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bek he felt all religion was evil. he felt the state was the savior of us all and could raise kids better than parents and churches. how is that working out?
Because that's what happens when atheists get into power.
No that is what happens when Marxist-Leninist-Maoist come to power. Yes Stalin took an aggressive removing theology from Soviet Society. It was certainly Marxist orthodox that religion blinded the masses to their own exploitation and by destroying religion the people could then focus on the task at hand, establishing heaven on earth (or some facsimile). Fortunately that school of thought and the repression that it sparked, died during the opening rounds of WW where Stalin correctly observed that in such times the Church provided the inspiration to endure the great suffering of WW2. As a result, Stalin would allow the reopening of the Orthodox churches in 1941.
I have seen plenty of times over the years, atheists claiming that Hitler was a Christian as part of their anti-Christian arguments.
Now here is an atheist saying that when a psychopath calls himself an atheist, he is not really being an atheist.
One would hope that you don't use the old 'Hitler was a Christian' argument ever, and that you would point out the fallacy if you see your fellow atheists trying to use it in argument.
First of all, Hitler was a Christian. He simply followed a very Nazified version of Christianity. Going all the way back to his time in the trenches in WWI serving as a message runner, he attributed his continuing survival to what he called "Providence" -- which is just another word for "higher power."
This, he honestly believed. It wasn't a showpiece for the troops and citizens. No, he really believed that a higher power (God) was protecting him so that he could fulfill his dream of conquering Europe and the USSR, murdering all of the Jews, then going after the United States next. Most people aren't aware that Hitler wrote a sequel to Mein Kampf. It's an untitled work still in manuscript form, but in this sequel, he argued that America had to be conquered because Hitler believed (incorrectly) that most of America's immigrants were Scandinavian (Aryans) who were living under Jewish rule (Hitler believed Jews were pulling FDR's strings).
In any event, Hitler was strongly religious. Most people want to claim Hitler was a cultist using a combination of Viking, Norwegian, and Germanic faiths but that's not so. It was Himmler who was obsessed with the idea of a religion centered on the Nazi Party and weird pagan rites. Hitler, for the most part, stayed somewhat conventional. In fact, Hitler was often plenty annoyed with Himmler for always trying to prove the dominance of Aryan stock and once said to Goering about Himmler's obsession: "It's like looking for ghosts in the attic!"
It is true that Hitler himself did not follow a mainstream or conventional version of Christianity. Yet it was still God -- or "Providence" to which he bent his knee. In Mein Kampf, Hitler talked about having God on his side quite often. Note: He used the name "God" and not a generic title like "Providence." He even capitalized the 'G'. That should tell you something about his own personal beliefs -- not the beliefs of Himmler which, unfortunately, are beliefs people associate with Hitler.
Does any of that make Christianity as a whole "bad" somehow? No, not really. But it DOES show that Christianity is just as capable of going ballistic with genocides, massacres, and heavy-handed fascism as any other religion or any other political ideology. There is NO such thing as: "It can't ever happen here." The Germans said the same thing as they were voting for the Nazi Party. It's a big reason why people like myself keep a very close eye on the politics of the right -- in this upcoming campaign, there are WAY too many fundamentalists, evangelicals, and dominionists for me to be comfortable with it.
Secondly, as for linking Stalin's atheism with the tens of millions he killed, sorry, but out of the 27 or so million Soviet citizens he killed, only a few thousand, mostly clergy, can be linked directly to atheism. Otherwise, it's like saying it was Hitler's love of animals that facilitated the Holocaust.
There's actually an informal logical fallacy called Reductio ad Hitlerum or Ad Nazium which says that claiming something is bad simply because Hitler believed in or did it is fallacious. For instance, Hitler loved animals, was anti-smoking, and loved Hollywood movies especially King Kong. Which is to say that no one is 100% evil.
The same fallacy can be used with Stalin just as easily -- Reductio ad Stalinum. Not everything Stalin did or believed was "bad" or intentionally evil. In fact, he had wanted to be a priest before the 1917 Revolution and the overthrow of the Romanov dynasty.
