Atheists destroy churches, attack the faithful

arthwollipot said:
Authoritarian + Catholic = anti Protestant suppression.

Authoritarian + Jewish = anti Muslim suppression.

Authoritarian + Confucianism = anti Taoist suppression.

History is littered with authoritarian regimes cracking down on religious groups they don't like. Not all were atheist. The common factor - the only common factor - is totalitarian authoritarianism.
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jimbob said:
Authoritarian + atheist = anti religious suppression.

Authoritarian + religious = anti religious suppression of all but the approved religion.

The key is the authoritarianism.

Tolerant + atheist = religious tolerance
Tolerant + religious = religious tolerance
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See my comment #1252, please.
 
arthwollipot said:
Except for the desire felt by some but not all atheists for religious people to stop believing in and spreading the false and harmful doctrines of religion. But that's a matter for individual atheists rather than something inherent to atheism itself.
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To emphasize a point, that is not based on atheism. That is not supported by atheism. Thus, the reasons for such cannot be validly linked to atheism. It can easily be validly linked to a number of other causes, though.

The Big Dog said:
Yet authoritarian atheist regimes attack religion with a fanatic consistency.

As shown.

As this thread is all about.

Seems anti religion is the element of atheism that our apologists wish to ignore.

As shown, again.
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To repeat, your wishful thinking and attempts to ignore important factors in play is as prominent as ever. There are important elements of Christianity that motivate believers to try to spread the religion and suppress other beliefs. There are no important elements of atheism that motivate atheists to spread atheism or suppress other beliefs.

To go further, there are important elements of authoritarian regimes that lead to their entirely predictable attempts to suppress competing ideologies.

Thank you for actually admitting that this thread is about trying to blame atheism, though, even though you've still been unable to make a coherent argument about why atheism should bear any of the blame.

The Big Dog said:
And perhaps our atheist bretheran have been so devoted to protecting their pet ideology that they are missing the obvious.

Authoritarian + atheist = anti religious suppression.
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Authoritarian + religion = suppression of other religions. Your argument fails.
 
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David Mo said:
Well, it seems we agree in the basic points.

Your link about religion detachment in US is interesting, but it doesn’t shed light about the total rate of deists (or non religious theists) in Western countries. I suppose we should look for in the inquests about “believers in some Spiritual Force” or similar. I imagine that the number of this kind of believers is not high.
In any case, my opposition to this kind of believers is substantially lesser than to religious people. “Spiritualism” seems to me an erroneous ideology but much less dangerous that submission to a church.
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To poke at the number cited in the earlier post that I had linked to... 26% of Americans identified themselves as non-religious. There may be some methodological issues with the source for that number, though. Those who self-identify as atheists are much lower than that, for reference.

David Mo said:
NOTE: I don't know what particular post of the Big Dog you are referring.
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The one you quoted in what I had responded to there. It linked to a Human Rights Watch link.

David Mo said:
In any case, it was important to highlight that even the articles provided by him doesn't mention atheism as a cause of attacks against churches in China. Or only in a circumstantial manner. And his references to "reports of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch" in this sense were simply false.
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Again, if they weren't being used in that manner in the first place, highlighting that they don't do so is meaningless.
 
The Big Dog said:
HI! Anyone falsely calling me a liar will be well served to read the foregoing post first
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So you take one post that claim that some good might come out of the misery, and use it to claim that "many atheists" appove of human right abuses?

... Yeah. Par for your game, i suppose.

I stand by my word: Liar.

Hans
 
MRC_Hans said:
So you take one post that claim that some good might come out of the misery, and use it to claim that "many atheists" appove of human right abuses?

... Yeah. Par for your game, i suppose.

I stand by my word: Liar.

Hans
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There has been a noticable silence from TBD after I asked him to name all these atheists.

As you say, par for the course. His strategy seems to be to ignore any post that is troublesome for his "arguments", and seize on anything he thinks he can twist to his advantage, whilst continuing the monotonous and repetitive attacks on atheism.
TBD: if you think this is unfair, consider this: My description of your approach is (more or less) the consensus of pretty much everyone who is engaging with you here. If it is not your intention to be dishonest, evasive, mocking and preachy, then perhaps you should look over your posts and consider why so many people think you are. Then stop doing it that way.
Let the Inner Big Dog blossom! Be an example to us all!

WWJD, TBD?
 
The Big Dog said:
As I have pointed out a half dozen times, he in fact does and enacted internet crackdowns on every single religious person in China.

Which i supported with citations to third party sources.

