The Religion of Atheism

There are plenty of atheists on this forum who make exactly that comparison. And what's sauce for the goose...

 

So you're willing to accept that argument? Really? Sorry, but that's insane. Look, either condemn it for both or accept it for both. Those are the only logical positions. Which are you going with?

 

To correct an incorrect claim in the OP, Torcaso vs. Watkins most certainly did _not_ say atheism is a religion. That's a bogus claim made by dishonest theists who have their hearts set on pretending atheism is a religion.

First of all, the decision never mentioned atheism being a religion. It mentioned secular humanism, a different thing.

Second, the judge, in a footnote, made a list of what he thought were religions, and included secular humanism on the list. In legal terms, that's called a "dicta". It has no legal standing at all.

 

No, I don't accept it, but it's a useful way to argue. Those who condemn Trump today for lying defended Bill & Hillary Clinton while they did it. Pointing out the hypocrisy doesn't mean that you support lying or Trump.

 

Using that argument as a "defense" does, indeed, mean that you support everything they do. Either it is a bad argument or a good one. You need to make up your mind. I know where I stand. Pointing out hypocrisy in order to provide cover for one's one hypocrisy is just hypocrisy squared.

 

That's even more simple-minded than blaming all theists for ISIS. One can point out hypocrisy without supporting the sinful behavior quite easily. Consider Jesus telling the crowd, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." Was Jesus defending adultery? No, he then told the woman, "Go, and sin no more."

 

Doesnt have to have legal standing and if it was an element used to decide the case its most likely not dicta but ratio decidendi. You need to know how it came into play in the first place and why he said it, the most obvious reason for legal instruction on the ruling. Even if it is dicta is carries authority for deciding future cases. People seem to think cases are decided solely by precedence and they are not, they are far more complex than that.

 

Either you blame all theists for ISIS and all atheists for Stalin, or you realize both arguments are idiotic. Which side are you on? This isn't rocket surgery.

 

Sure but in order to agree it requires individual acceptance. What the dictionary is quoting is not the substantial definition of religion in and of itself but a version tended to be accepted by some corporate body such as a government.

How would you say the group has religion without also saying each individual has religion? How can that be separated? If xyz worships and practices as part of his religion drinking a shot at 12 noon facing west is that just as much his religion as 12 xyz's doing the same? Make the distinction please.

 

You're still left with the issue that secular humanism and atheism are two very different things, and therefore it is not honest for someone to claim that Torcaso v. Watkins said that atheism is a religion.

 

to be fair to stalin and communist russians the church allied itself with the Russian aristocracy and would've happily seen all the socialists dead...so it was a life and death situation, the church chose sides and it chose the losing side...

 

I drink therefore I am. Conscious can be logically inferred - because you experience it in you ...as do others. In a sense we are all organic robots - robots who happen to be conscious of our own existence.

 

No ? ... Regardless there were many devout Catholics that participated in WW2 atrocities such as the genocide by Catholic Croatia on Jewish and Orthodox Serbs.

This "Devout Catholic" had the same ideology on the Jews as Hitler.

Ivan Šarić, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Vrhbosna in Sarajevo, supported the Ustaša, in particular the forcible conversion of Orthodox Serbs to Roman Catholicism. His diocesan newspaper wrote:

"There is a limit to love. The movement of liberation of the world from the Jews is a movement for the renewal of human dignity. Omniscient and omnipotent God stands behind this movement."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_clergy_involvement_with_the_Ustaše

"Šarić appropriated Jewish property for his own use, but was never legally charged. Some priests served in the personal bodyguard of Pavelić, including Ivan Guberina, a leader of the Croatian Catholic movement, a form of Catholic Action. Another priest, Bozidas Bralo, served as chief of the security police in Sarajevo, who initiated many anti-Semitic actions "

Devout Catholics have a long history of persecuting and killing Jews.

 

Like everyone else atheists have religion and politics which is what that refers to since being an atheist has an impact on a society precisely like another religion. Just because they dont want to be connected to any religion does not mean they truly are disconnected from a religion. The claim is simple denial and ungrounded.

 

So this is about jews and catholics?

 

I realize both arguments are idiotic, but you are failing to grasp the distinction between using an argument and supporting its corollary. Any time atheists want to claim theology is evil and responsible for death and destruction, I am going to point out the death and destruction caused by atheists, since the atheists are the big winners in that contest, 100 million dead in less than a century, caused by the atheists Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, etc. Do I believe all atheists are responsible for Marxism? Of course not, no more than I believe all Christians are responsible for the Catholic/Protestant wars. But it's a useful counter-argument to defang the atheists' claims about religion. After that, I will argue that human nature is to blame for war and inhumanity, not religion. But that would be a weaker argument without the earlier statistic.

 

The distinction is just as you have stated it... if it's just one person doing it, it's an eccentricity, not a religion. If it's just a dozen people doing it, it's a cult, not a religion. If it's a hundred people doing it, now it's tending toward religion. The same distinction can be made between citizens and a country. Everyone is a citizen of a country, but no one person can qualify as a country by himself.

