Science must destroy religion

[NeedImprovement]

This, I surmise, would have to imply that Beavis will be enrolling in RCIA any day now - otherwise he might feel abandoned.

 

[DCNBILL]

You Catholics will say any sort of vomit, with a very unethical intent to win an argument don’t you?
You made a statement I responded with the correct information butthead, no need to try and look like you know what you are talking about now.

He who can’t agree to the Truth, should not be trusted in anything he says or does.

I am sorry if I upset you with my response, I had no intention to do so.

 

[NeedImprovement]

Morality without a Creator could not, logically, exist.

Sorry friend, morality without an agreement between two or more can’t exist. You can’t be moral unless you agree to do something and do as agreed, and you can’t be immoral unless you do other than what you agreed to do.

I don’t see any philosophical conflict in half of the initial part of the second quote above :

DCNBILL says “morality without a Creator” – the second quote says “morality without an agreement between two or more can’t exist” . When we use the word “Creator” in the intended sense, we automatically posit “two or more” – to say otherwise, would mean He had created no one – so He wouldn’t be a Creator . However , as far as an agreement goes – that part isn’t 100% correct according to (sorry it offends you too) Catholic teaching . It wouldn’t give us a totally accurate picture of *sin *and free will.

Neither does that particular post distinguish between intrinsic and extrinsic morality.I’d concur it’s quite possibly a topic better dealt with separately in a previously suggested forum. However , if we’re going to consult definitions here, it makes more sense to refer to the crème de la “vomit” :

From Modern Catholic Dictionary; Fr. John Hardon, S.J.

MORALITY. Relation between a human act and the final destiny of a human being. It is the norm of behavior that flows from each person’s ultimate end, which is the possession of God in the beatific vision.

Depending on what is conceived to be this final destiny, morality will be determined accordingly. Since Catholic Christianity believes that this destiny is heaven, a human act is either good or bad according as it leads to or detracts a person from his or her heavenly goal. The moral norm of human acts, therefore, consists in their aptitude at leading one to that end. Such an aptitude cannot be created by the human will, nor is it entirely at the disposition of some arbitrary divine freedom. It flows necessarily from the nature of God, from the human nature elevated by grace, and from the nature of the acts themselves. Hence the norm of morality contains precepts that transcend every legislative will. The acts related to them are said to have an intrinsic (essential) morality of good or evil. Extrinsic morality, on the other hand, is external to this built-in relationship between action and purpose; they depend exclusively on the free dictate of the legislator.

Link to MODERN CATHOLIC DICTIONARY ; Fr John Hardon, S.J.

 

[Candide_West]

According to science** all **our activity has physical causes which preclude free will and also the ability to establish for ourselves a moral code already established for us by physical causes.

Ok, so now you just need to show that physical causes preclude free will and also prevent our being able to establish a moral code. Once again all you have done is asserted that these things are true. You have provided no reasoning or justification whatsoever. If you expect people to believe you then you need to do better.

According to science **all *our activities have physical causes and are neither inferior nor superior but amoral like all other physical events.

Nope, science says no such thing. If you really think you can make a scientific argument to that effect then by all means go ahead. Don’t forget to include falsifiable predictions.

According to science **all **our decisions have physical causes and our beliefs or non-beliefs are established for us by physical causes and it is not surprising that everyone without exception holds contradictory views.

Where do you get these things from? Again science does not say that everyone*without exception holds contradictory views. Indeed that observation is clearly contrary to observation.

It’s also nothing to do with the text you wrote it in reply to. To remind you, you said that without religion people are free to decide for themselves what is right and wrong, and I pointed out that WITH religion people are free (and do) decide for themselves what is right and wrong too. So religion seems to be entirely irrelevant here.

Whose suffering and whose happiness?

Everyone. These are axioms, so they always apply and for everyone.*

Are you referring to “suffering is bad” and “happiness is good”? If so are they the only axioms?*

Not necessarily only, they are probably sufficient though.*

What about “All forms of sexuality are good”, “men should be subordinate to men” and “it is wrong to kill a believer”?

Er, what? You asked me for some examples of moral dictats which I reject. I provided some. Who offers*“All forms of sexuality are good” as a moral dictat?

