MAJOR derail from Screwball Thread

[bridgeforsale]

In other words, you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.

well, let's see

Hitler, who was a pagan theist

there's no more evidence supporting this notion than there is supporting the idea that he remained Catholic. If you have some evidence then please present it.

Charles Darwin and, more notably, Friedrich Nietzsche and even presented Mussolini with copies of Nietzsche's full works when they met.

Yes Hitler did apparently like Nietzsche, but ironically it's pretty clear that Nietzsche could have never liked someone like Adolf Hitler. Nietzsche even ended his friendship with German composer Wagner because Wager was a racist (not only hating Jews, but Wagner even hated the French .... go figure).

As for the Darwin analogy you don't even realize what context the maxim survival of the fittest was made in (and on a side note, it's amazing to see how many of you guys are so ill informed & rely on these same arguments, obviously never having studied the work of these people, deriving your views from the narrow world of Christian apologetics, it's kind of scary).

It is meant to mean survival of the most adaptive (and explicitly not survival of the physically or genetically strongest or smartest), which has been proven by empirical observation (I'll be glad to provide examples if you don't believe me).

In Mein Kampf, Hitler stated that his anti-Semitism derived from simply observing Jews and realising that they were "not German". Unless you want Hitler's 6,000,000 to be added to the standing 185,000,000?

boy it's funny you mention Hitler. Now let's think, who in history prior to the National Socialists forced Jews to live in ghettos and to wear identifying armbands. Hmmmm, oh I remember, the Catholic Church.

Lenin, Trostky, Stalin, Khrushchev, Hoxha, Tito, Kim Jong-Il, Kim Il-Sung, Pol Pot, Fidel Castro, et al. specifically targeted religious people because they were religious, or, more precisely, because they weren't atheists.

That still doesn't prove (or even attempt to prove) their atheism informed their communist or totalitarian views.

False. Atheists who claim religion has caused genocide etc, are guilty of Tu Quoque, seeing as people killed by atheist regimes in peacetime over the past hundred years outnumber the number of reported murders fin America rom the same time (the number of reported murders being 11,600,000). It is also a correction to a particularly egregious historical and factual inaccuracy, seeing as there have been hardly any religious wars, and the victims of actual religious wars are dwarfened by the crimes of their godless counterparts. It is interesting how religion, particularly Christianity, is villified in cases where religion is not to blame, yet atheism is frequently exhonerated in cases where atheism is clearly to blame.

Again, Stalin and Hitler were raised Christians. Stalin was in an Orthodox Christian seminary studying to become a priest when he joined up with radical communists.

Absolutely and unremittingly false. Your level of ignorance strains credulity. After the Revolution of 1917, the Bolsheviks undertook a massive program to remove the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church from the government and Russian society, and to make the state atheist. Tens of thousands of churches were destroyed or converted to other uses, and many members of clergy were imprisoned for anti-government activities. An extensive education and propaganda campaign was undertaken to convince people, especially the children and youth, to abandon religious beliefs.

here's the comment you responded to:

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 atheism.

You misunderstood my statement. Can you reasonably say a "lack of belief" compels anyone to do anything, in the same way for instance the bible implores Christians to evangelize? You still haven't established this nexus (nor can you).

Communism (more specifically Marxism) believed religion was a tool the ruling class used to manipulate the underclass. Therefore, they believed abolishing religion was one of the steps that was necessary to accomplish their ultimate goal, which was nationalization and central control of the economy.

Not to act as an apologist for Marx (politically I'm personally libertarian, more inclined towards someone like Ron Paul than even more traditional republicans, and obviously more than democrats or more left leaning ideas), but he did write his manifesto right at the twilight of feudalism and the beginning of the industrial revolution (when labor conditions were at its harshest level ever seen in western history). Nevertheless history has proven Marx wrong.

Your argument fails particularly hard in your assertion that reason and rationality did not drive Stalin et al. On the contrary, they were acting perfectly reasonably. Firstly, atheism,logic, reason or science can provide no basis for morality, therefore they were acting perfectly consistantly with their atheism.

that's rubbish and ignorant bigotry.

Secondly, Marxism followed on from Machiavelli's "the end justifies the means" philosophy.

