Atheists More Irrational than Religious in U.S.A.

[KyivAndrew]

No. Dead people are without life. How could they communicate?

Christians, as I’ve thought, think they can talk to the dead by praying to prominent figures such as Jesus, Mary, and the Saints.

No, Jesus Christ, Mary and the Saints are surely alive, a belief which you must by now be aware of AJ because you’ve been here long enough to know Christians believe this and I noticed you’ve just put up Buddhist aspirant in your label in the right-hand corner recently. This thread is going to spill out of control if we bring in Buddhism (and with it theodicy) and I am mad because I want to see the reaction to Tom Delay’s debut on Dancing with the Stars tonight.

O.K. have you never heard of Buddhist prayers AJ. Bodhhisatvas after they die are dead or alive? Do you believe as most Buddhists do in the 4 Noble Truths and that Suffering comes from Desire and in order to reach Buddhahood one should eliminate desire? Do you believe the parapalegic deaf blind man is suffering because of bad karma from a past life? You should if you’re a Buddhist. Do you believe that animals have Buddhahood just like humans do. How far down the animal chain does Buddhahood run? Can a knat have Buddhahood?

As Christians, we believe firmly each human is made in the image of God and has a soul and we have a theodicy whose center is the Cross and the Incarnation, the “point of intersection between the timeless and time” in T.S. Elliot’s words. Buddhist belief is that one suffers for bad deeds done in past lives. Do you believe A.J. that any suffering you personally or those close to you undergo in life is the result of bad action in a past life?

 

[KyivAndrew]

Sorry I just noticed after I posted that A.J. has now removed the reference to Jesus, Mary and the Saints being dead from his original post. Any reason A.J.? Have you changed your mind Are they now Alive?

 

[anEvilAtheist]

What I find very curious is that they say on one hand how many have died because of religious wars, but completely blind the many more who died under non-religious forces of power.

I also find it inconsistent when atheists claim that the actions of people of some religions show that religion as a whole is evil or wrong, but do not come to similar conclusions about atheism as a result of the actions of some atheists. I’ve argued this point with both atheists and Catholics on CAF. Some people on both sides think evil acts committed by the other side prove that it is evil but minimize the acts committed by their own side.

By the way, do you have references to back up your claim that historically many more people have died under non-religious forces than religious ones? In my experience, a lot of people on both sides have figured out the conclusion they want the numbers to reach before even looking at them. But if someone has done a comprehensive study of deaths under atheist leaders vs. theist leaders, I’d be interested in taking a look at it. I guess the reason I never bothered to calculate the numbers for myself is because the whole exercise doesn’t seem that important. While someone’s specific interpretation of their specific religion or someone’s specific atheistic worldview could cause them to commit evil acts, their position on whether or not some kind of god exists does not itself lead to them doing evil things.

They also deny or are unable to face what is abortion is, so when the photos are being exchanged, one will finally bring up an embryo that looks more like a creature from outer space than a tiny person, disregarding the brief timeline the human being progresses to when its head, arms and legs are human appearing.

I wish you wouldn’t use the word “they” as if atheists were some monolithic group who all believed in the same things, and behaved the same way. I recognize that an abortion leads to the death of a human being. But I don’t like a lot of the ways photos are used in the abortion debate. Of all the ways of determining whether a life is worth protecting, their cuteness, or how disgusting they look when dead is one of the worst. I think it’s more important to focus on establishing what makes a life worth protecting.

Or for the sake of freedom, deny the impact the breakdown of the family has on society, the prevalance of porn, and that we did not have the crime rate and lack of civility and profanity that is so rampant today.

I think it’s important to examine the data carefully before leaping to conclusions. One important thing to note is that correlation is not causation. Additionally, despite what many people think (due to the media’s focus on sensationalism), the number of crimes committed per year, as well as the number of specific crimes like rape, murder, and robbery, have declined since their peak about 20 years ago, and this drop is even more significant when you consider that the U.S. population has risen significantly in that time period (disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm).