If a false belief makes a person happy it must be good according to your definition.

Incorrect, if a false belief makes a person happy and causes no suffering to anybody though… well I can’t see anything wrong in that. That is one of the reasons I’m not against religion as such - as long as it causes no harm then so what. Unfortunately religion has a long history of causing harm.*

That areligious environment is ultimately the product of a religious environment.*

Well if you’re going to talk about “ultimately” then the religious environment was the product of a non-religious environment. Also it’s entirely irrelevant to my point. The fact is that people can and DO form perfectly good moral systems for themselves in the absence of religion.*

With whom did you work out your moral values and principles - and on what did you base your decisions (apart from “suffering is bad” and “happiness is good”)?

My family, my peers, influences from various books, popular culture, religious and other morality based stories etc etc.*

 

[ReapReason]

Ok, so now you just need to show that physical causes preclude free will and also prevent our being able to establish a moral code. Once again all you have done is asserted that these things are true.

I see no assertions. Actually it is quite clear and irrefutable. If the history of atoms is simply the blind interactions and reactions we see evident today in the universe, having no goal, purpose, or objective meaning, then any effect that occurs in the here and now including its content is contingent upon and ordered by the sum total of all events that have ever occurred. All your actions including your thoughts are merely the sum total of the blind chemical events in you brain which is in turn influenced by events outside your brain. Your thoughts are not the intrinsic author of your actions; but rather every blind event that leads up to you thinking something is the author. Therefore you are not free to think or act at all. The idea of freewill is completely destroyed if we assume that only physical reality exists.

The point is, you cannot rationally believe that only physical causes exist if you believe in freewill.

 

[Candide_West]

I agree there are some exceptions in certain cultures and individuals but as you say generally the similarities are recurrent.

Yes, certain similarities are recurrent, but the differences are also vast. Some cultures have claimed that it’s ok to kill, some that paedophillia is fine, others that human sacrifice is ok, canibalism, slavery, genocide… virtually everything which you can think of which we would consider to be reprehensible has been considered to be morally acceptable and in some cases even morally required in human history.

Note that I am not so much talking of a particular moral code, as a sense of what is moral or immoral or right and wrong.

Er, I may be missing something here then. You defined a moral code as

“A moral code is a system of morality (according to a particular philosophy, religion, culture, etc.) and a moral is any one practice or teaching within a moral code.”

Surely that is a sense of what is right or wrong? Sorry to nitpick, but since you went to the effort to get an agreed definition it seems sensible to be clear on terms if they are important.

I believe that there is a distinction that you may be overlooking. Animals have certain behaviors that may seem to be morally right but these are behaviors none the less, the animals do not make rational choices. Moral behavior in humans is different, in humans a person is faced with a decision, say to return excess change that they were just handed. The morality of that person “informs” the person that money should be returned to the rightful owner and the person does. In this case the morality guides the action but not is the action.

I’m not sure I see a major distinction here. In other animals their “morality” is a balancing act of competing urges, some to share or help or whatever, and others to ensure their own safety, be selfish etc etc. We aren’t really in any position to judge how the animals themselves experience this competition. Perhaps they do indeed experience it as the equivalent of active decision making in their own terms of experience.

In any case, is this key to your argument? If not then I suggest that this is just accepted as a difference in views and move on. If it is key then we’ll need to find a position with which we can both agree.

Close enough.

Would you agree that there can exist moral behaviors in some persons that would be considered better than moral behaviors in some other people?

Not sure what you mean by better moral behaviours existing in some people. Surely you mean that some people exhibit behaviours which are more in keeping with the moral zeitgeist in which they live than other people? If so then yes I’m certainly happy to agree with that. Otherwise you’ll have to explain what you mean.

 

[Candide_West]

I see no assertions.

Then perhaps you are reading a different post because this:

“According to science all our activity has physical causes which preclude free will and also the ability to establish for ourselves a moral code already established for us by physical causes”

Is without any doubt an assertion and a bald one at that. TonyRey made not the slightest effort to support what he was saying with any form of justification or logic. He simply asserted that it was true.

