Darth Rotor
Salted Sith Cynic
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What planet are you from? Nationalism was a trigger for the Great War, 1914ish. The demonization of "they" was based on nationalistic archetypes and symbols.
DR
DR
Ryan O'Dine
OD’ing on Damitol
I'm not sure that's right. I don’t think I could show you large, cohesive populations where human greed has been reduced or is absent. Does that mean we can’t say whether or not greed causes conflict in society?
And actually, I’ve known people in my own life who were quite moderate growing up, but as a direct consequence of glomming onto fundamentalism, became fairly extreme in their views. They are one of the few sources of conflict in my extended family.
Multiply that a million-fold and I think you’d be hard pressed to say that religious fundamentalism doesn’t actively cause problems.
Religion, I agree -- not necessarily the prime culprit. Fundamentalism, OTOH -- conflict is its middle name.
And hey, welcome to the forum!
Yes Nationalists have told their followers to kill others but murder is not a core belief of a Nationalist ideal, unlike Christianity, Judaism and Islam when their holy books specifically advocate just that.
Some nationalists may take things to exteme and murder however murder is not a Christian/Muslim/Jewish extreme, it's right there as a normal rule in each of their books. THAT is my point.
Not to get too picky, but what about the thousands (dare I say millions?) of people who smoke and smoke regularly and NEVER get cancer? What about the thousands (dare I say millions?) of people who never smoked and still develop lung, throat and other cancers? Causation is NEVER to be accepted lightly or too quickly... perhaps after about a million years of data...
Wolfman
Chief Solipsistic, Autosycophant
Well, glad to see that my topic is generating discussion/debate.
Let me put this challenge to everyone here:
If religion is a "cause" of these things, then it stands to reason that the elimination of religion would logically result in a decrease. If there is no appreciable decrease, then religion cannot logically be deemed a root cause.
I will give an example: racism. For much of human history, certain Biblical passages were used to justify racism, and attacks on those of other religions. We would therefore expect that the introduction of evolution -- a scientific, rational, atheistic belief system (for the most part) -- would result in a decrease in racism.
Not the case at all; blame religion all you want, the only thing that happened was that people changed the justification for their racism. You had the 'social darwinists' who argued that evolution proved the evolutionary superiority of certain races (Hitler being a brilliant example of this form of racism). Or people took up the 'racial purity' banner, proclaiming that the intermixing of different races represented a backwards step in evolution, a 'muddling' of different evolutionary lines, etc.
Result -- a religious world has just as many racists as a non-religious world. They just find different excuses for their actions.
Religious ideology, political ideology...whatever ideology you want to consider. THAT is what drives this process. Removing religion doesn't remove ideology; people simply shift to a different focus.
And by far the majority of the people who were doing the killing were not doing so based on religious beliefs. While certainly they were killing religious people, I have a hard time seeing any argument that can defend the principle that it was the religious beliefs of the Germans that fed this. Quite the opposite, a much stronger motivation was the ATHEISTIC belief system that had grown from the theory of evolution, which Hitler (and many of his ilk) used to teach that Aryans were evolutionarily superior to other races. Yeah, Hitler used religion occasionally, but it was far from being the core motivation for the majority of abuses that took place.
There are INTERPRETATIONS of different religious and holy books that can be used to justify such abuses; but there are also EQUALLY VALID interpretations that teach peace, love, and harmony (look at Christ's teachings, to love your neighbor, etc.).
Its hilarious to me how much theists and atheists alike use the SAME arguments. Accuse a Christian, and they will say "the people who committed those atrocities were not real Christians, they weren't following the Bible's proper teachings". Turn around and talk about something like nationalism, and you get Neo Ricen's response...a mirror image of the same argument.
But, according to Neo Ricen, if THEISTS do it, it is BECAUSE of religion; but if nationalists do it, its NOT because of nationalism. Actually, in BOTH cases, theism and nationalism are simply different EXCUSES. Neither religion nor nationalism IMPLICITLY TEACHES such violence; but both can be easily interpreted to justify such actions, just as both can be easily interpreted to be opposed to such actions.
My god, people...get some perspective.
Throughout by far the majority of human history, the vast majority of humans have been "religious". Thus, yes, the vast majority of abuses have been committed by people who were "religious".
By the same token, the vast majority of the most loving, humanitarian actions have ALSO been committed by people who were religious. I gave the examples previously of Gandhi and Martin Luther King...but there are numerous other examples.
I DO NOT SEE HOW YOU CAN LOGICALLY ARGUE that religion is a "cause" of these abuses, without having to argue that religion was also a "cause" of things such as love, human rights, charity, etc.
Funny, isn't it...theists are "blamed" for all the evil they do in the name of their religion, but when they do good things in the name of their religion, hey, that's just coincidental, not relevant to the argument at all. I personally have significant problems with rendering people like Gandhi and Martin Luther King as irrelevant.
This is getting REALLY long, my apologies...mixing a lot of different arguments and points together here. Lets get back to the basics.
