charlie sc
Well-Known Member
Uhhh, are you talking about the French revolution? Are you sure you got your facts straight?
-
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:- Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
- Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
- Access to private conversations with other members.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
MURDER, GENOCIDE, and ATHEISTS.
- Thread starter shmogie
- Start date
Augustus
…
Presume he is conflating the Reign of Terror with the civil war/dechristianisation of France (war in Vendee, etc.) that also occurred in the aftermath of the revolution.
War in the Vendée - Wikipedia
charlie sc
Well-Known Member
Maybe, but I don't see the numbers he gave or the reasons he gave - " murdered 300,000 Frenchmen, most for not being good atheists."
charlie sc
Well-Known Member
These were all theists; they were deists.
"For Voltaire, the true God was the father of all men, and not only Christians. May this great God who is listening to me, this God who can surely neither be born of a virgin, nor be eaten in a piece of dough, nor have inspired these books filled with contradictions, madness and horror, may this God, creator of all the worlds, have pity on this sect of Christians who blaspheme him.8 Since the Christian God was not the true God, Christianity could not be the true religion; it could only be the enemy of true religion. It inculcates superstitions which are the germs that cause religious disease. For example, crosses, relics, and rosaries vulgarize true religion and substitute the sickness of superstition for religious health.9 Superstition for Voltaire was the direct cause of fanaticism, and it included all existing organized religions. "Almost everything that goes beyond the adoration of a Supreme Being and of submitting one's heart to his external orders is superstition."10 Orthodox religion is the source of all the follies and turmoils imaginable; it is the mother of fanaticism and civil discord; it is the enemy of mankind.1' To root out fanaticism, one must first root out superstition, and the only way to do this is negate all dogma-especially to destroy Christianity or ecrasez l'infdme.l2" The Philosophes and Religion: Intellectual Origins of the Dechristianization Movement in the French Revolution on JSTOR
It seems like it's perceptions of what god wants or is that gets people killed, even in your misinformed rant. They wanted to remove dogmatism and superstition and they definitely believed in a god.
Augustus
…
Deaths in the Vendee are difficult to establish, there were certainly a lot of them and the figure isn't ludicrous. Some historians call it a genocide, although this is debatable.
Dechristianisation was directly/indirectly responsible for a very large number of deaths, although identifying this as for 'not being a good atheist' isn't particularly useful.
Augustus
…
Diderot and the Marquis de Sade weren't.
Among the Revolutionaries, some were deists, some atheists. It made little difference to their levels of violence.
stvdv
Veteran Member
One need not be in this forum very long to learn that many Christians verbally hurt others emotionally by declaring
"Only Jesus is the right way, all others go to hell" (and when some don't declare it here, knowing they violate RF rule #8, they think this way)
(Of course the strong atheist is not affected by this BS, but what about all little children they emotional KILL (not free to think for themselves) by this blasphemic sin)
They think (and expect) they get away with this violent "emotional blackmail" kind of speech
PROOF of violence: So many Christians stick to the Bible/Church just out of fear for their horrific God/Satan in the Bible (done now for already 2000 years)
And the worst they do, being too arrogant to see, is blaming the atheist when the atheist mirrors the Truth: "emotional blackmail is not done"
It is nothing more than that 2000 years old persecution complex. Every little objection to their claims is perceived as a violent attack, or a threat to make them illegal and send them to feed the lions.
Ciao
- viole
charlie sc
Well-Known Member
Diderot was a deist, apparently, then become an atheist. However, this has to do with removing dogmatism and superstition, not god.
You didn't respond to my last post.
Why did you presume he's talking about War in the Vendée - Wikipedia?
Last edited:
oldbadger
Skanky Old Mongrel!
No, not Christianity, but just extremist Christianity.
Do they?
Oh..... well that's OK then.
If they lived like Jesus did, then 'no problem'.
It's the crazy extremist nutters that damage your image, methinks.
A few corrupt Churches, actuially, but you can see how and why folks point this stuff out.
Whoa! Although that's a lovely piece of rhetoric right there..... you're writing junk at this point. It's not true to wrote stuff like that.
OK...... give us a citation and then maybe you'll read some of the murderous drivvle that extyreme Christians have written ??? Again, moderate Christians who try to live like Jesus are no problem.... it'#s just the nasty hypocrits that need exposing, really.
We're reading what you have to say, aren't we?
We know that there are some extreme atheists, just as there are extreme Christians, but you're painting all atheists as liars and defamers..... not good.
Nah! The Dominicans were pretty good at that stuff.
The guillotine was considered to be a humane execution technique. In the UK we read about how executions today in your country leave convicts screaming and begging for ity to end.
And some extreme Christians think that LGBTs should be executed as painfully as possible, I once read on a Christian website.
There you go......... so don't knock moderates who point this out.
Curious George
Veteran Member
Well i was under the impression we were discussing more than just violence, and that we were discussing large scale violence. I have yet to hear of that in chimps. But it is possible i suppose. Sure you want to give instances of violence that is unrelated to ideology, i agree they exist. Genocide doesn't seem to be one of those instances. If you have an example i am all ears.
No i don't think i am using religion as synonymous with culture. I am using religion as a subset of culture, so i can see why you would wonder that.
Not correctly estimated mind you
It's so wrong that an estimate of zero deaths would certainly be considerably less wrong.
(to put this into context, there have probably not been 800 million deaths in all wars combined, and as has been noted, scholars estimate that maybe 6-9% of all wars have been primarily religious, with % death toll likely lower than this)
Lists like this are not scholarly but derivative of some post on reddit years back made by some random punter on the internet.