If all events are simply blind interactions and reactions with no goal, purpose, or objective meaning, then any effect that occurs in the here and now including its content is contingent upon and ordered by the sum total of all events that have ever occurred.

Not entirely true of course, quantum mechanical events are absolutely non-deterministic. No amount of data about previous states could permit you to predict a quantum event precisely.

All your actions including your thoughts are merely the sum total of the blind chemical events in you brain which is in turn influenced by events outside your brain.

Great, so you accept that thoughts can be our experience of electrical and chemical events in the brain. Keep this in mind because it’s important.

Your thoughts are not the intrinsic author of your actions; but rather every blind event that leads up to you thinking something is the author.

And there you have it. Your thoughts ARE the intrinsic author of your actions. They are ALSO the internal experience of electrical and chemical events in your brain. Your reasoning process by which you make decisions are combinations of these thoughts. So your freewill IS the the process of considering all the relevant elements of the environment, your memories, your morals, your unconscious bias etc etc etc. Just because these things when viewed externally are electrical and chemical events doesn’t mean that internally they are not thoughts and memories.

If you think about examples of other animals I think you’d find this easier. Clearly some animals learn, so to do so they must have some form of memories. But presumably you do not posit that animals must also have supernatural souls? If not then where are these memories? They are electrical and chemical events in their brains right? So if animals can have memories which are electrical and chemical events in their brains then why can’t humans?

Therefore you are not free to think or act regardless of whether events are random or determined or a union of both. The idea of freewill is completely destroyed if we assume that only physical reality exists.

Funnily enough you are right here IF you accept your assumption that free will must be independent of any deterministic process. It’s also worth noting that if we stick to this position then adding a “soul” or another additional element to the freewill decision making process doesn’t help the situation at all. This is because:

a). If the “soul” is rational (in other words can be expected to give a determined response from a given set of (name removed by moderator)uts) - then it is one additional factor added into the decision making mix (of circumstances, history, biology, etc) which is still in a very real sense deterministic so you have not escaped the problem of freewill not being free that you posited above.

b). If the “soul” is not rational (in other words it can give a response which is entirely independent of any given set of (name removed by moderator)uts) - in which case the “soul” is just a random response generator so your freewill is free, but it is no longer rational or reasoned.

In either case you have not resolved the problem at all. The way to resolve this of course is to accept that the process of taking into account all the various factors affecting decision making IS freewill (despite being determined). In that way freewill COULD be housed in the soul AND be both free and rational. Of course if we accept that then the freewill could also be housed in the brain AND be both free and rational, and for exactly the same reason.

The point is, you cannot believe that only physical causes exist if you believe in freewill

Incorrect, you simply have to accept that some of those physical events and causes ARE your free will. Just like if you want to have rational freewill housed in the “soul” you’d have to accept that the deterministic response of the “soul” IS your free will.

In any case, well done on attempting to put together a jusification for TonyRey’s assertion.

 

[Candide_West]

Nope. Because religion, at least not Catholicism, never claim that it must destroy science. If not, I don’t know why Nobel Laureates are sitting on the panel of The Pontifical Academy of Sciences

It’s also woth noting that science has never claimed it must destroy religion. Sam Harris has said it, and I strongly suspect that most scientists would entirely disagree with him. Science itself has said nothing of the sort.

Equally various theists have set out to directly oppose the furtherance of science and event sought to destroy scientific advancement through ignorance and the majority of theists I’m sure would entirely disagree with them too.

It is just as unreasonable to conflate “a scientist” with “science” as it is to conflate “a catholic” with “Catholocism”. So just because a scientist says something it doesn’t mean that science says that, just as if a catholic says something it doesn’t mean that Catholocism says that.

 

[tonyrey]

According to science all our activity has physical causes which preclude free will and also the ability to establish for ourselves a moral code already established for us by physical causes.

1. Free will implies that we choose what to think or do.
2. If what we think or do is due to physical causes we may occasionally be lucky and choose what is due to physical causes but there is no reason why our choices should always - or even usually - correspond to the choices due to physical causes.
   “You have provided no reasoning or justification whatsoever. If you expect people to believe you then you need to do better.” (I add those two assertions to demonstrate they do nothing whatsoever to further the discussion. In addition to being useless they are discourteous.)

