Magic solution to violence: "No religion", says atheism

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Tomdstone said:
IMHO, it is more prudent to use diplomacy to solve problems peacefully, rather than threaten to blow up the whole world resulting in the massive killing of hundreds of millions of innocent people.
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I’d say the naval embargo was a rather good example of diplomacy; diplomacy backed by some rather big guns.

The only thing that has kept the peace between the Great Powers, even if at times it has been a tenuous peace, is nuclear weapons. Without nuclear weapons, we would almost have been faced with a conventional Third World War fairly quickly after the Second World War. The pattern of European conflict since the end of the Middle Ages and the rise of the nation state had lead to several general wars (WWI wasn’t even the first world war; the War of the Spanish Succession and the Seven Years War are pretty good candidates, but in general the cycle began in the 18th century was for some or all of the Great Powers to pit themselves against each other military in Europe and wherever their colonies lay, each iteration being more destructive than the last, and frequently ending with some great accord that would end future wars, and never did.

Without the nukes, there is no way that the Soviets and the Western Allies would not have gone against each other again, and even the conventional weapons being used by the end of the Second World War were pretty darned terrifying (the firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo demonstrate that). Europe would have been laid waste, and other areas of Eurasia like Japan and China would probably ended up being satellite theaters.

And universal disarmament is never going to happen. Nuclear weapons guarantee territorial integrity, as well as being a diplomatic force all their own.
 
aclausen said:
I’d say the naval embargo was a rather good example of diplomacy; diplomacy backed by some rather big guns.

The only thing that has kept the peace between the Great Powers, even if at times it has been a tenuous peace, is nuclear weapons. Without nuclear weapons, we would almost have been faced with a conventional Third World War fairly quickly after the Second World War. The pattern of European conflict since the end of the Middle Ages and the rise of the nation state had lead to several general wars (WWI wasn’t even the first world war; the War of the Spanish Succession and the Seven Years War are pretty good candidates, but in general the cycle began in the 18th century was for some or all of the Great Powers to pit themselves against each other military in Europe and wherever their colonies lay, each iteration being more destructive than the last, and frequently ending with some great accord that would end future wars, and never did.

Without the nukes, there is no way that the Soviets and the Western Allies would not have gone against each other again, and even the conventional weapons being used by the end of the Second World War were pretty darned terrifying (the firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo demonstrate that). Europe would have been laid waste, and other areas of Eurasia like Japan and China would probably ended up being satellite theaters.

And universal disarmament is never going to happen. Nuclear weapons guarantee territorial integrity, as well as being a diplomatic force all their own.
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The risk is too high with the nuclear weapons threat. If used, it could mean the instant death of millions and millions of innocent people. And others will die a horribly slow, painful, miserable death by radioactive poisoning. Nuclear war will cause harmful mutations and other genetic defects to the survivors, thereby causing millions of individual tragedies for centuries after the war. The rates of mental retardation, malformations, and cancer will increase among those who were embryos at the time of the blast. Genetically unfit individuals are likely to survive and reproduce. This, together with the radioactive contamination of the soils and waters will most likely lead to an introduction of deleterious genes in the human gene pool to the point where everyone ends up experiencing sickness and things like internal and external bleeding, nausea, and all kinds of cancers including leukemia, and slow and painful death. For people surviving near the original blast, there will be moaning, crying, eyeballs hanging out, burnt skin, missing body parts, The lucky ones will be killed on the spot. I don;t think it is moral to threaten to destroy the whole world with nuclear annihilation. I think that peaceful diplomacy is the better course.
 
Tomdstone said:
The risk is too high with the nuclear weapons threat. If used, it could mean the instant death of millions and millions of innocent people. And others will die a horribly slow, painful, miserable death by radioactive poisoning. Nuclear war will cause harmful mutations and other genetic defects to the survivors, thereby causing millions of individual tragedies for centuries after the war. The rates of mental retardation, malformations, and cancer will increase among those who were embryos at the time of the blast. Genetically unfit individuals are likely to survive and reproduce. This, together with the radioactive contamination of the soils and waters will most likely lead to an introduction of deleterious genes in the human gene pool to the point where everyone ends up experiencing sickness and things like internal and external bleeding, nausea, and all kinds of cancers including leukemia, and slow and painful death. For people surviving near the original blast, there will be moaning, crying, eyeballs hanging out, burnt skin, missing body parts, The lucky ones will be killed on the spot. I don;t think it is moral to threaten to destroy the whole world with nuclear annihilation. I think that peaceful diplomacy is the better course.
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The nuclear powers will not disarm. Ukraine is an example of what happens when a nuclear state does.

Besides the genie if out of the bottle. Even non nuclear states like Germany and Japan could become nuclear powers quite quickly. The knowledge to build such devices if wisely enough known that several industrialised nations could quickly begin producing the weapons.

You can no more put an end to nuclear weapons than previous generations could get rid of bullets and gunpowder.
 
aclausen said:
Why should the United States have tolerated Soviet missiles less than 500 miles from Florida? And yes, the Americans had the Soviets encircled in a ring of alliances and nuclear weapons, thankfully. Wars, even cold wars, are not about being fair, but about winning; whether that is in the battle field or in diplomacy. What choice did Khrushchev have? He wasn’t going to start a nuclear confrontation over Cuba, and even Castro quickly became less than keen to have the missiles on his turf.

