The Alleged Troubles With Atheism

[Jagella]

You really, genuinely believe that living through the "Great leap Forward" and Cultural Revolution in China, or Year Zero in Cambodia wouldn't have been much worse than growing up in 60s America?

That's a pretty remarkable level of whatboutism.

I'm not really sure how the human-rights violations in capitalistic societies compare to the human-rights violations in countries like China and Cambodia. For now I suggest that we recognize that there are significant violations everywhere and not let our biases skew our perception and reasoning.

You might want to read better sources.

I never told you what my sources are! We are being rather presumptuous, are we not?

Stalin's seminary noted he was an atheist, Stalin acknowledged he was an atheist.

Then we can at least give Stalin credit for not falling for the God-myth. At least he got that much right.

Stalin implemented an "atheist 5 year plan", called for the liquidation of the clergy, killed tens of thousands of clergy and implemented policies that led to the almost complete destruction of the Church.

Why did Stalin hate religion so much? That's a question that seems to go unanswered by his religious critics. I think it's safe to say that he had some good reasons to hate religion. In any case, I'm as shocked and disturbed as anybody over Stalin's mass murders, but I see no logical connection between those murders and his atheism.

The seminary journal reports that Stalin declared himself an atheist, stalked out of prayers, chatted in class, was late for tea and refused to doff his hat to monks. He had eleven more warnings... [Stalin] adored Gogol, Saltykov-Shchedrin and Chekhov, whose works he memorized and “could recite by heart.” He admired Tolstoy “but was bored by his Christianity,” later in life scrawling “ha-ha-ha!” beside Tolstoyan musings on redemption and salvation... In his seventies, the dictator was still chuckling about these arguments. “I became an atheist in the first year,” he said, which led to arguments with other boys such as his pious friend Simon Natroshvili.
Young Stalin - S. Sebag-Motefiore

I've read that book too. It appears that if my sources are unsatisfactory, then so are yours seeing that we've read the same books! Anyway, I'm not sure how that cited passage demonstrates that Stalin wasn't influenced by his religious indoctrination to see genocide as a solution to problems with one's enemies. The Bible glorifies Yahweh's genocides, and it would be a strange coincidence that Stalin's genocides would by chance be so similar to Yahweh's acts of mass murder.

Again, you might want to read better sources.

Again, it looks like I've been reading yours! LOL

The "Christian Dark Ages" myth, while beloved of many internet atheists, is not considered tenable by modern historians.

So in what ways did Christians carry on the philosophical and scientific work of the Greeks?

Also the idea that Greeks were some kind of progressive, proto-humanist society is nonsense.

Yes, aside from their founding modern science, mathematics, philosophy and technology, it's just nonsense to admire them!

I like the Greeks in a historical sense, but they certainly aren't the source of modern humanistic values. We can admire many things about historical societies and shouldn't judge them anachronistically, but I can't agree with you that a theocratic society based on extreme xenophobia, where maybe half the people were slaves who could be raped at will, women were kept in seclusion, humans were fundamentally unequal, there was no such thing as individual rights, etc. was "socially progressive".

But much of that is still with us. We're still very unequal although it appears we are making progress. Much of that progress can be attributed to a reawakening of Hellenistic values like education and democracy.

3 communist regimes collectively in the 20th C killed that many: USSR, China and Cambodia.

The Spanish Inquisition killed maybe 3000-5000 people in 350 years (a fraction of a tenth of a percent of the population)

The Khmer Rouge killed 2-3 million in 4 years (1/3 of the population)

The Great Leap Forward killed anywhere from 15-60 million people.

You think it is "absurd" to draw a distinction between these?

Yes. When large numbers of people are getting killed due to ideology, counting the number of the victims to compare the effects of those ideologies is ridiculous.

The concept of the individual means that people have rights as an individual. The other extreme is that only the collective matters: society. If 10 million individuals die to benefit society it's great: progress.

Rights, I'm afraid, are ideals and aren't much a part of the real world. Violating human rights like I said happens everywhere. So as far as violating human rights is concerned, we westerners need to clean up our act first before we preach to the Communists.

But you are again missing the point. It's not about materialism in general, or what you think, or about hypotheticals, but about a specific, real world ideology, Marxism-Leninism (and its offshoots), that had, specific real world effects.

Oh, it was bad I'm sure. We just need to get over our phony holier-than-thou attitude toward Communism.

You say "I don't see violence as a way to perfect people. I would be an idiot if I did" yet are bending over backwards to defend and excuse an ideology that did exactly this.

I'm really not defending Marxism. I'm just pointing out that the facts show that they did little harm that other societies haven't done.

It is possible to identify problems with particular religious beliefs, while also noting there is a vast differences in scale of deadliness that exists between Marxist regimes and the average religious one.

What do you think Jim Jones would have done if he had nuclear weapons? And by the way, the only nation ever to use nuclear weapons to kill thousands of civilians wasn't the USSR; we all know it was the US.

No, what you keep avoiding is that they were stated as part of their ideals. They were necessary for progress, not incidental.

The Communist ideal is "to each according to his need, and from each according to his ability." What about that ideal would result in mass murder?

Do you really think it is a complete coincidence that 3 of the most murderous regimes in history all followed the same ideology at the same time? Or is it more likely that there was some kind of connection to this ideology which specifically accepted the need for violence and death to purify society?

Again, I'm not sure what the motives of dictators are, but I am sure that your treatment is ridiculously biased and superficial. Violence can be caused by many factors in a society not the least of which is religion, poverty, and social unrest due to fear and suffering. Russia was in bad shape long before the Bolsheviks came along. As I see it, Communism didn't cause their troubles but was an effect of them.

It's like saying the violence of ISIS was caused by them not living up to their ideals, rather than being a well documented strategy for achieving their ideological goals.

Could it be that what's really motivating ISIS is religious fanaticism brought on by suffering and resentment against nations like the US? Ideologies don't just fall from the sky but result from the conditions people live with. If you can recognize that fact, then your arguments can be much more respectable.

 

[Jagella]

If someone could demonstrate sin and why something is a sin sure, but I don't think anyone can even remotely do that. And therefore I won't bother with it.