According to science all our activities have physical causes and are neither inferior nor superior but amoral like all other physical events.*

Nope, science says no such thing. If you really think you can make a scientific argument to that effect then by all means go ahead. Don’t forget to include falsifiable predictions.

Science doesn’t say anything about morality!

1. Physical events are amoral.
2. If all our activities have physical causes they are amoral.
   “If you really think you can make a scientific argument to prove they are not amoral then by all means go ahead. Don’t forget to include falsifiable predictions.” (I add those two assertions to demonstrate they do nothing whatsoever to further the discussion. In addition to being useless they are discourteous.)

According to science all our decisions have physical causes and our beliefs or non-beliefs are established for us by physical causes and it is not surprising that everyone without exception holds contradictory views.

Where do you get these things from? Again science does not say that everyone without exception holds contradictory views. Indeed that observation is clearly contrary to observation.

“Where do you get these things from?”

1. According to science all our activities have physical causes.
2. Since no two persons have exactly the same physical makeup or the same physical background no two persons have exactly the same beliefs or non-beliefs.
3. The assertion that everyone without exception holds contradictory views is clearly contrary to observation because it simply isn’t true that all our activities have physical causes.

It’s also nothing to do with the text you wrote it in reply to. To remind you, you said that without religion people are free to decide for themselves what is right and wrong, and I pointed out that WITH religion people are free (and do) decide for themselves what is right and wrong too. So religion seems to be entirely irrelevant here.

I have pointed out that without religion there is no rational basis for morality because
the universe is amoral.

Whose suffering and whose happiness?

Everyone. These are axioms, so they always apply and for everyone.

Why do axioms apply to everyone?

Are you referring to “suffering is bad” and “happiness is good”? If so are they the only axioms?

Not necessarily only, they are probably sufficient though.

If one person’s happiness depends on another person’s suffering which person has priority?

What about “All forms of sexuality are good”, “men should be subordinate to women” and “it is wrong to kill a believer”?

You asked me for some examples of moral dictats which I reject. I provided some. Who offers “All forms of sexuality are good” as a moral dictat?

Do you accept or reject those assertions?

If a false belief makes a person happy it must be good according to your definition.

Incorrect, if a false belief makes a person happy and causes no suffering to anybody though… well I can’t see anything wrong in that.

If a fundamental belief - like the principle of inequality - is false and makes some persons happy it causes much suffering to others.

That is one of the reasons I’m not against religion as such - as long as it causes no harm then so what. Unfortunately religion has a long history of causing harm.

Materialism, hedonism, egoism and scepticism have an extremely long history of causing harm - not as a result of fortune but logic.

That areligious environment is ultimately the product of a religious environment.

Well if you’re going to talk about “ultimately” then the religious environment was the product of a non-religious environment.

1. Religion has always been a universal phenomenon.
2. Belief in the spiritual world has existed since the dawn of history whereas materialism is a rare occurrence.
3. Western society has been based on Christian values for the last two thousand years.
4. The principles of liberty, equality and fraternity originated in the teaching of Jesus.

Also it’s entirely irrelevant to my point. The fact is that people can and DO form perfectly good moral systems for themselves in the absence of religion.

Until that assertion is justified with evidence it is gratuitous.

With whom did you work out your moral values and principles - and on what did you base your decisions (apart from “suffering is bad” and “happiness is good”)?

My family, my peers, influences from various books, popular culture, religious and other morality based stories etc etc.

On what rational basis do you select your moral values and principles from that medley of sources?

What are your criteria of true moral values and principles?

 

[ASimon]

What Harris’s article claims is that, contrary to popular (and comforting) assertions, that there is a zero-sum conflict between the claims of science and many (if not all) the claims of religion. That means that, where one side is making a claim known to be correct, then the other side must be wrong.

In saying that “Science must destroy religion,” Harris is saying that we need to have the courage to point out that there is one set of facts that govern reality, and science is in the business of discovering what they are.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

**In saying that “Science must destroy religion,” Harris is saying that we need to have the courage to point out that there is one set of facts that govern reality, and science is in the business of discovering what they are. **

Courage has nothing to do with it. Hatred for religion does. Yes, science governs reality in many ways, including the police force of destroying entire cities with one missile.