This list probably overstates religious deaths by 150 million (only on the ones with attached casualty figures). Other than the numbers often being an order of magnitude too high, some of these links to 'religious' are ludicrously tenuous.
For example: "AIDS deaths in Africa largely due to opposition to condoms" this is total nonsense, compare HIV rates in Protestant and Catholic Africa if you don't believe
Muslim Conquests of India: 80,000,000: All casualty figures for all historical conflicts tend to be vastly overstated, this is one of the most egregious. Were it true, one would have to believe that a conflict of greater intensity than the 30 Years War waged for centuries and at the end of the 'greatest genocide in history' there were more Hindus than at the start of it and the country was far richer. (also the decision not to include many of these deaths as being part of the, purportedly 'not religious', Mongol conquests is pretty arbitrary really)
Even the more plausible ones like the 30 Years War are far more nuanced. it had some religious dimension, but was more about territory and the power rivalry. It would have been less than half as long if Sweden hadn't joined in to carve out some more territory. The Protestant Swedes were assisted by the Catholic French in this endeavour which shows that religion wasn't exactly the overriding concern. Or the fact that for the Dutch it was really part of the 80 Years War for independence.
Where the list came from originally i do not know but i have seen it published on several sites. As to its accuracy, i did state approximately and i have researched into some of those wars, i have included the death count for those.
You dont appear to understand much about the mores of religion in africa. And what has protestantism got to do with it? Protestants can also oppose condoms.
The muslim conquests of india went on for 400 years and the 80 million deaths is very conservative,. It is considered the greatest genocide in history and i have seen estimates of over 400 million Hindus slaughtered.
Yes the 30 years war "had some religious dimension" which is why it is included
Audie
Veteran Member
Augustus
…
Genocide is also a very minor contributor to historical death tolls. People didn't usually try to wipe out populations, just subjugate/exploit them.
Large scale violence is simply a consequence of large scale society though. Big groups have bigger battles. And if you weren't good enough at violence, your culture didn't survive (unless protected by geography).
It was basically a necessary consequence of human nature, the ideology is more the result than the cause.
How would you define a 'religious' war, as opposed to a cultural war, ethnic war, linguistic war, war of freedom/independence, geographic war, territorial war, resource war, or whatever, and why should this subset of culture be considered the key factor among all these other relevant variables?
Why should we consider the Romans fighting the Persians to be 'religious', for example?
Curious George
Veteran Member
I hope you realize how conveniently simplistic you are trying to make this here
I am not sure i would define it as distinct from many of those. Culture war i would suggest encompasses all war. I suppose that a religious war would necessarily be culture war and culture wars would sufficiently be religious wars. A resource war needn't be either bit most likely is; and, a territorial war is a subset of a resource war.
Because many that killed did so in the name of Justice, believing the riches of Persia were justly Greek riches. Many who fought for Alexander did so with the belief that he either was divine or had the favor of the gods and could not be defeated. Wars involve religion when the combatants believe in the righteousness of their acts. Without this righteousness we would see wars only carried out as practical endeavors. And while you have chosen a war, perhaps on purpose, that has a fair amount of practicality we also see religious fervor present.
Augustus
…
They are not 'approximate', they are simply wrong, and wrong stuff gets repeated on the internet all the time. Someone just said stuff which supports an ideological bias, provided no evidence for it, and people accept it uncritically because it's emotionally satisfying to do so.
Irreligious folk here frequently criticise religious people for dogmatically holding to irrational opinions despite the evidence, yet always seem to do the same when its ideologically convenient for them to do so.
They also can oppose sex outside of marriage so you could as easily argue that religion reduces the spread of HIV if we are just making up narratives off the top of our heads.
Is there any actual evidence that the major reason people in Africa don't use condoms because they are religiously opposed? Why should a rational person accept the assertion that religion is the major cause of the HIV epidemic?
It is considered the greatest genocide by people who are very, very wrong about history. The idea that 80 million is 'very conservative' is ludicrous. Again, an estimate of zero would be far less wrong than 80 million.
This was a continuation of the Mongol conquests, and the death tolls for these are all ridiculously overstated.
A simple look at the demographics of India can tell you this: Demographics of India - Wikipedia
There are numerous other impossibilities I could go into, but these large numbers are simply invented out of thin air, generally for propaganda reasons. If you think pre-modern people were good at estimating numbers, look at the purported size of armies, they are generally 4-15 times beyond what was feasible.
Just because someone says something, doesn't mean you have to uncritically believe it.
400 million would mean killing 1-2% of the original population every year for 4 centuries. This is above WW2 level industrial slaughter for 4 centuries while maintaining a large population growth and building a very prosperous country with numerous alliances. 80 million is almost equally ridiculous by the numbers.
Do you actually believe that is remotely plausible?
But mostly it wasn't a religious war.
In your opinion, what constitutes a 'religious war'?
No comparison, but in both cases the strength and power and wealth of the church that supported the monarchy made a compromise less likely. In contrast the Revolution in the USA did not have a trong church that supported the loyalists, and the monarchy was a long way off.
Yes, the church was becoming divided between Rome and the possibility of a Constitutional Church, and some clergy supported the Revolution and offered compromises, but the church itself did not.
What people want is a subjective claim. A great deal of force behind the French Revolution was the overwhelming abuse of the Monarchy of the Peasants, and the hoarding of food contributing vast starvation due to crop failures.
As I said before a detailed compromise solution was presented by Thomas Jefferson was turned down by the Monarchy and the church.
Monday morning quarter backing of 'what woulda, coulda, maybe, or shoulda happened is not particularly meaningful.
Last edited:
I believe it was more a war against the church, which strongly supported the monarchy, and shares in the responsibility of the abuse and suppression of the peasants by the monarchy.