A lot of atheists seem to misunderstand sin saying they don't believe in it., but whether you believe in sin or not, there is sin which is to say that the Bible's rules can be broken. That's wat is meant by sin. For example, if you commit adultery, then you sin whether God exists or not.

 

[Wildswanderer]

I actually agree with list items 1, 2, 3, and 6. Yes, atheism has nothing directly to offer, it cannot explain existence, and it cannot explain the complexity of living things. I don't expect it to. Also, although atheists have no objective basis for morality, nobody else has that basis either. Belief in God(s) does not confer objective morality as far as I can tell.

Those were my choices as well.

 

[Ella S.]

I can answer these using my own personal perspective as a strong atheist.

Atheism offers no hope.

Not necessarily. If you lack a belief in God, you don't need Catholic guilt or the fear of God, for instance. That on its own can offer hope.

Personally, I think hope is overrated. I think it's better to cultivate acceptance, no matter what life brings, although that can be much more difficult.

Atheism cannot explain existence.

I don't really know why existence needs an explanation.

The amazing complexity of living things cannot be explained by atheism.

You are correct, the lack of a belief in God does not explain the complexity of living things. That's why we have the Theory of Evolution.

Atheists are responsible for close to 100 million deaths during the twentieth century alone.

Perhaps. Almost any group of people that has been around long enough has had members of that group commit atrocities.

Hitler was an atheist, and his atheism led him to commit his "final solution" resulting in the deaths of six million Jews.

I thought Hitler was an Ariosophist. My atheism certainly hasn't lead me to contemplating, much less committing, any sort of genocide.

If one is an atheist, then there is no objective basis for that person's morality.

I disagree with this. Morality in the Western world is predicated a lot on purpose. Most theists form their morality based on a theistic teleology as described by Plato. However, Aristotle also explained how one can have a naturalistic teleology without requiring a creator. Thus, objective morality can still exist without theism.

Personally, I take that naturalistic teleology towards Utilitarianism, which is the most popular ethical philosophy that proposes an objective morality (called "ethical realism.") There are also naturalistic teleological arguments for Deontology, too. While I do disagree with Deontologists, I do think that their understanding of morality is logical in the ancient sense (ie, a product of the logos and/or logistikon)

Both also have their own schools of formal logic, too; imperative logic and deontologic logic respectively, although both of these are nonclassical logics. Under classical logic, they would be considered fallacious, or at least outside of the scope of pure deduction or induction.

Atheism is illogical because it is impossible to know that God doesn't exist.

It depends on how you define "know." I use Bayesian epistemology. I think alternative hypotheses explaining our perceptions of the existence of God that rely on methodological naturalism are more likely than the explanations that conclude God's existence. Therefore, I can say that it is justified to believe that there is no God.

That said, this really depends on the definition of "God" that we're using. Some people like to redefine the universe as "God." Technically, though, that's still not a form of theism; it's usually regarded as a form of post-theism, trans-theism, or non-theism. Therefore, someone who did this would still be an atheist because "atheism" means "without theism" not "godlessness-ism."

Atheism is a ruse because there are no true atheists: Supposed atheists do believe in God but don't recognize God's authority because they would rather sin.

This just doesn't make sense to me. If I believed that God existed and was going to punish me for sinning, why would I think that pretending he doesn't exist would let me off the hook? I don't think anyone believes that.

Nonetheless, I am a "true" atheist. Being a strong atheist, I even fit the more rigid, philosophical definition of atheism as "the belief that there are no gods." Of course, I am also a skeptic, so I try to leave room for doubt about this position, nonetheless.

Atheists have created ideas like evolution and the multiverse to avoid the fact that God created the cosmos and life.

Evolutionary theory and various multiverse proposals have been worked on by theists, too. They weren't created solely by atheists. They're also conclusions logically extrapolated from empirical fact, not rationalizations for presuppositions.

Atheism is a mental illness brought on by childhood trauma regarding one's father which leads a person to reject her Heavenly Father.

Atheism doesn't meet the general criteria for mental illness. Atheists are still able to be healthy and function normally in society. For me, I wanted to believe in God but the evidence just wasn't there and I have a deeper commitment to logic.

 

[Subduction Zone]

• Atheists are responsible for close to 100 million deaths during the twentieth century alone.

• Hitler was an atheist, and his atheism led him to commit his "final solution" resulting in the deaths of six million Jews.

Nope, Hitler was a Christian. He was a Catholic. He came up with his own strange version of Christianity, but he remained a Christian.

To call Hitler an atheist is a blatant fallacy. You have been lied to. If you want to claim that he was not a "true Christian" then by the same twisted logic I can claim that just about every atheist that you list was not a true atheist.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Those were my choices as well.

Then you would be terribly wrong since atheists are better at all of those than Christians tend to be.

 

[Ella S.]

Bart Erhman, whilst not a believer anymore (he's at agnostic) is an expert in new testament and writings claims(quite rightly I might add) that the single most influential person who ever lived was Jesus Christ!
There are now loads of archeological evidence proving the historicity of the Bible timeline and narrative.
The geological science now coming out of Christian science is uncovering overwhelming evidence in support of the biblical flood narrative as well as research in y chomosome linking modern cultures back to a single source in nth Africa where it's believed is near the region the garden of Eden likely was located.

Even if we grant all of these claims, how are any of them evidence for an afterlife? You have:

-Someone's opinion that Jesus is influential
-Evidence that events described in the Bible have ties to history
-Evidence of a Biblical flood
-Evidence of Adam, Eve, and the Garden of Eden

None of these are evidence for an afterlife. Just proving that some parts of the Bible are true does not prove that all of it is true.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Even if we grant all of these claims, how are any of them evidence for an afterlife? You have:

-Someone's opinion that Jesus is influential
-Evidence that events described in the Bible have ties to history
-Evidence of a Biblical flood
-Evidence of Adam, Eve, and the Garden of Eden

None of these are evidence for an afterlife. Just proving that some parts of the Bible are true does not prove that all of it is true.

Except they have no reliable evidence for the Garden of Eden or the Flood. In fact there is endless evidence against those myths.