 

Using this definition, Hitler was also a devout Muslim, since the Muslims have a long history of persecuting and killing Jews. And Hitler had nice things to say about Islam, unlike Catholicism.

 

Strange video. Not sure what it has to do with what was being discussed though.

 

Only in the last 100 or so years have Muslims been proactively going after Jews - especially since Israel was formed on Muslim land against their will after WW2.

the 1500 or so years prior to this the Muslims treated Jews much better than Christians. The rational given for this 1500 years of persecuting Jews was they were responsible for killing Christ.

Hitler liked the Muslims because they were his allies.

 

I think I’m closer to your view than to the militant anti-theist view. I don’t regard religion as being factual or literally true in any way. However, the ideological and moral character of religious people is pretty much all over the map.

In some areas, I’ve actually found some of Christianity’s teachings about human nature to be more insightful than I had thought previously. I think the duality in Christianity has some truth to it- the struggle between our best selves and our worst selves is very real. That’s not to say I’ll ever be a Christian, but I think we as atheists should acknowledge our debts to the culture we came from, as primitive as it may seem. It’s not all bad.

There are also religious intellectuals who believe in heaven, but don’t deny the earth beneath their feet. In other words, their beliefs regarding the real world are not very different from that of an atheist like me. Or at least no more different than any two people’s view of the world around them.

With that said, I take issue with treating Stalinism as a “sect” of atheism. It’s a more brutal offspring of Marxism. Atheism was just one small part of Marxism, and arguably not even a necessary part of socialism. There are ideologies like Ba’athism which have produced regimes similar to Stalinism, but which are not atheistic.

Atheism is not really an ideology. It’s just the lack of a particular type of ideology. It tells you nothing about what a person actually does believe. You can see the proof of that in some of my own beliefs. Saying you’re a Christian comes with way more baggage. No matter what “kind” of Christian you are, saying that you are one instantly delineates your beliefs to an extent, at least far more so than saying you’re not a theist.

 

So much error in one post.

False. Muslim slaughter of Jews has been on-going since 622 AD, and peaked in the 19th century.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-treatment-of-jews-in-arab-islamic-countries-2

False. 622 AD to 1900 is less than 1300 years, and while the Jewish population in Europe was around 9 million by 1900, in the Middle East, it was under 400,000.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jewish_population_comparisons

False. Long before Hitler ever came to power, he lamented that Germany and Austria were not Muslim. He believed that Islam was much more of a warrior religion than Catholicism was.

"Had Charles Martel not been victorious at Poitiers -already, you see, the world had already fallen into the hands of the Jews, so gutless a thing Christianity! -then we should in all probability have been converted to Mohammedanism [Islam], that cult which glorifies the heroism and which opens up the seventh Heaven to the bold warrior alone. Then the Germanic races would have conquered the world. Christianity alone prevented them from doing so." - Hitler

http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Quotations_on_Islam_from_Notable_Non-Muslims

 

It's still more accurate to say that atheism is just one belief, not an ideology or religion. It doesn't come with any other beliefs tied in to it, no traditions, no practices, no requirements. Secular humanism does come with all that, which is why I say it IS a religion. But atheism proper doesn't tell you anything about the person claiming it except for his belief about God/gods.

You're right in a sense, liberal views of communalism could very well lead to communist systems without displacing God, but so far, that's not how it has happened. And the most virulent Marxists see religion as an enemy to be crushed. So I think it's fair to paint Marxism/Communism with an atheist brush.

You'll have to find me a brief description of a Ba'athist place that mirrored Stalinism.

 

There was nothing false in my post. Sure there were Jews slaughtered by Muslims - but not nearly as "proactive" (the exact word I used) as the Christians.

The Christians were persecuting Jews for 1500 years. You using a population figure from 1900 - is laughable nonsense. I already stated that over the past hundred years or so the treatment of Jews by Christians was not as harsh.

Those Catholics in Croatia sure proved Hitler wrong now didn't they

The Christians were fare more proactive in persecution and killing of Jews than Muslims .. Christians from 325 AD to well into the 1800's and Muslims from 600AD through the same period.

That is just a historical fact regardless how how much you protest.

 

Because it wasn't necessary. Muslim restrictions on the rights of Jews kept their numbers limited. There were fewer restrictions on them in Europe, so both their numbers and their persecution grew.

Which is why I used 1900 numbers instead of 2000. You could probably pick any year after 70 AD and find more Jews in Europe than in the Middle East.

Only if you count slaughtering helpless people within your own borders being "warrior-like". I certainly don't.

Again, the numbers tell a very different story. More Jews were killed in Europe than in the Middle East, but far more survived.

Both sides treated Jews horribly. Your "historical fact", however, remains questionable since Jews could and did survive in much greater numbers in Europe than in the Middle East. By 1900, there were ten times as many Jews in Europe than in the Middle East and North Africa combined. That hardly speaks well of Muslim treatment of Jews, now does it? Meanwhile, in the present day, Christian oppression of Jews has stopped while Muslim oppression of Jews continues unabated.