Folks, when you going to learn that your argument by bare assertion does not impress anyone but the atheist apologists that have been running interference or outright cheer-leading his Unyielding Marxist Atheism.
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Official Chinese government-backed website. Note the puzzling absence of crackdown.
The Chinese Catholic Church now has 115 parishes, 70 bishops, 1,100 priests, 1,200 nuns, and over four million lay followers. The Chinese Catholic Church has established two national organizations: The Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, formed in 1957 in Beijing, with Bishop Fu Tieshan as the current president; and the Chinese Catholics Bishops’ Conference, founded in 1980 in Beijing, with Bishop Liu Yuanren as president. Bishop Liu has a theological research center, five special committees responsible for teaching, theological seminaries, rituals, liaison with foreign religious organizations, economic development, and social services, under his jurisdiction.

China has 5,000 Catholic churches and 36 seminaries with 1,900 students. Since 1981, more than 900 priests have been consecrated. There are also 50 noviciates, with more than 1,000 novices who have taken their initial vows. China’s principal Catholic churches include the Cathedral of Immaculate Conception of B.M.V (Xuanwumen Church), Our Savior Cathedral (Xishiku Church), both in Beijing; the Cathedral of Mary Mother of God (Xujiahui Church), in Shanghai; the Cathedral of St. Michael, Qingdao; the Cathedral of St. Joseph (Laoxikai Church), Tianjin; the Hongjialou Church in Jinan; and the Sheshan Church in Shanghai.

The Chinese Catholic Church owns a publishing house and has printed more than three million copies of the Bible and other religious books. The Chinese Catholic Bishops’ Conference and the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association jointly publish and distribute a bimonthly, “the Catholic Church in China”. In addition, foreign languages schools, kindergartens, clinics, rehabilitation centers, homes for the aged, and other social welfare undertakings have been set up in various parishes. Some parishes have sent donations to regions affected by natural calamities and to Project Hope schools. These welfare activities have brought praise to the Catholic Church from all circles of Chinese society.
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http://www.chinatoday.com/culture/china_religions/catholic_china_religion.htm

The section on Islam is also worth a look.
 
David Mo said:
On the importance of non-religious theists: Non-religious theism is called in philosophy "deism". To get an idea of its breadth, organizations of this type cover 0.2% of the population in the USA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deism#Contemporary_deism. They don't seem like many, really.

That you know a deist doesn't seem like much to evaluate the extent of the phenomenon. In this way the count can take us a thousand years. Suggest something more objective and faster, please.

ADDED: Of course, deism refers to the world of philosophy or of the scientists who have been interested in it. There are exceptions: an astronaut, a politician. On a list I even found the president of the Philippines, although I suppose it is not his deism that has led him to destroy human rights in his country.
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Deism is the belief in a non-interventionist god. I'm talking about people who believe in an interventionist God but who are not religious.
 
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dann said:
No, not really. Not even that. At least, not according to Phil Zuckerman. In his book about the secularization in Denmark and Sweden (2010), he interviews a hospice worker who tells him that irreligious people don't seem to miss religion when they are dying. On the contrary, religious people tend to have doubts about their religious beliefs and therefore become anxious.
I found it kind of contra intuitive, and, of course, it's only anecdotal evidence, but on the other hand, there's also a certain logic to it that makes me think that it's probably true.

I found a quotation that I posted in another thread:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=12307718#post12307718


ETA: A short excerpt:



It's weird that it might actually be an act of mercy to persuade dying Christians that there is no vengeful god who will punish them for their sins (real or imagined) after they die.
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FWIW, my granddad was Catholic until the horrors he experienced in WWI made him an atheist in his early 20s. He was in his mid-90s when he died and the one thing he was terrified of was that God was angry with him for abandoning his faith.
 
David Mo said:
In the post that you quoted to respond to there, TBD was not claiming that that article was evidence that atheism was at fault. Therefore, your point that that article didn't invoke atheism was meaningless from the start.
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I think you are wrong about what post we are speaking.
The Big Dog said:
I join in Human Rights Watch's (a/k/a "useful idiots") calls for sanctions against the Abusive Atheist regime.
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David Mo said:
Brother Big Dog, Brother Big Dog: you are lying again making fake news. Human Rights Watch doesn't mention any "Abusive Atheist regime".
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Squeegee Beckenheim said:
Deism is the belief in a non-interventionist god. I'm talking about people who believe in an interventionist God but who are not religious.
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There are different branches of deism. What is common is the defence of natural religion and criticism against revelation and miracles. God's intervention is by means of nature and reason. Rousseau, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Lessing, etc. are different kinds of deists. Contemporary deism is more diversify.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
FWIW, my granddad was Catholic until the horrors he experienced in WWI made him an atheist in his early 20s. He was in his mid-90s when he died and the one thing he was terrified of was that God was angry with him for abandoning his faith.
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So a brand new kind of atheism? Atheists who believe in God?!

ETA: He obviously wasn't an atheist. Your claim (maybe based on his claim) is a contradiction in terms. If you don't believe in God, you also don't fear eternal damnation. Your granddad may have doubted that God existed, but he can't have been convinced that he didn't exist. It sounds more like somebody who was disappointed that his God let WWI happen and therefore was angry at Him.
 