 

[Ella S.]

Actually, that is false. Religion most definately does explain existence. Most scholars, even though they do not believe in God, will agree that it (religion) focuses almost entirely on that question.

No, they don't. Here are the most widely circulated definitions of religion within scholarship:

"a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say things set apart and forbidden - beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a church, all those who adhere to them" from Emile Durkheim

"a comprehensive worldview or 'metaphysical moral vision' that is accepted as binding because it is held to be in itself basically true and just even if all dimensions of it cannot be either fully confirmed or refuted" from Max Lynn Stackhouse

"system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic." from Clifford Geertz

"the entirety of the linguistic expressions, emotions and, actions and signs that refer to a supernatural being or supernatural beings" from Antoine Vergote

"almost every known culture [has] a depth dimension in cultural experiences […] toward some sort of ultimacy and transcendence that will provide norms and power for the rest of life. When more or less distinct patterns of behavior are built around this depth dimension in a culture, this structure constitutes religion in its historically recognizable form. Religion is the organization of life around the depth dimensions of experience—varied in form, completeness, and clarity in accordance with the environing culture" from the MacMillan Encyclopedia of Religion

None of these scholars see religion as focusing entirely on explaining existence. The closest here is Clifford Geertz but he's talking about describing how existence is ordered not explaining where existence comes from or why it is the way it is.

 

[Ella S.]

Except they have no reliable evidence for the Garden of Eden or the Flood. In fact there is endless evidence against those myths.

I agree, although I'm not sure how useful pointing this out would be to someone that doesn't seem to understand how data is used as evidence for a conclusion.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

I think there is some validity to some of those objections, but any such problems are misdirected (see my post #16). For example, to expect atheism to explain existence is like expecting the milkman to deliver the mail! If we wish to explain existence, then atheism I think is a step in the right direction although science is ultimately the tool we should use.

I should stress that atheists like anybody else should be open to constructive criticism. Some atheists deserve to be criticized. We don't want to look like we're in denial like many of the religious appear to be in denial.

As a skeptic I would like to point out the difference between methodological and philosophical naturalism. Further existence is a problematic concept and might better be treated as philosophy rather than science.

 

[Augustus]

I'm not really sure how the human-rights violations in capitalistic societies compare to the human-rights violations in countries like China and Cambodia. For now I suggest that we recognize that there are significant violations everywhere and not let our biases skew our perception and reasoning.

You really don't think you can compare scale?

For example both Obama and Hitler were responsible for human rights violations, surely you would accept it is legitimate to consider Hitler worse than Obama and doing so would not simply be "bias".

Yes. When large numbers of people are getting killed due to ideology, counting the number of the victims to compare the effects of those ideologies is ridiculous.

I don't think I've ever seen such an immense commitment to whataboutism that killing 1/3 of your population in 3 years is no worse than killing 30 people in 3 years.

All human societies are violent, but claiming that this makes them all equally bad is nonsensical.

You don’t think we can say it is preferable to live in a secular liberal democracy as opposed the most oppressive forms of totalitarianism?

Oh, it was bad I'm sure. We just need to get over our phony holier-than-thou attitude toward Communism.

Would it be "holier than thou" to find the Nazis worse than modern Denmark?

Denmark has used violence in wars, so they are the moral equivalent of Nazis. Scale or proportionality don't matter after all.

So is it hypocritical to be opposed to the Nazis and to prefer Western liberalism?

Why did Stalin hate religion so much? That's a question that seems to go unanswered by his religious critics.

Soviet Communists were pretty explicit about it: it was necessary to eradicate all false consciousness to create a utopian society.

the criticism of religion is the prerequisite of all criticism...

It is, therefore, the task of history, once the other-world of truth has vanished, to establish the truth of this world. It is the immediate task of philosophy, which is in the service of history, to unmask self-estrangement in its unholy forms once the holy form of human self-estrangement has been unmasked. Thus, the criticism of Heaven turns into the criticism of Earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.

The only liberation of Germany which is practically possible is liberation from the point of view of that theory which declares man to be the supreme being for man

Marx - A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right

Anyway, I'm not sure how that cited passage demonstrates that Stalin wasn't influenced by his religious indoctrination to see genocide as a solution to problems with one's enemies. The Bible glorifies Yahweh's genocides, and it would be a strange coincidence that Stalin's genocides would by chance be so similar to Yahweh's acts of mass murder.

Maybe George Bush invaded Iraq because he watched Rambo. We can't prove he wasn't influenced by Rambo so it's equally rational to assume he was.

Rambo killed people with guns and explosions, so it's an almost identical mass murder.

There's no actual evidence to support it, and plenty of other well documented reasons that are infinitely more plausible, but if one person simply asserts it was Rambo without any evidence, you can never prove otherwise so it is a valid counterargument to all other hypotheses.

The Communist ideal is "to each according to his need, and from each according to his ability." What about that ideal would result in mass murder?

Why do you act as if they didn't have a well developed and explicitly articulated ideology that justified extreme violence as a moral good in it progressed their cause?

Again, they were quire explicit about it how do you think we were supposed to get from *here* to *utopia* and what was justified in the meantime...

Again, I'm not sure what the motives of dictators are, but I am sure that your treatment is ridiculously biased and superficial. Violence can be caused by many factors in a society not the least of which is religion, poverty, and social unrest due to fear and suffering. Russia was in bad shape long before the Bolsheviks came along. As I see it, Communism didn't cause their troubles but was an effect of them.

Of course many things cause violence.

One thing that can cause violence is an explicitly violent ideology. You seem to believe that religion can have negative effects, but also seem to want to argue that ideology has no negative effects as "the devil makes them do it" and it would have happened anyway regardless of whatever ideology existed.

Could it be that what's really motivating ISIS is religious fanaticism brought on by suffering and resentment against nations like the US? Ideologies don't just fall from the sky but result from the conditions people live with. If you can recognize that fact, then your arguments can be much more respectable.

Ghandi had reason for resentment against the British Empire, but chose a mostly peaceful path of revolution. Suffering and resentment doesn't necessitate violence, even though it can be a cause.