What the Cuban Missile Crisis demonstrated was 1. that nuclear weapons were an effective deterrent against even conventional military operations and 2. that the US’s naval dominance was unassailable.
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**It is not as cut and dried as that. Your post ignores the fact that tactical nuclear weapons were in the hands of Cuban commanders and aboard Soviet submarines.
Moscow had pre-authorized the use of these items, and a submarine came very close to firing a nuclear armed torpedo when it was being subjected to “practice” depth charges by the USN.

There is only room in this world for one nuclear armed superpower. The USA had its chance to fulfill that role in 1945, but Truman’s cold-war mentality caused that advantage to be wasted on Japan.
Now the USA has no choice but to stand down its ICBMs and concede the role of sole nuclear superpower to Russia.

The alternative is to suffer the ravages of a global nuclear war. You may not believe it must come to that, but it is in your Bible.**
 
jeffrey_erwin said:
**It is not as cut and dried as that. Your post ignores the fact that tactical nuclear weapons were in the hands of Cuban commanders and aboard Soviet submarines.
Moscow had pre-authorized the use of these items, and a submarine came very close to firing a nuclear armed torpedo when it was being subjected to “practice” depth charges by the USN.

There is only room in this world for one nuclear armed superpower. The USA had its chance to fulfill that role in 1945, but Truman’s cold-war mentality caused that advantage to be wasted on Japan.
Now the USA has no choice but to stand down its ICBMs and concede the role of sole nuclear superpower to Russia.

The alternative is to suffer the ravages of a global nuclear war. You may not believe it must come to that, but it is in your Bible.**
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The US will not give up its nukes. You’re living in fantasy.
 
aclausen said:
The US will not give up its nukes. You’re living in fantasy.
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**That is true. Unilateral nuclear disarmament will probably not happen, but not because I am in the fantasy.
Rather it is because the majority is in denial as to the inevitable outcome of the ICBM trap and are too intent on maintaining the USA’s role as world policeman.

The USA is a democracy, and its leaders have to bend to the will of its citizens.
We might not be able to outlaw abortion either, but we still try. **
 
aclausen said:
Which explains 1,500 years of constant war in Christendom.

Believing in God is no guarantor of peace.
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Where in the teachings of Christ or in the doctrine of the Church is there to spill blood?
Where as people like Mao Ze-Dong, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Kim II Sung ( to name a few ) Whats the count on them?

As I said … Know God Know peace, no God no peace
 
JimmyDFG said:
Where in the teachings of Christ or in the doctrine of the Church is there to spill blood?
Where as people like Mao Ze-Dong, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Kim II Sung ( to name a few ) Whats the count on them?

As I said … Know God Know peace, no God no peace
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The Catholic Church has the teaching on the just war.
 
I think that without religions it can’t be predicted whether the world would be better or worst. There are people that have acted malicious and altruistic with religions playing a role for either. In the case of slavery in the USA there were those that used the Bible to defend the institution and to argue against it.

There being no clear criteria for what constitutes a religion and what does not I wonder how a person that desires a world without religion might classify certain other ideologies and philosophies that could be argued to be either a religion or not a religion.

From the 1920s until the 1970s in the USA there were various bodies in place that would decide that certain people had no rights to reproduce due to being (and these were the words they used as “technical” terms) “imbeciles”, “idiots”, and “feeble minded” (which usually was applied to people that were not protestant, not affluent, and not of western European descent). In states that were largely Catholic the people voted against such measures allowing sex to be open to procreation. While it is not necessary to have a religion to be motivated to act against the American Eugenics programs it’s a scenario where we can see religious motivations leading people to oppose unfair treatment of people.

It’s a democratic republic.
 
Tomdstone said:
The Catholic Church has the teaching on the just war.
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In this regard Just War doctrine gives certain conditions for the legitimate exercise of force, all of which must be met:

"1. the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
  1. all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
  2. there must be serious prospects of success;
  3. the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition" [CCC 2309].
Do you find error in this?

Is there any “just” with the likes of Mao Ze-Dong, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Kim II Sung (no religion)?
 
Tomdstone said:
No error, just that it could happen that blood may be spilled in the case of a just war.
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As Jesus said in John 13:34
I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another

Sounds like a better solution to end violence if you ask me
 
JimmyDFG said:
As Jesus said in John 13:34
I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another

Sounds like a better solution to end violence if you ask me
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Yes it is. Peaceful solutions by diplomacy or some other method such as arbitration are always better than war, IMHO. This is why I am frightened when I listen to some of the American politicians talk about sending more and more weapons to a certain area. More weapons usually means more war and more killing and more sorrow.
 
Tomdstone said:
Yes it is. Peaceful solutions by diplomacy or some other method such as arbitration are always better than war, IMHO. This is why I am frightened when I listen to some of the American politicians talk about sending more and more weapons to a certain area. More weapons usually means more war and more killing and more sorrow.
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Matthew 5:44
But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you,
 
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