 

[josie_L]

No, I don’t think that most Catholics see all atheists that way, but there definitely are some who do. I guess one reason why I chose it was to catch people’s attention and maybe make some people rethink how they view atheists. Mainly though, I’m bad at picking names, and it was the best one I could think of.

Alright, but as you said most Catholics don’t see atheists in that manner.

 

[KyivAndrew]

AJTheMan thanks for pm,ing me and explaining. God Bless You! Yes we get heated at times on threads which is unfortunate but I have to go back to T.V. just this hour. (the one time you’ll hear me say this. Andrew

 

[josie_L]

I also find it inconsistent when atheists claim that the actions of people of some religions show that religion as a whole is evil or wrong, but do not come to similar conclusions about atheism as a result of the actions of some atheists. I’ve argued this point with both atheists and Catholics on CAF. Some people on both sides think evil acts committed by the other side prove that it is evil but minimize the acts committed by their own side.

By the way, do you have references to back up your claim that historically many more people have died under non-religious forces than religious ones? In my experience, a lot of people on both sides have figured out the conclusion they want the numbers to reach before even looking at them. But if someone has done a comprehensive study of deaths under atheist leaders vs. theist leaders, I’d be interested in taking a look at it. I guess the reason I never bothered to calculate the numbers for myself is because the whole exercise doesn’t seem that important. While someone’s specific interpretation of their specific religion or someone’s specific atheistic worldview could cause them to commit evil acts, their position on whether or not some kind of god exists does not itself lead to them doing evil things.

I wish you wouldn’t use the word “they” as if atheists were some monolithic group who all believed in the same things, and behaved the same way. I recognize that an abortion leads to the death of a human being. But I don’t like a lot of the ways photos are used in the abortion debate. Of all the ways of determining whether a life is worth protecting, their cuteness, or how disgusting they look when dead is one of the worst. I think it’s more important to focus on establishing what makes a life worth protecting.

I think it’s important to examine the data carefully before leaping to conclusions. One important thing to note is that correlation is not causation. **Additionally, despite what many people think (due to the media’s focus on sensationalism), the number of crimes committed per year, as well as the number of specific crimes like rape, murder, and robbery, have declined since their peak about 20 years ago, and this drop is even more significant when you consider that the U.S. population has risen significantly in that time period **(disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm).

You should be comparing the figures (for crime) pre-sexual revolution and post sexual revolution (not of 20 years ago), also, divorce, sexual immorality, out of wedlock babies (which leads to many fatherless boys entering gangs and a life of crime), more STD’s than ever before, millions of aborted babies, addiction to porn that skews the minds of men and women (it’s even breaking up marriages) . . . are issues which have morally affected our societies dramatically since the late 60’s. . . etc

 

[anEvilAtheist]

About your first point EvilAtheist, on what basis do you maintain Robespierre, Stalin and Lenin did bad things? In the absence of God, what do you as an atheist use as a yardstick for judging good from bad. Atheists will give varying justifications but I would like to hear yours personally, if you do not mind.

That’s a fair question. The only moral theory I’ve come across so far that makes a lot of sense to me is desirism. It’s still a somewhat recent theory, so if you think there’s some flaw in it please let me know. But it seems to avoid the common pitfalls of other moral theories. Basically desirism (a.k.a. desire utilitarianism) says that desires are the only reasons for action that exist, and that “value is a relationship between states of affairs and desires. For each desire that P, the agent with that desire has a reason to realize a state in which P is true. To say that a state in which P is true has value is to say that there are reasons to act so as to realize that state.” Also, since everyone just acts how they desire to act (regardless of whether their desire is to cure cancer or rape someone), the primary object of moral evaluation is the desire. A good desire is one that tends to fulfill other desires and an evil desire is one that tends to thwart other desires. A good action is an action that someone with good desires would perform. For example, a desire to rape is a bad desire because either the desires of the rape victim to not be raped are thwarted, or the desires of the rapist to rape are thwarted.