Could it be that there is a set of circumstances that make violent, millenarian ideologies more likely to emerge and take hold, but that this set of circumstances do not guarantee a violent millenarian ideology will always take hold so we should aim to prevent violent, millenarian ideologies from taking over if possible as violent millenarian ideologies, for some unknown reason, always seem to lead to terrible violence?

Computer programmers from London and engineers from Saudi were not joining ISIS because they were oppressed by their condition and they had no chance otherwise. They were attracted by an enticing vision of the future which also happened to legitimise violence in the present.

Personally, I think there is a problem with violent millenarian ideologies be they religious or secular as they always seem to be very bad. That doesn't mean they fall from the sky, or we can ever stop humans being violent or millenarian. That doesn't mean we simply have to adopt extreme relativism, declare them no worse than any other ideology and absolve them of any role in causing violence though.

Would you agree with this?

 

[Jagella]

Nope, Hitler was a Christian. He was a Catholic. He came up with his own strange version of Christianity, but he remained a Christian.

Although we can never really know for sure what Hitler's religious beliefs were, what you're posting here is more likely correct than to say he was an atheist. Atheism was associated with Bolshevism, and Hitler would not want to have anything in common with Bolsheviks. It is a sure bet that at the very least Hitler used Christianity to further his persecution of the Jews knowing that the New Testament is the founding document of anti-Judaism.

To call Hitler an atheist is a blatant fallacy.

I must disagree with you here. There's nothing illogical about calling Hitler an atheist although it is probably factually incorrect to do so. (A claim can be logical even if it is factually wrong.)

You have been lied to.

Millions have been lied to by Christian apologists who claim that Hitler was an atheist.

If you want to claim that he was not a "true Christian" then by the same twisted logic I can claim that just about every atheist that you list was not a true atheist.

Many Christians deny that any person who does evil can be a true Christian. They appear to be ignorant of the fact that their religion asserts that all people have sinned. In any case, it is common for people to define their way out of trouble. If a woman suffers emotional abuse from her husband's cruel insults for example, then to defend her husband just define abuse as physical violence. Presto! He's innocent of abuse.

 

[Augustus]

So in what ways did Christians carry on the philosophical and scientific work of the Greeks?

Sorry, the rest of my answers is mostly copy/pastes from stuff I wrote in other threads as it’s a massive topic and it's easier to paste than rewrite So it’s probably tl;dr, bit just in case you are interested.

There may be the odd continuity error too.

For example:

Oxford Calculators - Wikipedia
Roger Bacon - Wikipedia
William of Ockham - Wikipedia
Nicole Oresme - Wikipedia
Toledo School of Translators - Wikipedia

Some scholarly views:

A widespread myth that refuses to die...maintains that consistent opposition of the Christian church to rational thought in general and the natural sciences in particular, throughout the patristic and medieval periods, retarded the development of a viable scientific tradition, thereby delaying the Scientific Revolution and the origins of modern science by more than a millennium.

Historical scholarship of the past half-century demonstrates that the truth is otherwise.
David C Lindberg in the Cambridge companion to science and religion

John Heilbron, no apologist for the Vatican, got it right when he opened his book The Sun in the Church with the following words: “the Roman Catholic Church gave more financial and social support to the study of astronomy for over six centuries, from the recovery of ancient learning during the late Middle Ages into the Enlightenment, than any other, and probably all, other institutions.T”4 Heilbron’s point can be generalized far beyond astronomy. Put succinctly, the medieval period gave birth
to the university, which developed with the active support of the papacy. This unusual institution sprang up rather spontaneously around famous masters in towns like Bologna, Paris, and Oxford before 1200. By 1500, about sixty universities were scattered throughout Europe. What is the significance of this development for our myth? About 30 percent of the medieval university curriculum covered subjects and texts concerned with the natural world.5 This was not a trivial development. The proliferation of universities between 1200 and 1500 meant that hundreds of thousands of students—a quarter million in the German universities alone from 1350 on—were exposed to science in the Greco-Arabic tradition. Michael H Shank

Historians have observed that Christian churches were for a crucial millennium leading patrons of natural philosophy and science, in that they supported theorizing, experimentation, observation, exploration, documentation, and publication. Noah J Efron

No account of Catholic involvement with science could be complete without mention of the Jesuits (officially called the Society of Jesus). Formally established in 1540, the society placed such special emphasis on education that by 1625 they had founded nearly 450 colleges in Europe and elsewhere... It is clear from the historical record that the Catholic church has been probably the largest single and longest- term patron of science in history, that many contributors to the Scientific Revolution were themselves Catholic, and that several Catholic institutions and perspectives were key influences upon the rise of modern science. Margaret J Osler

Although they disagree about nuances, today almost all historians agree that Christianity (Catholicism as well as Protestantism) move many early-modern intellectuals to study nature systematically.4 Historians have also found that notions borrowed from Christian belief found their ways into scientific discourse, with glorious re- sults; the very notion that nature is lawful, some scholars argue, was borrowed from Christian theology.5 Christian convictions also affected how nature was studied. For example, in the six- teenth and seventeenth centuries, Augustine’s notion of original sin (which held that Adam’s Fall left humans implacably dam- aged) was embraced by advocates of “experimental natural phi- losophy.” As they saw it, fallen humans lacked the grace to understand the workings of the world through cogitation alone, requiring in their disgraced state painstaking experiment and ob- servation to arrive at knowledge of how nature works (though our knowledge even then could never be certain). In this way, Christian doctrine lent urgency to experiment.6

Historians have also found that changing Christian approaches to interpreting the Bible affected the way nature was studied in crucial ways. For example, Reformation leaders disparaged allegorical readings of Scripture, counseling their congregations to read Holy Writ literally. This approach to the Bible led some scholars to change the way they studied nature, no longer seeking the allegorical meaning of plants and animals and instead seeking what they took to be a more straightforward description of the material world.7 Also, many of those today considered “fore- fathers” of modern science found in Christianity legitimation of their pursuits. René Descartes (1596–1650) boasted of his physics that “my new philosophy is in much better agreement with all the truths of faith than that of Aristotle.”8 Isaac Newton (1642–1727) believed that his system restored the original divine wisdom God had provided to Moses and had no doubt that his Christianity bolstered his physics—and that his physics bolstered his Christi- anity.9 Finally, historians have observed that Christian churches were for a crucial millennium leading patrons of natural philosophy and science, in that they supported theorizing, experimentation, observation, exploration, documentation, and publication. (Noah J Efron - Ch9 in Galileo goes to jail and other myths about science and religion - Harvard University Press)

Yes, aside from their founding modern science, mathematics, philosophy and technology, it's just nonsense to admire them!