Ergo, even assuming Stalin actually WAS an atheist (just because atheism was part and parcel of being a communist doesn't mean every communist was REALLY an atheist), simply being an atheist doesn't make atheism bad. It is only if you can prove that spreading atheism, rather than his own personal power, was the main goal of the purges which caused so many deaths. Bottom line, you can't. At least no respected historian ever has to date -- at least none that I'm aware of.
bek he felt all religion was evil. he felt the state was the savior of us all and could raise kids better than parents and churches. how is that working out?
Well ... those nations that currently are the most secular and have a quasi-socialist government are the ones which consistently rank the best in ... well, just about everything from standard of living to life expectancy to happiness quotients. Seems to be working out damn good for them -- and not so good for massively religious and fervently capitalist nations like ours.
What you seem to be saying is that Hitler found a way in which he could justify to himself why he did what he did. Stalin didn't need any justification.
Obviously someone who feels that there is a G()D and that G()D give them the thumbs up to murder, then they will do so.
Obviously someone who doesn't believe in G()D won;t be so inclined to feel the need to justify why they murder.
So if your argument is that those who murder and are religious are representative of whatever religion they say they are of...
...then your argument (in order to be balanced) would also have to be that those who murder and are not religious (atheist) are representative of atheism.
Saying (or implying) that murder is representative of theism but not representative of atheism seems to me to show anti theism is the motivation of such argument.
There are those who understand that providence is something they interact with in relation to their own lives and they don't devolve into becoming murderers.
No that is what happens when Marxist-Leninist-Maoist come to power. Yes Stalin took an aggressive removing theology from Soviet Society. It was certainly Marxist orthodox that religion blinded the masses to their own exploitation and by destroying religion the people could then focus on the task at hand, establishing heaven on earth (or some facsimile). Fortunately that school of thought and the repression that it sparked, died during the opening rounds of WW where Stalin correctly observed that in such times the Church provided the inspiration to endure the great suffering of WW2. As a result, Stalin would allow the reopening of the Orthodox churches in 1941.
OK? So an atheist found he could use nominal "Christians" to do his bidding.
OK? So an atheist found he could use nominal "Christians" to do his bidding.
And?
So he realized he could use religion as a tool for power.
Just like many other leaders before him have done for centuries.
Strangely enough, all these leaders have something in common -- they're all pretty smart. They didn't get in that position and hold it without great intelligence.
So he realized he could use religion as a tool for power.
Just like many other leaders before him have done for centuries.
Strangely enough, all these leaders have something in common -- they're all pretty smart. They didn't get in that position and hold it without great intelligence.
OK? So is it the fault of the leaders? Or religion? Do you think those leaders would have figured out how to control the masses even without religion?
OK? So is it the fault of the leaders? Or religion? Do you think those leaders would have figured out how to control the masses even without religion?
Leaders have used religion to control the masses for millenniums.
When you are "dying for God" and headed to a "better place" it's a lot easier to motivate and dictate.
You see it today here in the US -- the anti-Islamic propaganda our politicians and media portray... Go over to Europe? Completely different stance. Focused on the terrorist groups themselves rather than religion as a whole. Our media and politicians are controlling the US through this propaganda.
Similar to the anti-Semitic propaganda during the Nazi regime.
But they are still Christians. You can't "disown" bad people from your religion simply to keep Christianity's name unsullied. That, in conspiracy parlance, is known as a cover-up.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rotagivan
What you seem to be saying is that Hitler found a way in which he could justify to himself why he did what he did. Stalin didn't need any justification.
That's exactly what Hitler did. Keep in mind that Hitler wasn't a Muslim, a Hindu, and certainly not a practicing Jew (though he might have had ethnic Jews in his not-so-distant past). Plus I explained how he wasn't really a cultist and/or pagan, either. Yet he believed in a higher power. There is no question about that. So which higher power do you suppose it was, especially considering he referred to God with a capital 'G'?
Stalin justified his purges as eliminating people who he felt were disloyal, incompetent, or just too popular among the masses.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rotagivan
Obviously someone who feels that there is a G()D and that G()D give them the thumbs up to murder, then they will do so.