We all act based on our desires. It’s not like we have evidence of something intrinsically good about kindness that forces us to be kind against our will; we are kind because we have the desire to be kind (and that is a good desire). Just like divine morality would not prevent someone who desired to kill someone from killing that person if they did not desire to go to heaven or please God, desire utilitarianism does not somehow force someone to be moral regardless of their desires. However, there are means such as the legal system, praise, and condemnation which can give people a strong desire not to do evil acts. The threat of hell is not the only means of inducing someone to act morally. It’s somewhat hard to give a comprehensive description of an ethical theory in a single post, and you’ll probably have some misconceptions about desirism just as I did when I first heard about it, but if you want to learn more about it, you might want to read this: commonsenseatheism.com/?p=776.

i.e. Stalin has just planned and put to pen an order for the murder of 5 million innocent Ukrainians in the 1930s, men, women, children, regardless of whether the victims have to resort to cannibalism in the end as long as the countryside and Ukrainian patriotism is destroyed. He believes this is moral because there should be no freedom in the U.S.S.R. and as an atheist he does not believe in Christian morality but believes morality is merely a superstitious superstructure to society.

Not all atheists believe that morality is mere superstition. And even for those who do, what matters is what actions people take as a result of this. There’s nothing objectionable about a chemist knowing that when certain chemicals are combined an explosion takes place, but if a chemist decides that because of this they should build a bomb and kill people, that’s a problem. If I learned tomorrow that there was no such thing as morality, I would not begin killing people or acting much differently than I already do.

To him like all atheist communists Morality is Whatever Advances the Proletarian Revolution and this is justified by any reasonable analysis of history and “scientific socialism”. It is justified by Reason as seen by the world’s reasonable people (and there were quite a few of these “reasonable believers” in scientific socialism here and in the Soviet Union in the 1930s – millions).

Not that I’m a communist or am in the business of defending them, but I don’t think it’s fair to assume that everyone who believes that communism is the best economic system necessarily has this view of morality.

Now, let’s say YOU anEvilAtheist are allowed to walk into this particular Politburo meeting and you say this mass execution is “bad” as you averred in your original post because____________________________________ (fill in the blank if you please, it would enlighten me and please I am being sincere here because I wish to know your reasoning).

I would say that it is bad because they’d be thwarting the desires of quite a lot of people who desire not to be killed (though I might say it a little less academically). I would also go into why this constitutes badness, which I tried to briefly summarize earlier in this post.

If you argue against Stalin using reason, how would you argue your “reason” of what constitutes bad is superior to the “reason” being used by these atheists in the Politburo. How do you as a fellow atheist make the case that what they are about to do is “bad”.

I would argue that their view of morality is utterly without foundation if they see their actions as moral or would explain some of the problems with error theory if they thought there was no such thing as morality. Of course this is all assuming that I actually thought they would be receptive to logical arguments.

 

[anEvilAtheist]

Alright, but as you said most Catholics don’t see atheists in that manner.

True, but I still think most Catholics have a somewhat negative view of atheists overall. Polling has shown that overall people are very mistrustful of atheists (gallup.com/poll/26611/some-americans-reluctant-vote-mormon-72yearold-presidential-candidates.aspx). Of course I’m sure there are also plenty of militant atheists who believe untrue stereotypes about believers. I just wish people of all types would make a greater effort to try to understand others before stereotyping them.

 

[josie_L]

True, but I still think most Catholics have a somewhat negative view of atheists overall. Polling has shown that overall people are very mistrustful of atheists (gallup.com/poll/26611/some-americans-reluctant-vote-mormon-72yearold-presidential-candidates.aspx). Of course I’m sure there are also plenty of militant atheists who believe untrue stereotypes about believers. ** I just wish people of all types would make a greater effort to try to understand others before stereotyping them**.

I don’t think your evil because you’re an atheist.