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Aridas said:
Interesting assertion. I just googled "pick and choose" for the fun of it. I came up with lots of different definitions and descriptions of the phrase, none of which invoked whimsy. A number of them specifically required it to be done thoughtfully, too, for that matter. I find your assertion to be outright false on inspection.
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I just googled it as well. I concede that there are some uses of the phrase specifying thoughtfulness. However, you really ought to include whim, or random when you are searching for the phrase. Context will make it clear that whimsy, randomness or capriciousness (another word to include with "pick and choose" googling) is commonly understood to be inherent in "pick and choose". Next time, perform a more thorough inspection before declaring victory, my friend.


Aridas said:
:rolleyes: When your premises are not in line with reality or normal usage, it's no surprise that your conclusions aren't, either.
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Except, when one doesn't half-ass one's search, normal usage becomes a bit more clear.


Aridas said:
In response to you making claims that apply well to fundamentalist Christians and much less so to other kinds of Christians, and you specifically referring to Christians in what he was responding to? I'm not impressed with your reading comprehension here. That wasn't limiting anything. You made a claim about your credentials regarding how well you understand Christianity. He addressed that claim in that post. That's not claiming that you were limiting the conversation to fundamentalist Christianity.
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Interesting assertions. Do you consider, say Saudi Arabia or Iran to be fundamentalist Christian? Because my claims also apply to them. Oh, (you are now thinking) fine, wareyin was talking about fundamentalist Abramic religions. Very well, is Hillary Clinton an example of a fundamentalist Christian to you? I ask because I'm sure you, with your vastly better reading comprehension and all, have surely noticed that she and her religion have been brought up in this thread, and my claims also apply to her. I mean, if you are using some definition of Christian that is so skewed as to view mainline Methodists as fundamentalists, then I can see how you might think the way you do.

eta: Also, it appears your reading comprehension may have failed you again. Following back through my conversation with dann, a normal reader might be able to see who brought up Christians, and that normal reader might apply my continued insistence that I was not talking only about Christians as a sort of "context" to my claims. There is a reason I used "believer" rather than Christian, after all.

Aridas said:
:rolleyes: The appropriate interpretation of what I said there is "believers that are quite deep down the rabbit-hole, so to speak, and give excessive respect to authority." I pointedly did not say "Christians," in fair part because doesn't only apply to Christians. Muslims serve as a very easy example of another major religion that has quite a few people that would fall into that, for reference.
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Well son of a gun, you do realize my claims apply to more that just fundamentalist Christians! Progress!

Aridas said:
Perhaps. If you're set on assuming falsehoods that quite aren't in evidence or that the available evidence directly contradicts, that does quite limit what progress can be made.
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You have limited the available evidence you have considered in order to crow about how wrong I am. Whether that is intentional, or simply because your reading comprehension perhaps isn't as good as you think, I don't know.
 
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dann said:
So a brand new kind of atheism? Atheists who believe in God?!

ETA: He obviously wasn't an atheist. Your claim (maybe based on his claim) is a contradiction in terms. If you don't believe in God, you also don't fear eternal damnation. Your granddad may have doubted that God existed, but he can't have been convinced that he didn't exist. It sounds more like somebody who was disappointed that his God let WWI happen and therefore was angry at Him.
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Is it your contention that a religious person who has a small amount of doubt is therefore an atheist? I'd guess not. So why is it your contention that an atheist who has a small amount of doubt is therefore a theist?
 
wareyin said:
What is your definition of "not religious"? I would think belief in a God who intervenes in human affairs would be religious.
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I would say that someone who has a belief in an interventionist God is a theist. Being religious requires some actual engagement with that idea, like being a member of a religion, observing some kind of religious rituals (be that going to church or praying occasionally), having some of their personal values informed by what they think their God would want, etc.

Let me give a different example to the one I gave earlier - an old co-worker. He and I once spent a while chatting about what a load of old bollocks we thought religion was. A few days later a regular customer came in and talked about how his mother had died. We offered our condolences and he said something along the lines of "at least I know that there's something else and there's someone watching over us", to which my co-worker replied "oh, of course there is!"

After the customer had left I asked my co-worker about this, and he said that it "just made sense" to him that there's someone watching over us and taking care of us, and that it didn't make sense that we'd just come into being. Upon further pressing, he hadn't actually thought about it any more than that. Any arguments against it he agreed with. But, still, he we sure that there was "something more".

I think that to call him a theist would be reasonable, as he clearly believed in a deity. I think that to call him religious would be to stretch the word practically beyond meaning.

It'd be like calling someone who believes that the sun exists religious because religions that worship the sun have existed. To my co-worker he put the same judgement value on the existence of God as he did on the existence of the sun. He just considered it a mundane fact and didn't spare it any more thought than that.
 
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