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John_of_Woking
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Ok the National Secular society. They advocate or at least support the right to use Acts of violence against the weakest members of society
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Charlemagne_III
Guest
The Catholic Church in the 20th Century never advocated violence.
That was reserved to anti-God states like the Soviet Union, China, and Germany.
My guess is that most of the murderers who are in prison didn’t have anything to do with God either. The murderers who did have something to do with God did not murder without knowing there would be eternal consequences for their immortal souls. They just thought if they could get away with it … well, they’d just get away with it.
Which of the two types is more likely to be a murderer?
Look into your local state prison and find out.
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DrTaffy
Guest
These guys?
Can you elaborate on and support your claim that they “advocate or at least support the right to use Acts of violence against the weakest members of society”? I don’t see that on their website.
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DrTaffy
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Statistics show that Catholics are over represented in the prison population, atheists are under represented.
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John_of_Woking
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Code:
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Al_Moritz
Guest
Yes, fundamentalism and extremism comes in many colors, both theist and atheist. As does moderation.
To say that all atheism is bad and all theism is good is just as plainly wrong as the opposite claim, that all theism is bad and all atheism is good. If you have followed my posts in this thread you may have noticed that I have tried to defend atheism from black-and-white painting (as also theism), while also being highly critical of some types of defenses of the worldview.
As Ritter in the movie Clear and Present Danger says: “Gray! The world is gray, Jack!”
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Birdpreacher
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shhhh!!! Don’t tell hime that atheists make up only 0.07% of federal prison population, it will only upset himStatistics show that Catholics are over represented in the prison population, atheists are under represented.
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KidCatholic1
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The claim that theists stockpile or love guns in a generalization. You are mistaken-
blogs.thearda.com/trend/featured/religion-and-guns-studies-find-faith-linked-to-lower-devotion-to-firearms/
We also do not support the acts of blatant ignorance and violence that occurred hundreds of years ago by Christians. They were wrong! In modern society, we should just accept that all people have their private opinions and tolerate each other, not try to bash one another. This goes both ways: Christians shouldn’t show intolerance to nonbelievers and nonbelievers shouldn’t show intolerance to Christians. I think that is something we can all agree on.
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BrassAnkles
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Humanism from MW:
3: a doctrine, attitude, or way of life centered on human interests or values; especially : a philosophy that usually rejects supernaturalism and stresses an individual’s dignity and worth and capacity for self-realization through reason
Homicide:
2: a killing of one human being by another
Homicide goes against the precepts of humanism. Therefore, you can’t have your cake and eat it to.
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BrassAnkles
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Whether atheism is an ideological or belief system as you note they still have their common precepts. Furthermore, this ideology has been applied for some time now to political and social issues, so it has a well enough defined ideology to be able to apply it’s “principles”. Furthermore, it becoming more organized to the point that many, even in the Atheist “community”, see it as a religion.
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k5thbeatle
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BrassAnkles
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The article was merely a reference to professor emeritus and Noble Peace Prize finalist Dr. RJ Rummel who has published many books on genocide by governments, ie “democide”.
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Bradski
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I’m afraid he is. It’s as risible as me saying it’s all the fault of the Episcopalians as some judges in Roe v Wade were of that denomination.
It’s one of the things that made me realise I was an atheist. My mother especially would use terms such as ‘it’s not a Christian thing to do’ and she might have been able to quote chapter and verse to back it up. I went along with that for many years until I realised that whatever it was she might be referring to was wrong - period. The only connection with Christianity was that they had it written down somewhere. It was wrong AND un-Christian.
I started to ask myself if a Hindu or a Muslim would also realise that it was wrong and the answer kept coming back that they would.
A little light bulb moment for a young kid who kept it to himself for a long time.
As do all the women who have abortions, who are overwhelmingly Christian. And there are even organisations of Christians who actively support it: rcrc.org
But is Christianity to blame for the awful abortion rate? Of course not. But who complains about it the most and yet actively participates in it the most? Christians. And we have inane attempts to deflect the blame to the ungodly, even to the point of some really classic ‘no true Scotsmen’ fallacies (the Democrats can’t be Christian!), including this nugget of logic:
They must be atheists!
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Al_Moritz
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Al_Moritz
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KidCatholic1
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Yes, but religiosity is possibly to be a deterrent to crimes. Perhaps there is something that we are missing something here, after all, one trend does not always effect another trend. I’m sure atheists have moral compasses. I have no doubt in that.
huffingtonpost.com/david-briggs/no-time-for-crime-study-f_b_4384046.html
nbcnews.com/id/7019023/ns/us_news/t/study-most-us-teens-serious-about-religion/#.VJ89k14Ays
business.tcnj.edu/files/2011/07/mapp.thesis.pdf
I think that there is more gray in this area than we may believe.