It's funny humanists at the time actually joined the Catholic Church in condemning The Prince (Machiavelli's book you're eluding to here). Nevertheless, here's two quotes from The Prince:

“Therefore the princes of a republic or kingdom must maintain the foundations of the religion they have; and having done this, it will be an easy thing for them to keep their republic religious, and, in consequence, good and unified.”

“Those Princes and Commonwealths who would keep their Governments entire and incorrupt, are above all things to have a care of Religion and its Ceremonies, and preserve them in due veneration.

Not that I'm even defending Machiavelli. What I'm doing is showing how the promulgation of your view relies on ignorance of the relevant subject matter.

With no God, humanity was ulitimately beholden to none but itself.

Yeah, and so what? First of all let's state the obvious, if god really exists we should assume he exists independent of our beliefs as to whether he exists or not. Second, you're argument reduces to the absurd.

Without offering any evidence that this god of yours exists, you're imagining what would happen if we stopped believing in what is almost certainly ancient myths with no factual basis.

With no God to judge them in the afterlife and no punishment awaiting them,

If you think you need an invisible friend to keep you in line, then fine. But to juxtapose your apparent intellectual weakness on the entire world and get angry when some of us think that's absurd is unreasonable.

they could do what they like and get away with it.

if you ask me Judeo-Christian morals are fine, but too simplistic. Under your version of morality people were still stoning adulterers and homosexuals to death, burning human beings at the stake, and other horrific acts.

I much prefer viewing Christian ethics (and the Jewish ten commandments) for what it is, simply an extension of laws humans figured out for ourselves (dating back to Hammurabi and much earlier).

Creation myths of a paradise garden, flood myths with the hero rescuing all biological life by building a ship date back to the ancient Sumerians. Whether or not there was a regional flood (we can assume there probably was) we know that category of creation myths are untrue (we have fossil records of biological life dating back over 3 billion years).

So you can say what you want, but at the end of the day I know it's a fairy tale.

Thirdly, their ultimate goal was an enlightened utopia. They saw religion as an obstacle to that goal. Seeing as there was none to hold them accountable other than themselves, they had no basis for morality,

the only thing the actual evidence suggests is they viewed religion as a threat to their power (cut out all the subjective religious hyperbole you're trying to conflate with their pretty simple motivations for wanting to dispense with religion).

and were perfectly free to do whatever they wanted, it is thus reasonably that, in order to "remove" the obstacle, religion, they simply tried to get rid of it. You can say that their actions were deeply immoral (although atheism can provide no basis for objective morality, the only logical choice is moralistic nihilism as subjective morality is illogical) but you cannot say that they were illogical or unreasonable in their actions, as they were acting perfectly consistantly in their atheism.

That's absolutely untrue. Modern western civilization is built on secular morals, enumerated by men like Kant, Voltaire, our founding fathers (mostly deists), etc. For crying out loud the man who by some accounts was responsible for stopping Hitler, Winston Churchill, was almost certainly agnostic.

Your views of history are taken from the narrow scope of Christian apologetics. In other words, utterly biased and useless from an academic standpoint.

Firstly, irreligion =/= atheism. Secondly: -

"Four in five EU citizens have religious or spiritual beliefs. In fact, over one in two EU
citizens believe there is a God (52%) and over one in four (27%) believe there is some
sort of spirit or life force. Only 18% declares that they don’t believe that is any sort of
spirit, God or life force."

God S/LF None Don't Know
EU 52% 27% 18% 3%
MT 95% 3% 0% 0%
CY 90% 7% 0% 0%
EL 81% 16% 3% 0%
PT 81% 12% 6% 0%
PL 80% 15% 0% 3%
IT 74% 16% 6% 3%
IE 73% 22% 4% 0%
SK 61% 26% 11% 0%
ES 59% 21% 16% 0%
AT 54% 34% 8% 4%
LT 49% 36% 12% 3%
DE 47% 25% 25% 3%
LU 44% 28% 22% 6%
HU 44% 31% 19% 6%
BE 43% 29% 27% 0%
FI 41% 41% 16% 0%
UK 38% 40% 20% 0%
LV 37% 49% 10% 3%
SI 37% 46% 16% 0%
FR 34% 27% 33% 5%
NL 34% 37% 27% 0%
SE 23% 53% 23% 0%
CZ 19% 50% 30% 0%
EE 16% 54% 26% 4%

