Do you deny that Stalin oppressed the Church in the Soviet Union? Do deny that Stalin had millions of his citizens killed? (Many of them Christians and/Jews?
Do you deny that anyone that would threaten him would be arrested?
Come on now.
Religion was not a freedom in Soviet Russia.
Do you deny that Stalin did not oppress the church in Russia?
Nobody denied any of those things. What we're denying is that they were a direct (or even indirect) result of Stalin's atheism.
Do I deny that many atrocities were committed in the name of religion? No I don’t.
So, on that same note how come you can’t admit that atrocities were committed under a regime that was purely atheist?
Sure there were, but they were not committed
because of atheism. Nobody has ever used atheism as a justification or motive to commit any kind of atrocity.
You see this is why; I am tired of this thread. You all get your nighttimes in a knot whenever anyone says anything about atheism in a negative fashion.
No, we're getting our "nighttimes in a knot" because you made a series of ignorant assumptions and refuse to respond to their refutations.
What I said prior to this is the Majority (99.9%) of Atheists are good people.
Just as the Majority of Christians (or any other religious denomination) are good people as well.
And...?
Look at the Salvation Army for example, can you deny they are not good people? They are selfless and do not pass judgment on anyone. They are first to help out in a crisis and turn away no one.
Where has anybody here, atheist or otherwise, suggested that
all Christians are bad people, or that Christianity has not been used as a motivation for countless acts of generosity or kindness?
It’s the extremists that give religion a bad name. Just as there are extremists in the Atheist circle as well, that gives it a bad name.
Except that there is no atheist doctrine that tells people to go out and kill or harm others in the name of their belief (or lack of belief). There are, on the other hand, passages in many religious texts that tell their followers to do exactly that. The fact that such passages exist - and the fact that people still exist who follow those passages - shows a fundamental problem with religious reasoning that has to be addressed. You cannot just shrug your shoulders and say "they're extremists, so they don't count". They read the same Bible as you do, and they hold the same degree of faith in it as you do, they just choose to take certain passages
which demand them to carry out atrocities as more important than you do.
Do you not see that such an attitude being created,
as well as motivated and encouraged, by your belief structure shows that there is something fundamentally wrong with that perspective?
http://www.alternet.org/belief/143674/are_the_%22new_atheists%22_as_bad_as_christian_fundamentalists
(I did not write the above, I am only trying to make a point)
You're hardly going to make a point with an ill-informed and pompous article apparently written by someone who hasn't actually read anything on the people they're talking about.
As far as my beliefs go, yes I believe in God. So what? How does my belief affect your life?
Not one bit. Where did we say it did?
Can, I prove with an absolute doubt that the universe was created? In my opinion the universe is something so spectacular and complex that it had to be created. Do I understand the complexities? Not on a bet. But I don’t believe it just happened.
That's a false dichotomy. Also, argument from ignorance.
As for who created God? As far as my belief goes, God always was and will be.
Circular reasoning.
Can I explain it? No. But then again no one can explain how the universe just happened for those who deny it being created.
We have an entire field of science devoted to it as well as a comprehensive and well-evidenced theory. Did you even bother looking?
I am not a fundamentalist, far from it. I don’t deny the existence of the dinosaurs; I don’t believe the earth is only 6000 years old. I do believe evolution is part of God’s design.
You don't get brownie points for accepting reality.
As far the Bible goes, it’s the fundamentalists that distort what it is saying and their interpitation of it. Christ’s teachings in the Bible taught us to basically love one another that’s it in a nutshell.
And what about the passages that justify things such as slavery, genocide, torture, stoning, honour killing and homophobia? Do those passages just "not count"? Did the people who chose to believe in those passages just "not get the point"?