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DrTaffy
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My point exactly. But at least theist belief systems have something in common - indeed a ‘something’ that is generally central to the system - whereas atheist belief systems only have a nothing - the absence of something - in common.
Granted my example was poorly chosen, overly coloured by the other post I was responding to, but take instead the example of Catholicism and Hinduism, shamanism, spiritualism, satanism and neopaganism. All very different, but they have at least the common belief in a God.
Despite this it would be nonsensical to claim that ‘theism’ was a belief system. That is like saying that a spark plug is an engine. Theism, or spark plugs, are merely components in belief systems or engines.
It would be even more nonsensical to say that the absence of spark plugs is ‘an engine’ - at least two engines which both have spark plugs have something in common. Both are almost certainly internal combustion engines, for example. Whereas two ‘engines’ that lack spark plugs need have nothing in common. They might be diesel engines, steam engines, Stirling engines, electrical motors, clockwork or (stretching the definition a little) a horse.
Likewise, it is more sensible to compare Catholicism and Satanism, which at least share a lot of beliefs, than to compare western atheism and Maoism, which really share only the lack of a belief.
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DrTaffy
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Abortion and euthanasia may be killing, but they are not violence.
If your argument relies on this sort of word game, then enough has been said.
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Oreoracle
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Regarding the atheist, fascist regimes of the twentieth century, no atheist is arguing in favor of any of that. Yes, there was a lot of oppression and murder. That may be because of, I dunno, the fascism, don’t you think? Just a guess.
You see, the problem isn’t atheism nor spirituality per se, but rather the tendency of humanity to blindly follow authority figures and take solace in cold comforts. Organized religion does this exceedingly well, and that is the main reason we oppose it. That is, after all, the definition of “dogma”: unquestioning belief. Fascism does it well, too, and atheists are not immune to being manipulated.
However, unless atheism makes you somehow more prone to manipulation like organized religion does, I don’t see any potential case you could make. Most democratic societies of the modern day lack a prevailing religion, and they are doing fine. So it would seem that atheism doesn’t make one more vulnerable to dogmatism.
You see, the problem isn’t atheism nor spirituality per se, but rather the tendency of humanity to blindly follow authority figures and take solace in cold comforts. Organized religion does this exceedingly well, and that is the main reason we oppose it. That is, after all, the definition of “dogma”: unquestioning belief. Fascism does it well, too, and atheists are not immune to being manipulated.
However, unless atheism makes you somehow more prone to manipulation like organized religion does, I don’t see any potential case you could make. Most democratic societies of the modern day lack a prevailing religion, and they are doing fine. So it would seem that atheism doesn’t make one more vulnerable to dogmatism.
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BrassAnkles
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Whatever you guys want to denominate godless belief systems hardly matters.
The claim there is no God is a belief (until proven otherwise) that many evil people have used to justify concrete actions that hurt other people, such as Mao, Stalin, Margaret Stanger and the current crop of godless leaders at Planned Parenthood, International Planned Parenthood, the UN and the US that are promoting the killing of what science has verified is a human being.
Ironically, atheists and whatnot work themselves into a frenzy criticizing Christians for the Crusades and whatnot yet cannot be bothered to criticize abortion, in fact most approve of it, even though science is clear on the topic. How unscientific, un-humanist and insincere.
Furthermore, many philosophers have labeled atheism as a belief systems, in spite of the atheist claim that it is actually just “lack of beliefs”. Therefore I think we can say with confidence that not only do atheists reject science but philosophy as well.
The claim there is no God is a belief (until proven otherwise) that many evil people have used to justify concrete actions that hurt other people, such as Mao, Stalin, Margaret Stanger and the current crop of godless leaders at Planned Parenthood, International Planned Parenthood, the UN and the US that are promoting the killing of what science has verified is a human being.
Ironically, atheists and whatnot work themselves into a frenzy criticizing Christians for the Crusades and whatnot yet cannot be bothered to criticize abortion, in fact most approve of it, even though science is clear on the topic. How unscientific, un-humanist and insincere.
Furthermore, many philosophers have labeled atheism as a belief systems, in spite of the atheist claim that it is actually just “lack of beliefs”. Therefore I think we can say with confidence that not only do atheists reject science but philosophy as well.
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