 

[anEvilAtheist]

You should be comparing the figures (for crime) pre-sexual revolution and post sexual revolution (not of 20 years ago), also, divorce, sexual immorality, out of wedlock babies (which leads to many fatherless boys entering gangs and a life of crime), more STD’s than ever before, millions of aborted babies, addiction to porn that skews the minds of men and women (it’s even breaking up marriages) . . . are issues which have morally affected our societies dramatically since the late 60’s. . . etc

Well the post I was responding to talked about how crime was rampant today. I think it’s important to note that the number of crimes per person in the U.S. is now 37% lower than it once was and the number of crimes per person hasn’t been this low in forty years. If these issues have been affecting us since the late ‘60’s, they don’t appear to have had any negative effects on the crime rate. Of course, as I mentioned earlier, correlation is not causation (I encourage you to check out the link I provided earlier if you’re unfamiliar with this phrase). Pornography in particular may actually reduce crime as some studies hint at (anthonydamato.law.northwestern.edu/Adobefiles/porn.pdf). But we should be very careful about making conclusions merely due to correlations without controlling for all the other factors that could have also had an effect. For example, did you know that the number of abortions per year has decreased more on average under Democratic presidents than under Republican ones (computed from CDC statistics: christianliferesources.com/?/library/view.php&articleid=1042). Does this mean that Democratic policies lead to fewer abortions than Republican ones? Possibly, since other studies have shown that economic programs for the poor are some of the most effective ways of reducing the number of abortions, but this correlation alone does not establish that.

 

[Hobble]

So do you agree Hobble with Hinduism’s belief that the difference between humans and the animals is simply one of degree and not kind. As Christians we believe we are unique on Earth among all nature’s creatures because we humans are made in the image of God. Hinduism postulates that in a past life Hobble may have been an insect, rat, or monkey, and in a future life Hobble may come back as an inanimate object depending on Hobble’s karma.

Do you find Hinduism’s concept of animals (i.e. cows) being as valuable and worthy of respect and veneration as a human to be reasonable? Do you Hobble believe Humans are different from animals, and if yes, how are we humans different from animals? And how did these differences arise? Can animals reason?

I am not a follower of Hinduism. But I want to point out that Hinduism is the most complex religion, and doesn’t have one school of thought/worship. That’s something I find interesting about Hinduism, it has unique paths for everybody, instead of a one-size-fits-all plan for life like most other religions. Hinduism has space for everyone in it’s philosophies.

Like I said earlier, Hinduism does have it’s share of superstitions. We are not completely unique compared to other animals, mammals all work similarly biologically, it has been proven that we are extremely similar to chimpanzees.

We are more intelligent than other animals, but our brains still work the same way, ours is just more complex. Animals do deserve respect. I do not believe in reincarnation.

I have only just begun studying the Vedas, but they are incredibly interesting. Without contest they contain much more knowledge than the bible. They predate other major religions by thousands of years, yet they contain scientific knowledge has only been proven in the past few centuries.

The Greeks and the egyptians who are considered two of the most advanced ancient cultures, aquired most of their mathematical and astronomical knowledge from the Vedas. The Vedas created many of the most important mathematics, such as Pythagorean theorem (Pythagoras learned it from the Vedas), binary which is how all electronic technology works, hash link systems that are now used by searn engines like google, and more. Julius Robert, known as the father of the atomic bomb, one of the top physicists in the world, said “Access to the Vedas is the greatest privilege this century may claim
over all previous centuries.” He actually learned how to create the atomic bomb from information in the Vedas. Many more of the worlds greatest philosophers and scientists studied the vedas. Here is a video with quotes that some of those great minds had to say about the Vedas youtube.com/watch?v=L71FAhl7Yfo

The Vedic knowledge of astronomy is only matched by our modern knowledge, in some ways it is still more advanced that our modern knowledge. Even philosophical concepts from later religions (yes, even Catholicism) are in the Vedas, but yet again more complex. But a lot of this is in the video, so I’ll stop typing. In case you care, here’s another video of Carl Sagan discussing the concept of the universe cycle (including the big band) in Hinduism.