Modern science was founded c18th century in Europe and the rest predate the Greeks.

The Greeks overvalued reason and undervalued experiment and practical observation. They were not particularly close to our modern concept.

Also, Greek natural philosophy was always a means to an end: living a good life, rather than simply advancing knowledge for the sake of knowledge.

In addition, it was a highly elitist pursuit for people with sufficient resources (and slave labour) to be able to live a life of leisure.

The development of modern science was more a result of medieval developments and later rejection of Greek methods in favour of an experimental approach in the early-modern period than a rediscovery of "Greek science" as the pop-culture "Renaissance" myth tells.

(obviously this is a major simplification of a complex topic, and all periods developed on the advances of previous generations so they are all important in the big picture. Thinking that the Greeks were 'almost there' undermines the contributions of the later generations in Europe and Middle East though)

If you are interested, one interesting theory relates to the idea that the experimental approach as proposed by Francis Bacon was, in part, a result of theological beliefs about The Fall prevalent at that time:


The experimental approach is justified primarily by appeals to the weakness of our sensory and cognitive capacities. For many seventeenth-century English thinkers these weaknesses were understood as consequences of the Fall. Boyle and Locke, for their part, also place stress on the incapacities that necessarily attend the kind of beings that we are. But in both cases, the more important issue is the nature of human capacities rather than the nature of the Deity. And if the idea of a fall away from an originally perfect knowledge begins to decline in importance towards the end of the seventeenth century, it nonetheless played a crucial role by drawing attention to the question of the capacities of human nature in the present world...

One of the first texts that [Francis] Bacon would have had to contend with was the ‘Organon’, a collection of Aristotle’s writings on logic. All undergraduates were expected to become familiar with its contents, and until well into the seventeenth century university statutes prescribed monetary penalties for those guilty of transgressions against Aristotle’s logic.

Bacon’s early resistance to the Aristotelianism he encountered at university and his later ambition to establish new foundations for learning are both evident in the title of what is probably his best known philosophical work: Novum organum – (The New Organon, 1620). At this point it should be unnecessary to labour the fact that Bacon has a conception of natural philosophy as an enterprise devoted to a recovery of Adamic knowledge of nature and dominion over it.

Each of the two sections of the Novum Organum concludes with an injunction to recover the dominion over nature that was lost as a consequence of the Fall. As for the impediments to this recovery, Bacon saw in the long-standing tradition of Aristotelian logic an implicit recognition of the fact that ‘the human intellect left to its own course is not to be trusted’. But Bacon was convinced that the purveyors of logic had systematically misidentified the nature of mental errors and the means by which they were to be corrected. The champions of the old Organon ‘have given the first place to Logic, supposing that the surest helps to the sciences were to be found in that’. In Bacon’s judgement, ‘the remedy is altogether too weak for the disease’. The impotence of logic in the face of the human propensity for error could be attributed to two factors. First, the logicians had simply underestimated the extent of the problem they were seeking to rectify.154 ‘The root cause of nearly all evils in the sciences’, Bacon wrote, is that ‘we falsely admire and extol the powers of the human mind.’ As a consequence, ‘we neglect to seek for its true helps’.155 Second, not realising that error stems from multiple failures of the human mind, they had prescribed a single generic remedy.156

In order to arrive at a true interpretation of nature, Bacon insists, we need to begin with an understanding of human faculties and their limitations. In the Novum Organum, then, Bacon identifies the senses, memory, and reason as the faculties involved in knowledge, and seeks specific ‘ministrations’ or ‘helps’ to heal their inherent infirmities.157 These infirmities, which for Bacon ‘have their foundation in human nature itself’, are referred to as ‘the idols of the tribe’, the first category of four ‘idols of the mind’ to which Bacon attributes the errors of human knowledge.158 For Bacon, the deficiencies of the senses provide the first occasion for error: ‘By far the greatest hindrance and aberration of the human understanding proceeds from the dullness, incompetency, and deceptions of the senses.’159The senses, which are ‘infirm and erring’, fail us in two ways. Sometimes they provide no information; sometimes they provide false information...

Bacon believed that a better ‘help’ for the senses was experimentation: ‘For the subtlety of experiments is far greater than that of the sense itself, even when assisted by exquisite instruments.’" Peter Harrison - The Fall of Man and the foundations of modern science

 

[Augustus]

Nope, Hitler was a Christian. He was a Catholic. He came up with his own strange version of Christianity, but he remained a Christian.

He was most likely some kind of Providential deist who believed in some vague force of nature and destiny.

To call Hitler an atheist is a blatant fallacy. You have been lied to.

On the other hand, the only people who tend to think he was a Christian are internet anti-theists, and they tend to do so with such a tremendous certainty that it is telling.

For example, Richard Steigmann-Gall's Holy Reich, is one of the better known revisionist works (in the sense that it ascribes a greater role of Christianity than has traditionally been the case).

Even then he still concludes the following:

The contradictions and inconsistencies found in Table Talk on many issues make it impossible to claim to know Hitler's mind. Nonetheless, certain tendencies in his thought are discernible. Even though he never converted to paganism, Hitler nonetheless became increasingly opposed to Christian institutions and, on the face of it, to the Christian religion as well. However, the process was not as clear as historical analysis generally suggests. In fact, Hitler's professed hatred of Christianity was shot through with ambiguity and contradiction. Even as he accused Christianity of being Jewish and Bolshevik, at all times he carefully protected the Jew Jesus from his attacks. According to Hitler, Christ's "original message" could still be detached from what was later called Christianity. In other words, Hitler continued his long- held belief that the unfettered ideas of Christ were different from the ideas of the churches. Elsewhere, Hitler went further, indicating an appreciation for aspects of Christian teaching and even a remorse that the churches had failed to back him and his movement as he had hoped. Although increasingly anticlerical, Hitler put limits on his apostasy...

