An Unscientific Theory On Religion Forums

[Cacotopia]

I still wonder why the holocaust is given so much attention and the war crimes committed by allied forces rarely gets even a blink of attention.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I think that this subject has gone on long enough here, it's off topic and distracting, but I do think it is an important subject. Would you mind having it in one of the history forums here?

Then own up to your obvious error.

When a person does that others will no longer feel the need to keep correcting the person that made the obvious error.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I still wonder why the holocaust is given so much attention and the war crimes committed by allied forces rarely gets even a blink of attention.

Because we is the good guys!!

Some of them have been addressed. For example the U.S. illegal rounding up of Japanese immigrants has been admitted and corrected to a degree. Plus it is pretty hard to rise to the same level of war crime of the Nazis.

 

[dianaiad]

In the French revolution, they were throwing out
everything of the established order.

It seems to me, that what went on in Russia and China
had relatively little to do with religion, or non-religion.
It was out with the old, whatever it was.

Stalin may well have qualified as a militant atheist, but
that would hardly be the primary thing he was militant about.

In the event, if the church had somehow stood to help
him, he'd have been quite different about it, dont you think?

'What could have been' or 'might have been' is irrelevant. What WAS, is relevant...and what was is this: leaders who determined to get rid of religion (that's 'atheism,' again...) were more murderous than any theocracy, and indeed the sum of the murders committed by officially atheistic governments was greater than the sum of all government sponsored murders in the previous two thousand years, whether those governments were theocracies or not.

Atheism did not STOP the murdering.

...........and that is my only point here. "Militant atheists" seem to be of the opinion that if only we could get rid of religion, the world would be a much better, more rational, more peaceful place. Eliminating religion has been TRIED. The societies in which it was tried have all, every single one, been anything BUT rational, better, or more peaceful.

What that tells us is something that should be very obvious; it's not the religion or lack of it that causes the murders. It's people who do, and they do it for reasons that really don't have much to do with deity, one way or the other. Getting rid of religion won't solve any of the world's ills, and attempting to do so seems to be a pretty efficient way of reducing the population.

 

[dianaiad]

This is rather convoluted logic. If religion did not exist everyone would be an atheist. There would simply not be a title for atheism.

Or the concept. For instance, nobody things about, or worries about, piwpoeuters. Nobody has a clue what a piwpoeuter would be. Nobody makes laws regulating airspace for piwpoeuters, or sea-lanes, or sidewalks/roads, for piwpoeuters. Nobody has put them on a protected species list or given them minority protected status. Nobody, in other words, is an apiwpoeuter. The concept "piwpoeuter" simply does not exist. It's a random series of letters that mean nothing.

Without theism there can be no atheism; atheists utterly depend upon theism to exist. (shrug) I mean, really...if there were no theism, some atheists wouldn't have anything to gripe about or blame for everything.

 

[dianaiad]

TLDR. But I did scan the highly biased website. It loses all credibility when it tries to count known religious based deaths as "Democide".

It doesn't count religious based deaths AT ALL. the author of this website counts only those deaths that are government ordered, sanctioned or approved. His point isn't 'theocracy vs atheist." He never brings that up, at all. He concentrates on the differences between dictatorships vs. democracies/republics.

One has to do one's own research to find which of the most egregious killer governments are 'officially atheist,' that is, governments which make religion illegal.

 

[dianaiad]

Replacing is not the same as removing.
List x number of reasons to do something. Remove reason abc. You now have x-1 reasons. No matter how many other reasons you add, if abc is gone, that is one less reason.

You are quite right. Replacing isn't the same thing as removing. When you remove something, it is true that you have x-1. The problem is, if the means of removing something is to add a different something, you are indeed replacing, and you have x-1+1.

And you end up with X.

Except of course that the reason you have replaced the first one with results in more deaths. That's problematic.

 

[dianaiad]

If pignanism didn't exist there would be no pignanists and there would be no apignanism nor any apignanism.


What's your point?

That IS my point...and I made the same one myself in a different post.

 

[Audie]

'What could have been' or 'might have been' is irrelevant. What WAS, is relevant...and what was is this: leaders who determined to get rid of religion (that's 'atheism,' again...) were more murderous than any theocracy, and indeed the sum of the murders committed by officially atheistic governments was greater than the sum of all government sponsored murders in the previous two thousand years, whether those governments were theocracies or not.