 

[anEvilAtheist]

I don’t think your evil because you’re an atheist.

Then why do you think I’m evil? Just joking. Glad to hear you don’t think I’m evil.

 

[josie_L]

Then why do you think I’m evil? Just joking. Glad to hear you don’t think I’m evil.

Were you once a theist, a Christian?

 

[KyivAndrew]

By the way, do you have references to back up your claim that historically many more people have died under non-religious forces than religious ones? In my experience, a lot of people on both sides have figured out the conclusion they want the numbers to reach before even looking at them. But if someone has done a comprehensive study of deaths under atheist leaders vs. theist leaders, I’d be interested in taking a look at it. I guess the reason I never bothered to calculate the numbers for myself is because the whole exercise doesn’t seem that important.

You directed this question anEvilAtheist at Kathleen Gee so far be it from me to answer on her behalf but I’ll answer on my behalf. The exercise in and of itself is important somewhat in that it destroys the quite common belief that most deaths in history were from religious wars, or the Inquisition or the Crusades. We actually discussed the latter two in Apologetics sometime ago and touched upon the number of deaths in the Inquistion. Henry Kamen’s book is quite authoritative in that regard. amazon.com/Spanish-Inquisition-Historical-Revision/dp/0300078803

The fact is in modern culture I think there exists a view of the Catholic Church throughout history as being an absolutely horrendous tool of oppression and warfare - a chimera. How many Hollywood movies are there where the religious Christian is actually the good guy? How many movies on the evil Middle Ages Cardinals. The fact is IMHO that the History of the Church is primarily the history of an Institution guided ultimately towards fulfilling Christ’s command to love one another and watching out for the least of one’s brethren. There were millions of little acts of kindness and help from the local parish priest or the monks or nuns (Mother Teresas) throughout Christendom but this is all so prosaic when one can bring up the Inquisition as a whipping boy and as a symbol of the Church’s entire 2,000 year history, which is simply false. I think anti-Christian culture has played a profound role in providing us with such a picture. There were astounding acts of cruelty to be sure in Church history which one should study but I think I am not far off the mark when I think recently we have swung to the extreme of seeing the Church as mostly an evil, repressive institution for 2,000 years which in my opinion has no basis in reality.

To counter such over exaggerations, it helps to look at death tolls of regimes which enforced atheism and attempted to extinguish God. I of course make reference to the Christianity vs. Atheism paradigm (which is unfair admittedly from the atheist standpoint) because I believe Christianity unique among the world religions in terms of possessing Truth (which is not to deny other religions have elements of Truth in them). Still even the theism vs. atheism comparison may hold for the 20th Century as atheism killing more, for lack of a better term.

It is quite clear on any reading of history that the 20th Century’s death toll from Totalitarian Regimes far outweighs that of man-made deaths from any century. This fact is clearly made by Zbigniew Brzezinski in his book Out of Control which documents what he calls the “Century of Megadeaths”. If we remove Nazism out of the ballpark (since it was by and large an insane evil ultra-nationalist movement as opposed to an atheist or Christian one), we are left with the other big totalitarianism - Communism which is atheist by definition. Just on Nazism, never mind that Hitler and Himmler believed in the occult and that the Nazis killed Polish Catholics en masse without regard to religion as German nationalism trumped all religions in Nazism which makes it all the harder to claim it a Christian force).