TR 95% 0% 0% 0%
RO 90% 8% 0% 0%
HR 67% 25% 7% 0%
BG 40% 40% 13% 6%

CH 48% 39% 9% 4%
IS 38% 48% 11% 3%
NW 32% 47% 17% 4%

"The graph above is representative of the diverse nature of Europe’s religious and spiritual composition. The average results mask considerable differences in the beliefs of the various nationalities. Roman Catholicism is the official religion of Malta and 95% of Maltese respondents confirm that they believe in a God. The majority of the population of Cyprus is Greek Cypriot and Christian Orthodox6 and the results show that nine in ten declare that they believe in a God. Four in five respondents in Greece (81%), Portugal (81%) and Poland (80%) declare that they believe in a God and are followed by Italy and Ireland where respectively 74% and 73% confirm their religious beliefs. These are all countries where the Church as an institution has, historically, always been present and strong.

Of the candidate countries, Turkey, where the vast majority of the population is Muslim, ranks highest with 95% declaring their belief in a God. In Romania, where the vast majority of the population is Eastern Orthodox, 90% state that they believe in a God.

In contrast, in Estonia and the Czech Republic less than one in five declare that they believe in a God. In these countries, at least one in two believes there is some sort of spirit or life force: Estonia (54%) and the Czech Republic (50%). In Sweden also a majority share similar spiritual beliefs (53%).

The socio-demographic breakdown of results reveals some striking tendencies with regard to the profile of respondents who believe in a God."

"The third tendency is the development of a new kind of religion characterised by the belief that “there is some sort of spirit or life force”. This new religion or spirituality is more marked in certain Protestant countries, such as Sweden or Denmark as well as in the Czech Republic and Estonia."
http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/a..._report_en.pdf

If you want an example of a largely atheist country, try France. Or better yet, pick an atheist state like North Korea or PR China.

You're right being irreligious doesn't make you an atheist (by any stretch), but being an atheist doesn't require being a naturalist either (which is what you're inferring here).

The Eurobarometer poll asks:

1) do you "believe there is a God"

2) do you "believe there is some sort of spirit or life force," or

3) "don't believe there is any sort of spirit, God or life force"?

Atheist would encompass both two and three, since atheist simply means:

a: disbelief in the existence of deity b: the doctrine that there is no deity

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Atheism

Believing in a spirit or life force, unless it's god, is not theism. It's at the very least agnosticism.

At any rate it doesn't matter how many or how few people believe something is true, it doesn't add anything to truth or falsity of the matter being pursued (it's called the bandwagon fallacy, kind of an obvious term eh).

[bridgeforsale]

And what if there is no "natural" cause?

that means we just haven't found it yet

[LilPunkishOfTerror]

you mean if I want to be taken seriously by you (or your small cabal here)? Hmmm let me think .... nahh I'll keep thinking reason and rational thought informs atheism.

I mean in general. Obviously you're not being informed properly or you wouldn't make daft errors like claiming the inquisition killed millions. (besides that's a secular legal issue, not a religious one)

[LilPunkishOfTerror]

Yankee, quick question re: burning people is a horrific act (hopefully you're referring to witch trials/punishments)...would you agree or disagree that electrocuting people in The Chair is a horrific act?

[bridgeforsale]

I mean in general. Obviously you're not being informed properly or you wouldn't make daft errors like claiming the inquisition killed millions. (besides that's a secular legal issue, not a religious one)

Umm, I decline the invitation to join you in discovering the depths of potential human stupidity

[bridgeforsale]

Yankee, quick question re: burning people is a horrific act (hopefully you're referring to witch trials/punishments)...would you agree or disagree that electrocuting people in The Chair is a horrific act?

witch punishments & the inquisition. But no I don't think frying mass murders in the chair is horrific (although it may be an inefficient use of energy .... hanging them is probably more environmentally friendly).

[LilPunkishOfTerror]

witch punishments & the inquisition. But no I don't think frying mass murders in the chair is horrific (although it may be an inefficient use of energy .... hanging them is probably more environmentally friendly).

okay, so it's ok to punish criminals in the 20th century (& 21st) but not in the 15th...