Whereas Hitler insisted as late as 1938 that he still believed in the party's positive Christianity, on other occasions his tone was very different. In December 1939, for example, Goebbels noted in his diary that "The Fuhrer is deeply religious, but entirely anti-Christian. He regards Christianity as a symptom of decay"...



Alternatively, Ian Kershaw's biography Hitler, takes a more traditional stance:

“In February 1937 Hitler made it plain to his inner circle that he did not want a ‘Church struggle’ at this juncture. The time was not ripe for it. He expected ‘the great world struggle in a few years’ time’. If Germany lost one more war, it would mean the end. The implication was clear: calm should be restored for the time being in relations with the Churches. Instead, the conflict with the Christian Churches intensified. The anti-clericalism and anti-Church sentiments of the grass-roots party activists simply could not be eradicated. The activists could draw on the verbal violence of party leaders towards the Churches for their encouragement. Goebbels’s orchestrated attacks on the clergy through the staged ‘immorality trials’ of Franciscans in 1937 – following usually trumped-up or grossly exaggerated allegations of sexual impropriety in the religious orders – provided further ammunition. And, in turn, however much Hitler on some occasions claimed to want a respite in the conflict, his own inflammatory comments gave his immediate underlings all the licence they needed to turn up the heat in the ‘Church struggle’, confident that they were ‘working towards the Führer’.

Hitler’s impatience with the Churches prompted frequent outbursts of hostility. In early 1937, he was declaring that ‘Christianity was ripe for destruction’, and that the Churches must yield to the ‘primacy of the state’, railing against any compromise with ‘the most horrible institution imaginable’. In April, Goebbels reported with satisfaction that the Führer was becoming more radical in the ‘Church Question’, and had approved the start of the ‘immorality trials’ against clergy. Goebbels noted Hitler’s verbal attacks on the clergy and his satisfaction with the propaganda campaign on several subsequent occasions over the following few weeks. But Hitler was happy to leave the Propaganda Minister and others to make the running. If Goebbels’s diary entries are a guide, Hitler’s interest and direct involvement in the ‘Church struggle’ declined during the second half of the year. Other matters were by now occupying his attention.

 

[Subduction Zone]

He was most likely some kind of Providential deist who believed in some vague force of nature and destiny.



On the other hand, the only people who tend to think he was a Christian are internet anti-theists, and they tend to do so with such a tremendous certainty that it is telling.

For example, Richard Steigmann-Gall's Holy Reich, is one of the better known revisionist works (in the sense that it ascribes a greater role of Christianity than has traditionally been the case).

Even then he still concludes the following:

The contradictions and inconsistencies found in Table Talk on many issues make it impossible to claim to know Hitler's mind. Nonetheless, certain tendencies in his thought are discernible. Even though he never converted to paganism, Hitler nonetheless became increasingly opposed to Christian institutions and, on the face of it, to the Christian religion as well. However, the process was not as clear as historical analysis generally suggests. In fact, Hitler's professed hatred of Christianity was shot through with ambiguity and contradiction. Even as he accused Christianity of being Jewish and Bolshevik, at all times he carefully protected the Jew Jesus from his attacks. According to Hitler, Christ's "original message" could still be detached from what was later called Christianity. In other words, Hitler continued his long- held belief that the unfettered ideas of Christ were different from the ideas of the churches. Elsewhere, Hitler went further, indicating an appreciation for aspects of Christian teaching and even a remorse that the churches had failed to back him and his movement as he had hoped. Although increasingly anticlerical, Hitler put limits on his apostasy...

Whereas Hitler insisted as late as 1938 that he still believed in the party's positive Christianity, on other occasions his tone was very different. In December 1939, for example, Goebbels noted in his diary that "The Fuhrer is deeply religious, but entirely anti-Christian. He regards Christianity as a symptom of decay"...



Alternatively, Ian Kershaw's biography Hitler, takes a more traditional stance:

“In February 1937 Hitler made it plain to his inner circle that he did not want a ‘Church struggle’ at this juncture. The time was not ripe for it. He expected ‘the great world struggle in a few years’ time’. If Germany lost one more war, it would mean the end. The implication was clear: calm should be restored for the time being in relations with the Churches. Instead, the conflict with the Christian Churches intensified. The anti-clericalism and anti-Church sentiments of the grass-roots party activists simply could not be eradicated. The activists could draw on the verbal violence of party leaders towards the Churches for their encouragement. Goebbels’s orchestrated attacks on the clergy through the staged ‘immorality trials’ of Franciscans in 1937 – following usually trumped-up or grossly exaggerated allegations of sexual impropriety in the religious orders – provided further ammunition. And, in turn, however much Hitler on some occasions claimed to want a respite in the conflict, his own inflammatory comments gave his immediate underlings all the licence they needed to turn up the heat in the ‘Church struggle’, confident that they were ‘working towards the Führer’.

Hitler’s impatience with the Churches prompted frequent outbursts of hostility. In early 1937, he was declaring that ‘Christianity was ripe for destruction’, and that the Churches must yield to the ‘primacy of the state’, railing against any compromise with ‘the most horrible institution imaginable’. In April, Goebbels reported with satisfaction that the Führer was becoming more radical in the ‘Church Question’, and had approved the start of the ‘immorality trials’ against clergy. Goebbels noted Hitler’s verbal attacks on the clergy and his satisfaction with the propaganda campaign on several subsequent occasions over the following few weeks. But Hitler was happy to leave the Propaganda Minister and others to make the running. If Goebbels’s diary entries are a guide, Hitler’s interest and direct involvement in the ‘Church struggle’ declined during the second half of the year. Other matters were by now occupying his attention.

Yes, basically what I said. He was very anti organized Christianity and he had his own weird version of Christianity. But then look at the Christianity of some of the members here. There is quite a range.

 

[Augustus]

Yes, basically what I said. He was very anti organized Christianity and he had his own weird version of Christianity.