Thus if one looks at atheist Communism the most recent comprehensive study is The Black Book of Communism by a number of high-profile French scholars. Their scholarly research puts the astounding figure of 100 million victims at the foot of Communism. I met the American professor who wrote the introduction to the book’s English version Martin Malia when I was a history undergrad. Malia, good ole Irish boy, always stressed the need for using morality when judging history unlike the mass of Soviet specialists who belonged to the value-neutral Soviet revisionist school (J. Arch Getty or Jerry Hough who once said only some thousands died under Stalin before the archives were opened). The book won plaudits even from such left-wingers as Tony Judt. I’ve read it and the fact is it drew the ire of many former fellow-travellers because they could not bear putting the Communist death toll in the same ball park as the Nazis. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Book_of_Communism

It shows to me that attempts to kill off God in society have provided no good whatsoever if one relies just on the empirics of death tolls we have so far. As a Catholic, I believe in Original Sin and that we live in a Fallen World. Human Nature is not infinitely malleable as some philosophes and later Marxists thought. Stalin (and Hitler) believed they could create paradise on Earth. In the words of the philosopher, Eric Voegelin, they believed they could “immanentize the eschaton”. As Catholics, we believe and hope in society’s improvement but know we can never perfect human nature. We all sin. To the communists this was all poppycock. They were victims for all intents and purposes of the original temptation in the Garden: “I shall make of you Gods”. This was the ultimate temptation of atheist communism and nazism. Hitler blasted “We are creating Gods!” in his master race and Communism had Lunacharsky and his God-Builders Society. Man would become God now - specifically Stalin (or Hitler). Communism, out of all man-made systems, killed more people in the most bloody century of human history than any other man-made institution or state in my view but I will listen to counter-arguments obviously.

I apologize for any bluntness in the post but I hope you appreciate I am being frank with respect to my opinions and am not being purposefully mean whatsoever. God Bless.

 

[anEvilAtheist]

Were you once a theist, a Christian?

Not really. I was baptized, but I stopped going to church when I was extremely young.

 

[KyivAndrew]

The threat of hell is not the only means of inducing someone to act morally.

And on this most Christians I believe would agree. There appears to be a stereotype associated with the Christian that they do good only out of selfish personal motives to get to heaven. I believe this is very much an over-simplification. There are some for sure who refrain from evil acts out of fear of hell. But in my experience most Christians attempt to do good not to earn heavenly “brownie” points but out of love for Jesus Christ who taught us to love one another as ourselves and to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. There is also the command to love one’s enemies and to see in the weakest of society the image of our Savior. I believe these positive points are ignored way too much by some in describing a Christian’s motivations. I know because my best friend in University held the same view of his parents and I got to know them quite well before realizing that his was a grossly wrong statement borne more out of the child/parent thing.

I also wish to thank you for the links on desirism and the debate you linked to. I’ll have to watch them tomorrow evening but thank you. (Bill Buckley presiding over a debate on God huh!)

 

[survive]

As a young atheist, I knew what I was supposed to know. I had learned well how to absorb and repeat the slogans of academic/behavioristic secularism; communism and its philosophical support, dilactical materialism; anti-Westernism in its academic form and its already-vintage-radical-chic form, also popular on campus.
It was gradual exposure to actual religious people, especially Evangelical conservative Christians, that caused me to open my mind to the idea that it takes more to be rational than just saying one is being rational. They were the ones who challenged me without going into emotional fits. And opposition didn’t cause them to scream buzzwords and run away as some folks I knew often did. I was interested.
I examined things closely for years and had some experiences – a lot of it is on the forums by now. After taking way too long to accept the fact that Christianity is true, I did so in 1999.
Since then my wide variety of friends in the Catholic Church has shown me a world far more rational than that which I saw in Evangelicalsim, which was far more rational than the world I was in as an atheist on campus, which was far morer ational than the world I was in as an occultist, which was an attempt to bring some sort of reason to bear on the New Age scene I’d been in before that.
I was raised as an atheist, with a secular-humanist influence and a hard-line communist influence from different directions. The people were regular people. They care about the world, and they have day-to-day worries like anyone. But yes, as a child, and as an adult, I did hear people I knew discussing things I could describe most precisely as anti-religion, anti-family, anti-parenthood, anti-childhood conspiracy. In the context of those days it seemed so innocuous. Almost everyone wants to see himself/herself as doing good, after all. But to be treated as if I’m imagining things when I ask gently whether there is any relationship between those old discussions and current attacks on religion, well, that’s illogical.

