denial of God - is abject nonsense on steroids.

back to "Atheists killed more" - you can't compare deaths in the 20th century - to deaths in the first century - on a number of people killed basis. Do try to figure out why this is the case.

 

The 1st Century? When all the Christians were being killed off by the Romans? The Romans who were atheists. Yes, spirituality is a denial of God. Also, I wasn't comparing anything. It's a fact that modern day atheists killed 100 million people because they were drains on their economies. You are moving the goal posts...1st century.

 

Try to stay current =

Genghis Han killed so many people, that it was actually good for the environment, new study claims
"Genghis Khan might have been the greenest invader of all time – his bloody conquests killed so many people, that in their path, huge swathes of cultivated land returned to forest, eliminating a huge amount of carbon from the atmosphere."
https://www.zmescience.com/ecology/genghis-khan-environment-26052014/

 

Yep, population control methods of the liberal Democrat nut-groups. Kill off people like Stalin and Mao and that is a good thing for Biden supporters.

 

Suffice it to say that without war or contention of any sort, all previous generations would still be dead. Currently the crime and brutality being accomplished in America is not under any religious banner. So therein is the absence of religion. But is it a better off thing?

 

It seems to be under the banner of no religion. It seems to be under the banner of communism through BLM and Anti-fa. And, we could also include China brand of communism with the use of bioterrorism with Covid19. Certainly the atheist ungodly genocide of 60 million unborn children since Roe v Wade.

 

No, Hitler invaded Poland that started world war 2.

 

Well said.

 

The central problem with your (and I assume, Hitchens') thesis, is that it presumes the possibility of a united humanity-- from which, religion is supposedly keeping us-- without being able to cite a single example of any such paradise, in human history or pre-history. So we could really say that there are two problems. First, without any proof that all the ills blamed on religion (war, division, hatred) are things from which humans, under any circumstances, are capable of ascending above, all you are doing is scapegoating religion, for an intrinsic human flaw. If we look at any place where religion, writ large, has been outlawed, we see nothing exemplary in those systems.

The other problem with your thesis is that the reason examples are so hard to find, is that religion is one of the most characteristic attributes, maybe THE most iconic, of human behaviors, traditions, & institutions. Any thinking person need wonder why this would be so that, across time, continents, and cultures, wherever there has been man, almost invariably "religion," has existed, as well. I am, here, including any belief in supernatural forces, as part of that human group's religion of shared beliefs & practices, relating to forces unseen.

Data from brain scans, in fact, has shown that religious experience alters the working of our brains, to make us MORE communal. It appears that our brains are actually wired, for religious belief. Research suggests that it was the changes in our brains which brought about religion, that enabled us to live in larger groups than our nearest ancestors, chimpanzees, which top-out at about 45 members. This means that your thread's premise is precisely opposite of the truth: religious practices brought humans together.

What we do, in those large groups, is another matter, but one which applies to large groups of any type: national, cultural, fraternal, etc. This is a function of a combination of human nature, & group dynamics; again, nothing to blame on religion.

I, personally, belong to no faith community, and as someone who qualified as a, "pagan," I have personally encountered the most hypocritical treatment from those I've known who have worn their Christianity most prominently on their sleeves. This, however, I attribute to the same human mechanism which causes anti-minority bias, or xenophobia. For me, then, to extrapolate an equivalence between those unfaithful emissaries of their faith, who I have known, and all members of that faith, would be to practice the very same prejudicial form of thinking, which is the root of the problem.

 

True. But we are all alike to God. When Jesus said, "Except a man be born again, born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot see or enter into the kingdom of God", he was speaking to everyone, including Atheists. So in that regard, no one mindset, tradition, or moral framework is superior to another in the Gospel when they all must be discarded equally, regardless our pasts or ancient history. It is undeniable that evils were done over the centuries in Gods name as well as otherwise. You yourself have taught here that the true Church and authority was removed from the earth not long after Jesus's resurrection, when it fell into apostasy. So all the work done for many centuries after that under Gods name was done by the judgment and will of man. Granted God may have had a part in the mass production and spreading of his word. But we cannot rightfully say that to plant a cross and a gallows upon the shores of a newly discovered people has anything to do with Jesus's gospel of salvation. You more so than anyone here know the value and need of a restoration and the vision/testimony of Joseph Smith. Not to mention the fact that it was a multitude of Christian denominations who tormented the early LDS Church members, drove them from place to place, and eventually murdered Joseph Smith and his Brother Hyrum in a jail. Those were so called Christians, not Atheists. Now you could say they were Godless. But that can't be pinned on Atheists. There's a gulf of difference between unbelief and wickedness. Before Joseph Smiths revelation and conversion, he had no religion per se. And were it not for his vision and conversion, he may as well have become an Atheist regardless of him being a good kid. Who knows. At any rate the hand of God is revealed to whom he may. In fact, it is Joseph Smiths own testimony that God told him directly, face to face, that none of the other Churchs were true or legitimate. That alienates a heap of people who call themselves Christians. Anyway, I agree with everything you say. Just thought I'd offer up these thoughts for your consideration because I value your judgment and insight.

 

Rachel Carson and her book "Silent Spring" killed more people than religion ever did

 

What makes you think the Romans were atheists? Everything I have read about them refers to them having Gods.

 

Depends on how you look at it. One could argue that the harsh treatment of the Germans under the treaty of Versailles started WW2. Or that France and England declaring war on Germany did.

 

Don't you know that some nuts want to kill off 95% of the role population to save the planet? They think that they will be among the 5% who survive. It only takes a handful to pull it off so stay tuned.

https://standthewall.blogspot.com/2017/01/to-save-planet-kill-90-percent-of.html

 

Doing things under the name of God isn't the same as God doing it. You would think it did by those who claim no God in this forum. But, that isn't the case. We had Stake Conference this weekend and our Stake President broke down Moroni chapter 7. The method God has to teach us truth and true knowledge is through the light of Christ and the Holy Ghost. He's not chirping in our ear constantly. He gives us our moral agency to choose. But, Satan chirps constantly and uses others to create evil social norms that affects our conscience. The biggest challenge for the Church today is young people leaving over LGBTQ social norms and how they go against Church standards, doctrines and commandments. The young people think they are more aligned with God because of their false narrative that they are more compassionate. To combat this, young people have to gain a testimony of what God commands and not what social man has to say. For God is the light and true knowledge.

 

LOL!!! Everything they did had nothing to with God.