Very dubious whether there is any reason to definitively label him any kind of Christian., let alone with any degree of confidence.

The bulk of the available evidence from his close associates tends to present him as being anti-Christian from the late 30s onwards.

Scholarly views range from "he was staunchly anti-Christian" to "it's a mixed bag and we can't really tell either way", with the centre of balance being far closer to the former.

 

[Ella S.]

I must disagree with you here. There's nothing illogical about calling Hitler an atheist although it is probably factually incorrect to do so. (A claim can be logical even if it is factually wrong.)

It depends on how the conclusion that Hitler was an atheist was arrived at. It could be misinformation that looked genuine to the person making the claim.

However, the claim itself stated as-is becomes neither a logical conclusion nor an observation but an Argument from Assertion.

Of course, it is not always necessary to provide your reasoning for a conclusion that you believe is common knowledge in a debate format nor is it always necessary to provide support for a definition you use for a word if it's agreed upon by both sides of the debate. These are things that can bog debate down.

So the claim that Hitler is an atheist is in a sort of gray zone when it's left without any sort of source or justification. In a discussion, it's better to entertain the idea that the other person might have some information that you don't, making them more informed than you are. You grant that they are probably logical for the sake of discussion but do not accept their claims until you find that information, otherwise you yourself become illogical.

In a debate, it's more likely going to be a mistake that other people will jump on top of and pummel you with because debates aren't about discovering what's true. They're about making your opponents' argument look bad and making your own look better so you can win. In my opinion, this means that debates have little, if any, worth.

 

[Jagella]

You really don't think you can compare scale?

The scale of what? If you're referring to evil, then no, I know of no such scale to measure it. What is evil is a judgment call.

For example both Obama and Hitler were responsible for human rights violations, surely you would accept it is legitimate to consider Hitler worse than Obama and doing so would not simply be "bias".

What did Obama do to violate human rights? If you ask al-Qaeda, then they'll no doubt judge him as very evil. My own estimation of Obama is that he may be no worse than most US presidents.

I don't think I've ever seen such an immense commitment to whataboutism that killing 1/3 of your population in 3 years is no worse than killing 30 people in 3 years.

I think killing any number of people in any amount of time is bad enough.

All human societies are violent, but claiming that this makes them all equally bad is nonsensical.

You can call societies as bad as you wish, but objectively comparing those societies is obviously problematical.

You don’t think we can say it is preferable to live in a secular liberal democracy as opposed the most oppressive forms of totalitarianism?

I cannot say from experience what it's like to live in an oppressive totalitarian society. I'm having enough problems living in America. I suppose a secularized democracy is preferable to a theocracy.

Would it be "holier than thou" to find the Nazis worse than modern Denmark?

Assuming that modern Denmark has demonstrated that it treats people better than Nazi Germany, then Denmark would be justified in judging itself to be morally superior to the Nazis.

So is it hypocritical to be opposed to the Nazis and to prefer Western liberalism?

In some ways it is. If you've ever read To Kill a Mockingbird, a young girl in a Southern school prior to WWII is told that the Nazis are evil because they practice racism. Smart girl that she was, she pointed out to her teacher that America practiced racism too!

Soviet Communists were pretty explicit about it: it was necessary to eradicate all false consciousness to create a utopian society.

the criticism of religion is the prerequisite of all criticism...

It is, therefore, the task of history, once the other-world of truth has vanished, to establish the truth of this world. It is the immediate task of philosophy, which is in the service of history, to unmask self-estrangement in its unholy forms once the holy form of human self-estrangement has been unmasked. Thus, the criticism of Heaven turns into the criticism of Earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.

The only liberation of Germany which is practically possible is liberation from the point of view of that theory which declares man to be the supreme being for man

Marx - A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right

I would agree with Marx that religion should be criticized. He was right there, but nothing in that quotation explains why the Communists hated religion so much. Could it be that they hated religion for its centuries of lies and persecutions?

Maybe George Bush invaded Iraq because he watched Rambo. We can't prove he wasn't influenced by Rambo so it's equally rational to assume he was.

I don't know why exactly Bush invaded Iraq. But in Stalin's case, we have good reason to believe his theological training influenced his atrocities.

Why do you act as if they didn't have a well developed and explicitly articulated ideology that justified extreme violence as a moral good in it progressed their cause?

Why do you ask so many questions while dodging mine? I said that the Communist ideal is "to each according to his need, and from each according to his ability." What about that ideal would result in mass murder? My answer, since you dodged your opportunity to answer, is that it's a great ideal which exhibits compassion and social responsibility. There's no way that mass murder could be inspired by that Communist ideal.

One thing that can cause violence is an explicitly violent ideology.

As in The Battle Hymn of the Republic?

Ghandi had reason for resentment against the British Empire, but chose a mostly peaceful path of revolution. Suffering and resentment doesn't necessitate violence, even though it can be a cause.

Your fallacy here is to cite an exceptional example to support a general rule. In general, suffering and the attendant resentment very often does lead to revolution and violence. I think that's what has happened in Communist societies. People were hurting, they blamed their leaders, and they rebelled against those leaders forming a government they hoped would be an improvement.

Personally, I think there is a problem with violent millenarian ideologies be they religious or secular as they always seem to be very bad. That doesn't mean they fall from the sky, or we can ever stop humans being violent or millenarian. That doesn't mean we simply have to adopt extreme relativism, declare them no worse than any other ideology and absolve them of any role in causing violence though.

Would you agree with this?

We have more questions from somebody who insists on dodging the questions posed to him!

Anyway, I'm not sure how extreme my relativism might be, but it's always a good idea to make sure one's own home is clean prior to criticizing the sloppy neighbors.

 

[Augustus]

Why do you ask so many questions while dodging mine? I said that the Communist ideal is "to each according to his need, and from each according to his ability." What about that ideal would result in mass murder? My answer, since you dodged your opportunity to answer, is that it's a great ideal which exhibits compassion and social responsibility. There's no way that mass murder could be inspired by that Communist ideal.

I didn't "dodge" it, I pointed out that summing up A complex, explicitly violent millenarian ideology with a bumper sticker slogan detached from actual reality is inane.