[bridgeforsale]

okay, so it's ok to punish criminals in the 20th century but not in the 15th...

criminals in the 15th century were people who didn't believe the absurd mythology forced down their throats by the Catholic theocracy. Whether they were tried by civil courts or not is of no consequence, it was still a theocracy headed by Rome. Look, I'll be honest, I don't fault any set of ideas or words in a book for the behavior of human beings. Nevertheless ideology can always become dangerous absent a rigorous set of checks and balances (and a fairly well educated and productive society with enough entrenched interests who have adversarial relationships with other entrenched and sufficiently powerful interests).

[LilPunkishOfTerror]

what an absurd reading of history.

[Darth Ovious]

Yes Hitler did apparently like Nietzsche, but ironically it's pretty clear that Nietzsche could have never liked someone like Adolf Hitler. Nietzsche even ended his friendship with German composer Wagner because Wager was a racist (not only hating Jews, but Wagner even hated the French .... go figure).

Erm, all that RG was saying was that Hitler supplied Nietzche works to Mussolini etc. What you've raised here doesn't address the point, it's one big giant red herring.

As for the Darwin analogy you don't even realize what context the maxim survival of the fittest was made in (and on a side note, it's amazing to see how many of you guys are so ill informed & rely on these same arguments, obviously never having studied the work of these people, deriving your views from the narrow world of Christian apologetics, it's kind of scary).

It is meant to mean survival of the most adaptive (and explicitly not survival of the physically or genetically strongest or smartest), which has been proven by empirical observation (I'll be glad to provide examples if you don't believe me).

What? Excuse me but what does this have to do with the price of cheese in Denmark? In other words you're putting in a red herring again. You obviously don't know RG because if you did then you would realize that he is a Theistic Evolutionist.

boy it's funny you mention Hitler. Now let's think, who in history prior to the National Socialists forced Jews to live in ghettos and to wear identifying armbands. Hmmmm, oh I remember, the Catholic Church.

Can you expand on this please?

That still doesn't prove (or even attempt to prove) their atheism informed their communist or totalitarian views.

So what did? It certainly wasn't any sense of morality that they had from anywhere.

Again, Stalin and Hitler were raised Christians. Stalin was in an Orthodox Christian seminary studying to become a priest when he joined up with radical communists.

Being raised a Christian doesn't mean you stay a Christian. Actually Lenin actually picked Stalin because of his anti-religious stance.

You misunderstood my statement. Can you reasonably say a "lack of belief" compels anyone to do anything, in the same way for instance the bible implores Christians to evangelize? You still haven't established this nexus (nor can you).

Well, what do you blame bad morals on? Also how do you define what a bad moral is?

that's rubbish and ignorant bigotry.

You do know that RG used to be a Nihilist, don't you? He spent a long time trying to find a basis for atheist morality and of course found out that there wasn't one.

It's funny humanists at the time actually joined the Catholic Church in condemning The Prince (Machiavelli's book you're eluding to here). Nevertheless, here's two quotes from The Prince:

“Therefore the princes of a republic or kingdom must maintain the foundations of the religion they have; and having done this, it will be an easy thing for them to keep their republic religious, and, in consequence, good and unified.”

“Those Princes and Commonwealths who would keep their Governments entire and incorrupt, are above all things to have a care of Religion and its Ceremonies, and preserve them in due veneration.

Not that I'm even defending Machiavelli. What I'm doing is showing how the promulgation of your view relies on ignorance of the relevant subject matter.

So? This is just another red herring that you're throwing in to distract from the point. Who cares what humanists did at the time, we're talking about Machiavelli.

Yeah, and so what? First of all let's state the obvious, if god really exists we should assume he exists independent of our beliefs as to whether he exists or not. Second, you're argument reduces to the absurd.

Without offering any evidence that this god of yours exists, you're imagining what would happen if we stopped believing in what is almost certainly ancient myths with no factual basis.

I think you'll find there are plenty of facts. Maybe you should read up on what Historians and scholars have to say on the subject.

If you think you need an invisible friend to keep you in line, then fine. But to juxtapose your apparent intellectual weakness on the entire world and get angry when some of us think that's absurd is unreasonable.

You just described yourself quite well there.

if you ask me Judeo-Christian morals are fine, but too simplistic. Under your version of morality people were still stoning adulterers and homosexuals to death, burning human beings at the stake, and other horrific acts.