 

[anEvilAtheist]

You directed this question anEvilAtheist at Kathleen Gee so far be it from me to answer on her behalf but I’ll answer on my behalf. The exercise in and of itself is important somewhat in that it destroys the quite common belief that most deaths in history were from religious wars, or the Inquisition or the Crusades. We actually discussed the latter two in Apologetics sometime ago and touched upon the number of deaths in the Inquistion. Henry Kamen’s book is quite authoritative in that regard. amazon.com/Spanish-Inquisition-Historical-Revision/dp/0300078803

Okay, but I never claimed that the Inquisition or Crusades killed nearly as many people as atheist communists like Stalin and Mao.

The fact is in modern culture I think there exists a view of the Catholic Church throughout history as being an absolutely horrendous tool of oppression and warfare - a chimera. How many Hollywood movies are there where the religious Christian is actually the good guy? How many movies on the evil Middle Ages Cardinals. The fact is IMHO that the History of the Church is primarily the history of an Institution guided ultimately towards fulfilling Christ’s command to love one another and watching out for the least of one’s brethren. There were millions of little acts of kindness and help from the local parish priest or the monks or nuns (Mother Teresas) throughout Christendom but this is all so prosaic when one can bring up the Inquisition as a whipping boy and as a symbol of the Church’s entire 2,000 year history, which is simply false. I think anti-Christian culture has played a profound role in providing us with such a picture. There were astounding acts of cruelty to be sure in Church history which one should study but I think I am not far off the mark when I think recently we have swung to the extreme of seeing the Church as mostly an evil, repressive institution for 2,000 years which in my opinion has no basis in reality.

To counter such over exaggerations, it helps to look at death tolls of regimes which enforced atheism and attempted to extinguish God. I of course make reference to the Christianity vs. Atheism paradigm (which is unfair admittedly from the atheist standpoint) because I believe Christianity unique among the world religions in terms of possessing Truth (which is not to deny other religions have elements of Truth in them). Still even the theism vs. atheism comparison may hold for the 20th Century as atheism killing more, for lack of a better term.

Sure, it may hold for the 20th century as the two biggest killers were atheists. But I don’t think it’s necessarily true over the course of history. There have been a lot of smaller incidents in which the leader was religious.

It is quite clear on any reading of history that the 20th Century’s death toll from Totalitarian Regimes far outweighs that of man-made deaths from any century. This fact is clearly made by Zbigniew Brzezinski in his book Out of Control which documents what he calls the “Century of Megadeaths”. If we remove Nazism out of the ballpark (since it was by and large an insane evil ultra-nationalist movement as opposed to an atheist or Christian one), we are left with the other big totalitarianism - Communism which is atheist by definition.

Marxism may be, but communism itself is not. There have been Christian communists (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_communism).

Just on Nazism, never mind that Hitler and Himmler believed in the occult and that the Nazis killed Polish Catholics en masse without regard to religion as German nationalism trumped all religions in Nazism which makes it all the harder to claim it a Christian force).

Hitler’s an interesting figure. While he mistreated plenty of religious people while in power, he also said many things which made it seem like he was religious (atheism.about.com/od/adolfhitlernazigermany/tp/AdolfHitlerQuotesGodReligion.htm). But there are also a few quotes in which he says negative things of religion. To me he seems like someone with a hatred for many organized religions, but who himself believed in some kind of higher power.