Harris advocates that science should bully its way to the top of the knowledge heap. It already has by creating weapons of universal destruction more threatening than you will ever read about in Revelations.

Which is the more dangerous threat to the future of the human race … religion or science?

Even Einstein would vote science.

 

[ASimon]

**In saying that “Science must destroy religion,” Harris is saying that we need to have the courage to point out that there is one set of facts that govern reality, and science is in the business of discovering what they are. **

Courage has nothing to do with it. Hatred for religion does. Yes, science governs reality in many ways, including the police force of destroying entire cities with one missile.

Harris advocates that science should bully its way to the top of the knowledge heap. It already has by creating weapons of universal destruction more threatening than you will ever read about in Revelations.

Which is the more dangerous threat to the future of the human race … religion or science?

Even Einstein would vote science.

Without question, it’s religion (specifically Islam, and to a lesser extent, Christianity) that represents the more dangerous threat to the future of the human race. Science may have given us dangerous weapons with no practical use, but Islam and Christianity both prophesize the end of the world and expect us to rejoice in its coming.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

ASimon

**but Islam and Christianity both prophesize the end of the world and expect us to rejoice in its coming. **

If they have lived well, they might plan to rejoice.

But I don’t think they would say everyone should plan to rejoice.

 

[prodigalson2011]

Without question, it’s religion (specifically Islam, and to a lesser extent, Christianity) that represents the more dangerous threat to the future of the human race. Science may have given us dangerous weapons with no practical use, but Islam and Christianity both prophesize the end of the world and expect us to rejoice in its coming.

Religion says its coming, but science has already come close to making it happen!

Religion says, “All in God’s time,” materialistic science says, “All in OUR time.”

If we could talk to the ghosts of Hiroshima, I wonder who they would tell us to fear more: Priests or scientists?

 

[epan]

Religion says its coming, but science has already come close to making it happen!

Religion says, “All in God’s time,” materialistic science says, “All in OUR time.”

If we could talk to the ghosts of Hiroshima, I wonder who they would tell us to fear more: Priests or scientists?

you left out industry and technology.

 

[Al_Moritz]

Funnily enough you are right here IF you accept your assumption that free will must be independent of any deterministic process. It’s also worth noting that if we stick to this position then adding a “soul” or another additional element to the freewill decision making process doesn’t help the situation at all. This is because:

a). If the “soul” is rational (in other words can be expected to give a determined response from a given set of (name removed by moderator)uts) - then it is one additional factor added into the decision making mix (of circumstances, history, biology, etc) which is still in a very real sense deterministic so you have not escaped the problem of freewill not being free that you posited above.

In referring to rationality, you are confusing here the concepts of ‘physically determined’ (based on cause and effect) and ‘logically determined’ (based on ground and consequent). They are not necessarily the same.

As C.S. Lewis writes:

“But unfortunately the two systems [ground and consequent, cause and effect] are wholly distinct. To be caused is not to be proved. Wishful thinkings, prejudices, and the delusions of madness, are all caused, but they are ungrounded. Indeed to be caused is so different from being proved that we behave in disputation as if they were mutually exclusive. The mere existence of causes for a belief is popularly treated as raising a presumption that it is groundless, and the most popular way of discrediting a person’s opinions is to explain them causally – ‘You say that because (Cause and Effect) you are a capitalist, or a hypochondriac, or a mere man, or only a woman’. The implication is that if causes fully account for a belief, then, since causes work inevitably, the belief would have had to arise whether it had grounds or not. We need not, it is felt, consider grounds for something which can be fully explained without them.”

Link:
philosophy.uncc.edu/mleldrid/Intro/csl3.html

 

[DeepBlueSea]

It’s also woth noting that science has never claimed it must destroy religion. Sam Harris has said it, and I strongly suspect that most scientists would entirely disagree with him. Science itself has said nothing of the sort.

