Wow, the critical thinking on this thread has gone to pot. The Christians who committed the crimes against others were not following the teachings of the one they follow. The muslims who commit crimes against others cannot say that. Mohammed quite often said to kill, torture and enslave.
I’m not an expert in Islam, so can you quote me the specific passages in the Koran that make these sort of references?
Atheists can basically sit back and claim superiority if they want to, I won’t. We are all in this mess together. Some notable atheists that should make us very embarrassed are Stalin and Mao. Many who commit crimes are also labeled a Christian but might be agnostic such as McVeigh.
The Pol Pot … Stalin statements are a post hoc ergo propter hoc, which is to say, it’s a false cause fallacy. More subtly, the argument is also an ad hominem.
In simple argument form this is saying:
- If atheism leads to evil it cannot be true,
- Hitler, Pol Pot, and Stalin were atheists,
- Atheism cannot be true
However, there are some problems with the argument as a modus ponens. The conclusion does not follow from the premise. First, there is no reason why truth cannot lead to evil. Secondly, the second premise is a premise that contains one or more sub premises. It assumes that these three individuals were atheists, that they were indeed evil, and that their evil was informed by their atheism.
Even if the first two of these sub premises were true, and it seems reasonable to believe they are, there is no reason to believe that their atheism informed their evil actions. In fact, there is ample evidence to suggest that at least two of these three men were significantly influenced by religion, specifically Christianity, early in their lives. Since premises 1 and 2 do not hold up, the conclusion cannot follow from the premises.
As an ad hominem argument, the Hitler/Stalin/Pot argument is typically a tu quoque, or “you too,” made in response to the claim that religion is responsible for the deaths of millions through the inquisition, Crusades, genocides, etc.
Never has a causal effect been demonstrated by any historian between atheism and the actions of, say, Stalin, who ordered the deaths of thousands because he deemed them a threat to his government. There are no gulags or concentration camps in recorded history that were designed to fulfill a “lack of belief” in something, which is what atheism is. None were constructed to destroy lives out of reason or rational thought, which is what informs the atheistic conclusion.
What I am reading is the parroting of what the liberal left wing are spouting in our schools and in our media. And I don’t read or hear too much critical thinking coming out of those institutions either concerning Jews, Christians, and Muslims.
It’s unfortunate that people allow themselves to get polarized by this sort of rhetoric, and allow politicians to exploit them so easily. You can jump on the left wing or the right wing if you want to … I’ll continue to be informed by common sense & logic.
Is there a law against being an atheist and believing in a very libertarian form of free market economy, like that envisioned by Adam Smith? Apparently not since Smith himself was probably agnostic or atheist (we at least know he rejected Christianity and embraced the philosophy of his good friend David Hume, who was an atheist). Nevertheless most irreligious people tend to gravitate toward government solutions to social problems, while the more zealous of a Christian you are the more likely it is you’ll vote republican. What this means I don’t know, and I don’t care. I prefer to think freely.
Bad people do bad things and it is up to the laws of the country that represent the majority of the people that show us how good people handle the bad people.
OK … I think I can agree with that, sort of?
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