If it wasn't clear enough: what about that anodyne slogan, taken in isolation and abstracted from any real world Marxist-Leninist ideology would incite people to mass murder? Nothing. It's just a platitude that sums up one aim, and says nothing about how that aim is to be achieved and what else is justified in achieving that aim.

As an argument it is about as substantial as absolving ISIS of any crimes because they said they were trying to create a harmonious global society by killing anyone who disagreed with them.

If you think Year Zero, The Cultural Revolution or the Red Terror were simply manifestations of "compassion and social responsibility", and you think it is rational to judge totalitarian ideologies and political systems based on the most mawkish soundbite given by their apologists, then I've got some magic beans you might want to buy.

Now your question, if several governments preached a version the following violent, millenarian ideology and all of them killed many millions people for exactly this reason, and they were all outliers in terms of repression and violence, should we consider that their ideology probably had something to do with the killings and should people who care about compassion and social responsibility who don't really like millions of innocent people being killed and exceptional levels of repression and violence criticise this ideology?

Leninism posited a belief in humankind’s effective perfectibility through development of a new type of person, capable of living under communism. Belief in the attainability of an aesthetically pure, harmonious, and unitary future society required the removal of imperfections and the active sculpting of society by the state... [thus it required] “a radically new type of violence, truly decisive and self-contained, a form of violence that will put an end once and for all to violence itself.”93 This dialectical notion of violence to end violence is of cardinal importance for understanding how violence in the service of the revolution was not simply justified but sacralized in Bolshevik thought...the Soviet concept of “active humanism”—the necessity of taking (violent) action to eradicate the sources of human suffering—was quite central to the representation of violence as morally good...

The Sacralization of Violence: Bolshevik Justifications for Violence and Terror during the Civil War - Jame Ryan

Your fallacy here is to cite an exceptional example to support a general rule. In general, suffering and the attendant resentment very often does lead to revolution and violence. I think that's what has happened in Communist societies. People were hurting, they blamed their leaders, and they rebelled against those leaders forming a government they hoped would be an improvement.

Suffering and resentment is omnipresent throughout human history. Revolution is the exception, not the rule.

But in this case, people rebelled against the government and then a fringe party of fanatics took over the revolution and enacted their violent, millenarian ideology in exactly the manner they said they would, by cleansing society of "wrongthink" using massive amounts of violence.

Revolutions often bring the most brutal or most fanatical elements of society into power, who them brutalise the population to maintain their grip on power. This is greatly helped if you promote an ideology that says you can kill anyone who opposes you as they are enemies of humanity.

I would agree with Marx that religion should be criticized. He was right there, but nothing in that quotation explains why the Communists hated religion so much. Could it be that they hated religion for its centuries of lies and persecutions?

Again, you seem unfamiliar with the ideology you are sugarcoating. The answer is in the quote.

Marxist Communism required the eradication of all other ideologies as they were obstacles to creating a utopia. Religion, liberal democracy, human rights, democratic socialism etc. were all obstacles to progress and needed to be eradicated.

When you have the One True Belief System, all others are false and must be destroyed to allow Humanity to reach its true purpose.

This is the difference between totalitarianism and mere autocracy.

The scale of what? If you're referring to evil, then no, I know of no such scale to measure it. What is evil is a judgment call.

Yes, a judgement call all humans need to make.

I judge brutally killing 1/3 of your population and creating a totalitarian hell-hole in pursuit of a pipedream utopia to be morally worse than creating a flawed liberal democracy, where most people are protected by a relatively equal access to the law and most people can live a reasonably safe and happy life.

Wouldn't you agree?

My own estimation of Obama is that he may be no worse than most US presidents.

So you do actually believe you can morally evaluate actions.

So was Hitler worse than Obama? What about Pol Pot?

Surely you can go out on a limb enough to say, in your opinion, they were both much worse than Obama

I don't know why exactly Bush invaded Iraq. But in Stalin's case, we have good reason to believe his theological training influenced his atrocities.

No we don't and repeating it without evidence doesn't make it true.

Anyway, you also seem to forget that Lenin was near equally violent, and Mao, and Pol Pot were worse. Stalin wasn't an outlier, they all were extremely violent and they explicitly told you their ideological justifications for their violence. In no cases was it because of a Bible they explicitly rejected as superstitious nonsense.

And, just for good measure, even if your fantastical argument about Stalin was correct, it would mean that exposure to violent ideologies can make you commit atrocities. If you are arguing that exposure to violent belief systems can make you commit atrocities, why are you so insistent that fanatical commitment to a violent millenarian ideology like Marxism-Leninism should not be considered to have contributed to 3 of the most murderous regimes in human history? Surely if ideologies can lead to violence, then it would be preferable if countries were not ruled by those who promote such ideologies and kill millions of people because of it?

Assuming that modern Denmark has demonstrated that it treats people better than Nazi Germany, then Denmark would be justified in judging itself to be morally superior to the Nazis.

So would you judge it to be better based on your knowledge? Or you don't want to be "holier than thou"?

We have more questions from somebody who insists on dodging the questions posed to him!

Anyway, I'm not sure how extreme my relativism might be, but it's always a good idea to make sure one's own home is clean prior to criticizing the sloppy neighbors.

They were answered first time around. Now 2nd time around too.

I answered your questions several times, it would be nice if you gave a direct answer to this too rather than skating around the edges with platitudes.

Personally, I think there is a problem with violent millenarian ideologies be they religious or secular as they always seem to be very bad. That doesn't mean they fall from the sky, or we can ever stop humans being violent or millenarian. That doesn't mean we simply have to adopt extreme relativism, declare them no worse than any other ideology and absolve them of any role in causing violence though.

Would you agree that we can, and should, call some ideologies better or worse than others, even while accepting the failings and flaws of our own belief system? Also, that it is reasonable to believe that beliefs do indeed influence human behaviour and that extremely violent, totalitarian ideologies based on utopian fantasies are therefore undesirable?

Bonus points if you will extend yourself as far as clearly answering whether you consider the historical, real world version of Marxism-Leninism as an a extremely violent, totalitarian ideology based on utopian fantasies.