Atheism did not STOP the murdering.

...........and that is my only point here. "Militant atheists" seem to be of the opinion that if only we could get rid of religion, the world would be a much better, more rational, more peaceful place. Eliminating religion has been TRIED. The societies in which it was tried have all, every single one, been anything BUT rational, better, or more peaceful.

What that tells us is something that should be very obvious; it's not the religion or lack of it that causes the murders. It's people who do, and they do it for reasons that really don't have much to do with deity, one way or the other. Getting rid of religion won't solve any of the world's ills, and attempting to do so seems to be a pretty efficient way of reducing the population.

So lets get to the point.

You have it figured that atheists, and particularly militant atheists are the most evil and destructive people on earth.

Or what?

How do you happen to know that getting rid of religion
would not solve anything, btw?

 

[Cacotopia]

Because we is the good guys!!

Some of them have been addressed. For example the U.S. illegal rounding up of Japanese immigrants has been admitted and corrected to a degree. Plus it is pretty hard to rise to the same level of war crime of the Nazis.

Doesn't justify it, a crime is a crime, it would be hypocritical to say otherwise.

Burning to death 100,000 Japanese civilians all at once is pretty terrible. Nuking two Japanese cities, one of which wasn't even classified as a military target, despite Japan attempting to surrender in 1944, carpet bombing dense civilian population centers with a few factories in the middle, Looting and raping their way across Europe. Burning down entire towns and massacring all present civilians for a single sniper, systematic slaughter of POWs and non combatants via explosives and burying them alive in caves or collapsing tunnels on them, and the death by neglect of some few 100k German POWs by US forces. During Operation overlord, the Normandy Invasion, US soldiers were reported to have used surrendering German soldiers as human shields and forcing them to walk through minefields in order to clear a path for allied soldiers as well as forcing them to march on German occupied encampments to soak up the defensive fire. While I suppose you might think that the Nazis committed far worse with concentration camps and human testing with chemical warfare, Allied war crimes don't seem to me any less worse. They were still atrocious acts all the same regardless of which side committed them.

 

[Cacotopia]

Open Atheism isn't that old of a concept, if you openly denounced god during the reign of a theocracy it was likely you would be tortured till you started believing in god again, right before you were summarily executed. Atheists are still jailed and executed even today for not believing.

Estimates of world population from 10k BC to 2007

which I might add you didn't factor in to your religious war does less damage than "atheist" warfare, as well as factoring in technology. Population density around the globe etc etc.

 

[ChristineM]

From the Jewish World Almanac

Jewish world population 1933: 15,315,859
Jewish world population 1938: 15,748,091
Jewish world population 1948: 15,753,638

I'm not that good at math, but I'm not stupid.

Hitler didn't want to exterminate the Jews, he wanted them to get out of Germany before they nearly destroyed it like they had Russia.

Oh wow, another tinfoil hat moment

 

[ChristineM]

I think that this subject has gone on long enough here, it's off topic and distracting, but I do think it is an important subject. Would you mind having it in one of the history forums here?

You mean you are bottling out again when the evidence shows you wrong? How predictable

 

[Subduction Zone]

It doesn't count religious based deaths AT ALL. the author of this website counts only those deaths that are government ordered, sanctioned or approved. His point isn't 'theocracy vs atheist." He never brings that up, at all. He concentrates on the differences between dictatorships vs. democracies/republics.

One has to do one's own research to find which of the most egregious killer governments are 'officially atheist,' that is, governments which make religion illegal.

Wrong again. But then you will never see your error.

 

[Cacotopia]

Without theism there can be no atheism; atheists utterly depend upon theism to exist. (shrug) I mean, really...if there were no theism, some atheists wouldn't have anything to gripe about or blame for everything.

This is a dishonest statement. You don't know where the world would be without religion, I would like to think we would be a whole lot more advanced without religious institutions persecuting, torturing, and executing scientists, philosophers, and people that did not think withing the religion's paradigm. Nor would I speculate that the monopoly on literacy formerly held by hegemonic theocratic governments and religions would have been as widespread. Perhaps ideas could have been more easily cultivated without religion to hold those in the past back.

 

[ChristineM]

'What could have been' or 'might have been' is irrelevant. What WAS, is relevant...and what was is this: leaders who determined to get rid of religion (that's 'atheism,' again...) were more murderous than any theocracy, and indeed the sum of the murders committed by officially atheistic governments was greater than the sum of all government sponsored murders in the previous two thousand years, whether those governments were theocracies or not.