I thought you used to be a Christian? You should know what Christ taught then and you should realize that stoning people was not it.

Also, please point me to where it says that we should be "burning human beings at the stake".

I much prefer viewing Christian ethics (and the Jewish ten commandments) for what it is, simply an extension of laws humans figured out for ourselves (dating back to Hammurabi and much earlier).

Can you prove this point please?

Creation myths of a paradise garden, flood myths with the hero rescuing all biological life by building a ship date back to the ancient Sumerians. Whether or not there was a regional flood (we can assume there probably was) we know that category of creation myths are untrue (we have fossil records of biological life dating back over 3 billion years).

So what? We have fossil records of biological life dating back over 3 billion years. Is there any rule which says that I can't be a Christian and believe in evolution at the same time? I'm also expecting you reply here to be of a hilarious nature.

So you can say what you want, but at the end of the day I know it's a fairy tale.

Yep, just plain assert it. No need to actually prove it.

That's absolutely untrue. Modern western civilization is built on secular morals, enumerated by men like Kant, Voltaire, our founding fathers (mostly deists), etc. For crying out loud the man who by some accounts was responsible for stopping Hitler, Winston Churchill, was almost certainly agnostic.

Kant was a theist, so you need to get that correct first. And I hate to point this out to you but a lot of Western civilization is based on Christian morals. Morals that were founded when we were a Christian nation. As for secular morals today, what do you suggest? The legality of abortion? How about all the people who smooch off the British government every day with fake reasons for why they can't work? How about a night in the town where we get totally blotto (drunk) and then start fights? Let me tell you something, I was walking to the train station with my wife yesterday and we were heading into Glasgow from Paisley when a guy approached us asking for money, now this wasn't what stunned me but it was the fact that he was holding his own throat with blood dripping down it and onto his hands. Apparently some guy tried to cut his throat. Needless to say I phoned for an ambulance for the guy.

Your views of history are taken from the narrow scope of Christian apologetics. In other words, utterly biased and useless from an academic standpoint.

Biased does not equal wrong. Maybe you should actually try to provide an argument instead of saying "ah you're biased".

[bridgeforsale]

what an absurd reading of history.

dude you believe in talking snakes and spooky devil villains .... of course reality is boring and absurd to you

[LilPunkishOfTerror]

dude you believe in talking snakes and spooky devil villains .... of course reality is boring and absurd to you

Non-sequitur. Hey at least you're posting in the right thread...the screwball thread. Who was it who complained about logical fallacies earlier? oh yea, you.

[bridgeforsale]

Non-sequitur. Hey at least you're posting in the right thread...the screwball thread. Who was it who complained about logical fallacies earlier? oh yea, you.

I guess somewhere deep in that thing you call a brain you think you made a mind boggling point. Alright dude I'm just kidding around (it was too tempting ... I succumbed to the invisible serpent slithering around my head ). But seriously, you're too damn childish to discuss this issue with (aren't you supposed to be outside playing dodge ball or something, or at least playing X-Box, so you're obese before you're out of your teen years). You don't debate anything, you just toss around insults (and unfortunately I can't slap you silly over the internet).

And another thing while I'm joining the fun and hurling logically fallacious ad homs in your direction. Is that your pic (on your avatar)? It is sooo gay .....

[LilPunkishOfTerror]

I guess somewhere deep in that thing you call a brain you think you made a mind boggling point. Alright dude I'm just kidding around (it was too tempting ... I succumbed to the invisible serpent slithering around my head )

my point was - that you can't keep to a fair argument while accusing others of the same thing. re: the Inquisition etc, have you actually read the legal documentation that was published at the time? on what basis do you charge them with mythology etc?

[Steve007]

Frankly, I see no difference between the way Christians argue this issue and guys like Christopher Hitchens. It's not that I have a problem engaging in heated debates with anyone (I went to law school, I guess that's what I'm trained for, although I hardly wish to waste my talents trying to debunk ancient mythology -- since it doesn't bother me that other people believe it, as I once did very strongly). Moreover, I remember debating with atheists and the discussion often became heated (and that's probably an understatement). There was probably no tactic I wouldn't resort to in order to uphold and defend my version of theism.

You seem to be doing the same thing in this thread when you argue against Christianity.