Yep.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rotagivan
Obviously someone who doesn't believe in G()D won;t be so inclined to feel the need to justify why they murder.
Well, actually, even the Godless and the G()Dless will usually try to justify why they murdered. That's just human nature -- especially if the murderer thinks his reason makes so much sense that the authorities will say, "Oooh!" and then let the murderer go.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rotagivan
So if your argument is that those who murder and are religious are representative of whatever religion they say they are of...
...then your argument (in order to be balanced) would also have to be that those who murder and are not religious (atheist) are representative of atheism.
Except why does it have to be balanced?
What's important is the justification and society's acceptance of that justification. When we have a world where 90% of the global population believes in a higher power of one sort or another, it stands to reason that it is far more likely that any given murderer will believe in a higher power. All of the murderers of the world are not atheists, after all. In fact, few of them are.
We also have to decide whether a person's religious belief was what motivated them to commit a crime. Most of the time, someone's religious affiliation has absolutely nothing to do with the crime and shouldn't even be brought into the debate.
The problem arises when a crime is committed and the perpetrator's religious belief DOES lie at the center of their motives and justifications. That's when members of that same religion begin to climb mountains and do hand-springs in an attempt to distance the crime from the religion ... except you can't. Because sometimes the crime was committed because a believer -- usually a fanatic of some kind -- thinks they are being commanded (somehow) to commit the crime.
An excellent example of this is when tens of thousands of women -- and millions of cats -- were killed because all of Europe was blaming witchcraft for the plague known as the Black Death. Those women were killed because the Bible specifically says "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." In this case, religion is at the heart of the reason why all of those murders took place. The plague itself might have motivated otherwise good people to start slaughtering women and cats, but religion was still the justification. Without religion, upon what would European society base its decision to kill women and cats upon? Yeah, nothing. They wouldn't have a justification. In fact, if not for the Bible, it is unlikely that any particular group would have been singled out and killed en masse.
With that in mind, Stalin did not kill anyone because atheism said to go kill believers. Atheism doesn't have any holy books, rules, laws, or dogmas that we must adhere to in order to be atheists. Even if Stalin killed in the name of atheism, which he didn't, there is still nothing about atheism that tells anyone to murder people. However, the Bible DOES order believers to kill witches. And that is the quintessential difference.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rotagivan
Saying (or implying) that murder is representative of theism but not representative of atheism seems to me to show anti theism is the motivation of such argument.
Well, I'm not saying or implying that Stalin or Hitler or any other murderer is "representative" of any religion. However, not being able to pin blame onto atheism is just a bitter pill that must be swallowed. There has never really been any wars fought because of atheism, there's never been an act of terrorism motivated by strong atheist beliefs, I mean, the reality is that there has never been a nation that has had an 80% or 90% atheism rate among its population so there just isn't any data to work with in terms of how an atheistic nation with an atheist leader would conduct itself.
But we HAVE seen -- many times (and we're still seeing it in the Middle East) -- how religion can so easily jump the track and turn into a train wreck. As I've said many times, there has never been a truly benevolent, free, democratic nation or civilization that was ruled by religion. And that is true even though, for most of human history, religion and rulership were inseparable. Odd, don't you think, that the most peaceful nations in modern history have also been the most secular? It's no coincidence that militant Muslims want to kill all the Jews, who themselves must constantly live on a war footing because of it, and the USA, the most religious of all industrialized nations, has been fighting a de facto war against Islam since Reagan bombed Libya in 1986.
As I said somewhere before, not only does religion -- especially the Abrahamic religions -- deal only in absolutes. You are 100% with us or you are 100% against us and anyone against us is the enemy. Add to that the reality that many, many deity-worshipers internalize their religious belief to such an extent that they can no longer separate themselves FROM themselves and their beliefs. This means that if you attack religion even in a very slight or innocuous way, it's the same thing as launching a personal attack against the believer himself.
I'm not saying or implying that any one individual or any individual's actions are representative of any religion. At the same time, however, history -- as well as today's headlines -- has shown us again and again and again .... and again some more how religion has caused a lot of people in the world to simply behave irrationally. And immorally.
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