Atheism did not STOP the murdering.

...........and that is my only point here. "Militant atheists" seem to be of the opinion that if only we could get rid of religion, the world would be a much better, more rational, more peaceful place. Eliminating religion has been TRIED. The societies in which it was tried have all, every single one, been anything BUT rational, better, or more peaceful.

What that tells us is something that should be very obvious; it's not the religion or lack of it that causes the murders. It's people who do, and they do it for reasons that really don't have much to do with deity, one way or the other. Getting rid of religion won't solve any of the world's ills, and attempting to do so seems to be a pretty efficient way of reducing the population.

It really bugs me when religious go on about the murders atheists have carried out saying they account for far more than religious murders.

Here is an incomplete list of wars or conflicts in which one side or both were fighting in the name of religion.

Albigensian Crusade, 1208-49
Algeria, 1992-
Baha'is, 1848-54
Bosnia, 1992-95
Boxer Rebellion, 1899-1901
Christian Romans, 30-313 CE
Croatia, 1991-92
English Civil War, 1642-46
Holocaust, 1938-45
Huguenot Wars, 1562-1598
India, 1992-2002
India: Suttee & Thugs
Indo-Pakistani Partition, 1947
Iran, Islamic Republic, 1979-
Iraq, Shiites, 1991-92
Jews, 1348
Jonestown, 1978
Lebanon 1860 / 1975-92
Molucca Is., 1999-
Mongolia, 1937-39
Northern Ireland, 1974-98
Russian pogroms 1905-06 / 1917-22
St. Bartholemew Massacre, 1572
Shang China, ca. 1300-1050 BCE
Shimabara Revolt, Japan 1637-38
Sikh uprising, India, 1984-91
Spanish Inquisition, 1478-1834
Taiping Rebellion, 1850-64
Thirty Years War, 1618-48
Tudor England
Vietnam, 1800s
Witch Hunts, 1400-1800
Xhosa, 1857
Arab Outbreak, 7th Century CE
Arab-Israeli Wars, 1948-
Al Qaeda, 1993-
Crusades, 1095-1291
Dutch Revolt, 1566-1609
Nigeria, 1990s, 2000s

These account for in excess of 800,000,000 deaths in the name of religion, beat that atheists.

Note the list does not included those killed by Hitler (catholic) or Stalin (Georgian Orthodox Christian) both murdered for nationalistic reasons, not religious

 

[ecco]

Plus it is pretty hard to rise to the same level of war crime of the Nazis.

The Russian atrocities in Poland were pretty bad.

 

[ecco]

You are quite right. Replacing isn't the same thing as removing. When you remove something, it is true that you have x-1. The problem is, if the means of removing something is to add a different something, you are indeed replacing, and you have x-1+1.

And you end up with X.

Except of course that the reason you have replaced the first one with results in more deaths. That's problematic.

You keeping trying to make the argument that I want to forcibly eliminate religion. That's not an argument I have been making.

I am making the argument that if religion did not exist, if people did not hold superstitious beliefs, then there would be no reason to kill in the name of god(s).

There would be one less reason to hate and kill.

 

[ecco]

This is a dishonest statement. You don't know where the world would be without religion, I would like to think we would be a whole lot more advanced without religious institutions persecuting, torturing, and executing scientists, philosophers, and people that did not think withing the religion's paradigm. Nor would I speculate that the monopoly on literacy formerly held by hegemonic theocratic governments and religions would have been as widespread. Perhaps ideas could have been more easily cultivated without religion to hold those in the past back.

Perhaps if we had descended from the same line as bonobos instead if the chimp line ...

 

[dianaiad]

So lets get to the point.

You have it figured that atheists, and particularly militant atheists are the most evil and destructive people on earth.

And exactly where did I say, or write, that?

Or what?

Definitely 'or what.'

How do you happen to know that getting rid of religion
would not solve anything, btw?

Because it has been tried. Several times. Governments went to great lengths to make religion illegal.

....and life under those governments was, without exception, an exercise in avoiding dying/getting killed. Millions upon millions of people ended up dead because getting rid of religion didn't solve anything.

What, do you want another Stalin or Mao to run another country to see if THIS time getting rid of religion will work?