Equally various theists have set out to directly oppose the furtherance of science and event sought to destroy scientific advancement through ignorance and the majority of theists I’m sure would entirely disagree with them too.

It is just as unreasonable to conflate “a scientist” with “science” as it is to conflate “a catholic” with “Catholocism”. So just because a scientist says something it doesn’t mean that science says that, just as if a catholic says something it doesn’t mean that Catholocism says that.

Agree.

Wasn’t conflating but merely pointing out the irrationality of Sam Harris and the kind of ideals he was brandishing in that particular article and how so many atheists eagerly jump on that bandwagon. Isn’t that this whole thread is about a.k.a the irrationality of Sam Harris? Besides, whether Mr. Harris’ scientific approach, as demonstrated in the paucity of his published works, does not quite rise up to the scientific rigor. Nobody claimed that his view is representative of the scientific community.

 

[Touchstone]

Let me ease back into the topic “Science must destroy religion” by saying I’m very sorry to learn that your friend (colleague) no longer has his/her little boy. It wasn’t God who killed the child. It was cancer. Maybe you would be kind enough to tell his parents who believe in God that I send them my love, knowing how difficult it must be though realizing that they must be surrounded with kind and loving friends and family that will support them at this time of sorrow. Oftentimes, having loving friends and family to comfort them is somewhat a miracle since there oh so many times a parent(s) may not have such and there are times a child has no parent or loved one at his or her side. I recall long ago flying to a bedside of a person(adult) because no family member wished to be present since they thought the individual was already dead because to them the person wasn’t responding to them but did respond to me for a few moments before passing on.

Take care TS. I might ease again back into the topic in a few days.

Thanks for the kind words, LogisticsBranch, but let me clarify a couple things on this.

1. I’m not saying God killed the child, and I also believe cancer killed the child. From the brief conversations I had with the father (it’s a work relationship so there are practical limits to how far the exchange on this can go), they do not think anything like that either – all agree cancer was the cause of death and no one suspects God of intervening in any way to cause the death of the child.
2. The cruelty, the indictment of God, then, comes from two conflicts:
   a. Why was this beautiful young boy refused a supernatural intervention when Aunt Martha’s goiter got miraculous healed or, (to use a case officially recognized by the RCC) Gemma di Giorgi’s eyes were miraculously fixed up?
   b. On the response (which is ubiquitous and inevitable) that “we just don’t know the reasons”, God’s silence and removal on this question is ITSELF an immanent form of cruelty, a manifestation of evil. That is, this is the role a trixter demon would act: heh, watch this, we’re gonna fix Aunt Martha’s goiter, and then we will SERIOUSLY screw with the heads of this kid and his parents. Why not him? Why not heal this boy? Hahaha – it’s bad enough he succumbed and died for the parents, but now they get the lifelong additional suffering of wondering why I demurred in his when I granted a miraculous favor to Aunt Martha. And I ain’t sayin’ nothin’.

None of this has anything to do with causing the cancer itself, or blaming God for instigating the cancer, or the young man’s agonizing, pathetic death. The accusations against God comes from God’s capricious use of life saving miracles elsewhere, combined with the cruel silence he inflicts on the victims and those who care about the ones suffering as to the particular rationale (or lack of any rationale) that went into the decision.

I appreciate the compassion in you message. It saddens me to see such a noble disposition kneeling in front of God such as you imagine. It’s not a miracle to have family, parents and friends come together in crises like this: this is as basic a feature of human nature as can be found. There is nothing less miraculous than that, and well it should be that way.

-TS

 

[uther]

Quite true. And the way a belief makes people behave tells us absolutely nothing about the truth or falsity of that belief - only its effect upon the minds of the people in question.

Part of the problem comes when people who are used to having their moral strictures handed to them from some form of authority take impersonal nature to be that authority, little realising that nature only allows for the development of morality - it doesn’t provide a handbook on how we ought to behave or advice on whether it’s actually a good idea to give our impulses free rein.

It’s all very well to give examples of unbelievers who decided to take moral dictation from amoral science; but it would be hypocritical - and entirely consistent, of course, with human inconstancy (!) - to suppose that these folks are worse than those who use religious beliefs to support their own hateful and violent impulses.