Thus if one looks at atheist Communism the most recent comprehensive study is The Black Book of Communism by a number of high-profile French scholars. Their scholarly research puts the astounding figure of 100 million victims at the foot of Communism. I met the American professor who wrote the introduction to the book’s English version Martin Malia when I was a history undergrad. Malia, good ole Irish boy, always stressed the need for using morality when judging history unlike the mass of Soviet specialists who belonged to the value-neutral Soviet revisionist school (J. Arch Getty or Jerry Hough who once said only some thousands died under Stalin before the archives were opened). The book won plaudits even from such left-wingers as Tony Judt. I’ve read it and the fact is it drew the ire of many former fellow-travellers because they could not bear putting the Communist death toll in the same ball park as the Nazis. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Book_of_Communism

Not only is it in the same ballpark, the death toll was significantly greater. I have never disputed that Stalin and Mao killed tens of millions. I was disputing the claim that many more were killed by atheists than non-atheists. I looked around a bit, and even anti-atheist sites claim that the total number of people killed by those in power over the course of history is about 300,000. Even when you consider other atheists like Pol Pot, I think you’d probably still have a little more than half of the killings coming from leaders who were religious.

But as I mentioned before, this does not show anything about what religion, if any, is true, and it doesn’t show that atheists are more or less evil than believers. If there was one day someone who believed in Christianity and killed 200,000,000, that wouldn’t make Christianity itself any less true or any more evil.

 

[anEvilAtheist]

It shows to me that attempts to kill off God in society have provided no good whatsoever if one relies just on the empirics of death tolls we have so far.

Well obviously you’re not going to find good that was done from death tolls. If you rely just on the number of people killed by Christian dictators, it is obvious that Christianity has done no good whatsoever (but it clearly makes no sense to do so). Also, there’s a distinction to be made by people who want to use violence to suppress religion and people who want to use persuasion to convince people to give up their religion. Even people like Dawkins who are seen as “militant atheists” staunchly oppose the former.

As a Catholic, I believe in Original Sin and that we live in a Fallen World. Human Nature is not infinitely malleable as some philosophes and later Marxists thought. Stalin (and Hitler) believed they could create paradise on Earth. In the words of the philosopher, Eric Voegelin, they believed they could “immanentize the eschaton”. As Catholics, we believe and hope in society’s improvement but know we can never perfect human nature. We all sin. To the communists this was all poppycock. They were victims for all intents and purposes of the original temptation in the Garden: “I shall make of you Gods”. This was the ultimate temptation of atheist communism and nazism. Hitler blasted “We are creating Gods!” in his master race and Communism had Lunacharsky and his God-Builders Society. Man would become God now - specifically Stalin (or Hitler). Communism, out of all man-made systems, killed more people in the most bloody century of human history than any other man-made institution or state in my view but I will listen to counter-arguments obviously.

I apologize for any bluntness in the post but I hope you appreciate I am being frank with respect to my opinions and am not being purposefully mean whatsoever. God Bless.

It’s fine. I appreciate bluntness.

 

[anEvilAtheist]

And on this most Christians I believe would agree. There appears to be a stereotype associated with the Christian that they do good only out of selfish personal motives to get to heaven. I believe this is very much an over-simplification.

I agree. I was not trying to make that implication at all.

There are some for sure who refrain from evil acts out of fear of hell. But in my experience most Christians attempt to do good not to earn heavenly “brownie” points but out of love for Jesus Christ who taught us to love one another as ourselves and to do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

It was also my impression that a lot of Christians want to be good because they really love God, are grateful for what they have, and want to please him even if they get no material reward from it. That was what I was trying to capture when I had earlier said that “divine morality would not prevent someone who desired to kill someone from killing that person if they did not desire to go to heaven or please God.” But I guess I probably should have made this more explicit.

There is also the command to love one’s enemies and to see in the weakest of society the image of our Savior. I believe these positive points are ignored way too much by some in describing a Christian’s motivations. I know because my best friend in University held the same view of his parents and I got to know them quite well before realizing that his was a grossly wrong statement borne more out of the child/parent thing.

I also wish to thank you for the links on desirism and the debate you linked to. I’ll have to watch them tomorrow evening but thank you. (Bill Buckley presiding over a debate on God huh!)

No problem. I brought the clip up mainly just to demonstrate the genetic fallacy, but the debate as a whole is somewhat interesting. Atkins makes some really bad arguments and Craig does a great job of rebutting them.