The entire point is that someone who treats people as disposable when they have the temporal power to do so, is **acting quite rationally and morally **if that person holds the view that there is no intrinsic value to human life. And that is the rational deduction from the perspective prevalent in popular science regarding the origins of human life, ie., that its origins are accidental as is all material existence, and that human life is then no more or less than a material existence, regardless of how we may experience the world and ourselves. That is the materialist view of humanity. Under that materialist view, there can be no accusation of immoral behavior on the part of any of the great monsters of the twentieth century, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, etc., etc. Even if there is a moral code created by some other materialist that disagrees, there is no rational foundation within the materialistic worldview to uphold the one and condemn the other.

On the other hand, the one who holds the belief, as the Catholic Church teaches, that human life holds intrinsic value in and of itself, does act immorally and irrationally, if and when they engage in the kinds of practices we have noted above, like abuse and/or genocide.

However, I would like to detach the Catholic Church here from the general category of “religion” realizing of course that you have identified yourself as a pantheist. The reason is that it is quite possible for a religion to have a disregard for the intrinsic value of all human life. There are many examples of this but the most obvious in our day and for the past 1300 or so years is the one branch of Islam, which holds that Muslim human life is sacred, whereas other human life is disposable. The Catholic Church in fits and starts and largely unsuccessfully, fought a rear-guard action against the military onslaught of this mindset in the various Crusades that have garnered so much mis-information over the centuries largely from Protestant polemics for their own reasons (but that is an intramural dispute not relevant here) but nevertheless, their purpose was lost long ago in the common discourse and public education, which purpose was to protect the holy sites in Israel for the pilgrims from Europe. A modest goal but still unsuccessful in the long haul.

That perhaps seems like a digression but it bears on the general claim of the vast numbers of people killed “by religion”. However, even if we are to lump all religions together over the centuries and accept some of the wild-eyed claims agaisnt the Catholic Church regarding the Inquisition and so forth, without any reference to the moral context (ie. self-defense, just war, etc.) or the actual record; even so, the numbers killed in some connection with religion are miniscule compared to the tens of millions exterminated by atheistic regimes.

I would say the reason is simple, at least with respect to the Catholic Church. For any Catholic or Catholic government by name, to act in a genocidal manner, he or they must act contrary to what they claim to believe. Whereas, for the atheist or atheistic regime to do so, incurs no such hypocrisy. Hence the numbers.

 

[DeepBlueSea]

The reason is that it is quite possible for a religion to have a disregard for the intrinsic value of all human life. There are many examples of this but the most obvious in our day and for the past 1300 or so years is the one branch of Islam, which holds that Muslim human life is sacred, whereas other human life is disposable. The Catholic Church in fits and starts and largely unsuccessfully, fought a rear-guard action against the military onslaught of this mindset in the various Crusades that have garnered so much mis-information over the centuries largely from Protestant polemics for their own reasons (but that is an intramural dispute not relevant here) but nevertheless, their purpose was lost long ago in the common discourse and public education, which purpose was to protect the holy sites in Israel for the pilgrims from Europe. A modest goal but still unsuccessful in the long haul.

That perhaps seems like a digression but it bears on the general claim of the vast numbers of people killed “by religion”. However, even if we are to lump all religions together over the centuries and accept some of the wild-eyed claims agaisnt the Catholic Church regarding the Inquisition and so forth, without any reference to the moral context (ie. self-defense, just war, etc.) or the actual record; even so, the numbers killed in some connection with religion are miniscule compared to the tens of millions exterminated by atheistic regimes.
.

I appreciate how the Church unifies the belief system by trimming out sectarian beliefs that distort the truth and mislead people, thus preserving truth in its entirety.

I think self-proclaimed atheists do not seem to realize that atheism does not imply rationalism. It is more like rationalism that falls short of reaching the height of truth. In fact, atheism nowadays so often engage straw man strategy and hasty generalization to discredit religious systems.

My guess is that atheists who chant the mantra that God is just fairy tale are just people who have yet to properly research and investigate the truth in religious belief. Atheism is becoming quite a fad these days so I guess it is their herd instinct, not rationality, at work.