My challenge:
1) Demonstrate, based on more than personal beliefs that "this is what I think", that removing religion decreases abuses. If removing religion does not decrease abuses, there is obviously no causal connection between the two. I've given plentiful examples of where I believe non-religious motivations have resulted in equal abuses, feel free to refute me.
2) Demonstrate how it is logical that "religion" is the "cause" of all these abuses committed by religious people throughout history, but is not likewise a "cause" of all the incredibly great things that have been done by religious people throughout history. I find it absolutely incredible -- practically absurd -- how many atheists pick and choose their information to suit their arguments, a VERY non-scientific and non-rational approach to the discussion. People here have made the explicit claim that religion "teaches violence and murder", while ignoring that those same religions also teach love, harmony, and respect. People here make long lists of the atrocities committed in the name of religion, but ignore the many great sacrifices and humanitarian efforts that have also been made in the name of religion.
It is, in fact, a tactic typical of those who seek to teach intolerance. You take the actions of one PART of a given population, and generalize that to apply to EVERYONE within that population. Where would our world be today without people like Gandhi? Like Martin Luther King? Their actions -- and the results thereof -- were motivated and driven by deep religious beliefs.
Sorry...this post really does ramble a little too much. Please try to keep responses mainly to the final portion of this post.
Let me put this challenge to everyone here:
If religion is a "cause" of these things, then it stands to reason that the elimination of religion would logically result in a decrease. If there is no appreciable decrease, then religion cannot logically be deemed a root cause.
I will give an example: racism. For much of human history, certain Biblical passages were used to justify racism, and attacks on those of other religions. We would therefore expect that the introduction of evolution -- a scientific, rational, atheistic belief system (for the most part) -- would result in a decrease in racism.
Not the case at all; blame religion all you want, the only thing that happened was that people changed the justification for their racism. You had the 'social darwinists' who argued that evolution proved the evolutionary superiority of certain races (Hitler being a brilliant example of this form of racism). Or people took up the 'racial purity' banner, proclaiming that the intermixing of different races represented a backwards step in evolution, a 'muddling' of different evolutionary lines, etc.
Result -- a religious world has just as many racists as a non-religious world. They just find different excuses for their actions.
I would agree 100%!! This is, in fact, pretty much the point I'm trying to make.
Religious ideology, political ideology...whatever ideology you want to consider. THAT is what drives this process. Removing religion doesn't remove ideology; people simply shift to a different focus.
The Nazis were also killing homosexuals and Gyspies...are you arguing that homosexuality is a religion?
And by far the majority of the people who were doing the killing were not doing so based on religious beliefs. While certainly they were killing religious people, I have a hard time seeing any argument that can defend the principle that it was the religious beliefs of the Germans that fed this. Quite the opposite, a much stronger motivation was the ATHEISTIC belief system that had grown from the theory of evolution, which Hitler (and many of his ilk) used to teach that Aryans were evolutionarily superior to other races. Yeah, Hitler used religion occasionally, but it was far from being the core motivation for the majority of abuses that took place.
Ai ya...I'm sorry, but this particular argument demonstrates terrible ignorance of what you speak.
There are INTERPRETATIONS of different religious and holy books that can be used to justify such abuses; but there are also EQUALLY VALID interpretations that teach peace, love, and harmony (look at Christ's teachings, to love your neighbor, etc.).
Its hilarious to me how much theists and atheists alike use the SAME arguments. Accuse a Christian, and they will say "the people who committed those atrocities were not real Christians, they weren't following the Bible's proper teachings". Turn around and talk about something like nationalism, and you get Neo Ricen's response...a mirror image of the same argument.
But, according to Neo Ricen, if THEISTS do it, it is BECAUSE of religion; but if nationalists do it, its NOT because of nationalism. Actually, in BOTH cases, theism and nationalism are simply different EXCUSES. Neither religion nor nationalism IMPLICITLY TEACHES such violence; but both can be easily interpreted to justify such actions, just as both can be easily interpreted to be opposed to such actions.
My god, people...get some perspective.
Throughout by far the majority of human history, the vast majority of humans have been "religious". Thus, yes, the vast majority of abuses have been committed by people who were "religious".
By the same token, the vast majority of the most loving, humanitarian actions have ALSO been committed by people who were religious. I gave the examples previously of Gandhi and Martin Luther King...but there are numerous other examples.
I DO NOT SEE HOW YOU CAN LOGICALLY ARGUE that religion is a "cause" of these abuses, without having to argue that religion was also a "cause" of things such as love, human rights, charity, etc.
Funny, isn't it...theists are "blamed" for all the evil they do in the name of their religion, but when they do good things in the name of their religion, hey, that's just coincidental, not relevant to the argument at all. I personally have significant problems with rendering people like Gandhi and Martin Luther King as irrelevant.
(I LOVE the name, by the way) People fight and die for IDEOLOGIES (as stated above). The assumption that atheists are somehow less prone to extremism or being willing to die for their beliefs seems a very naive one to me, and certainly would seem to fly in the face of actual human experience.
This is getting REALLY long, my apologies...mixing a lot of different arguments and points together here. Lets get back to the basics.
My challenge:
1) Demonstrate, based on more than personal beliefs that "this is what I think", that removing religion decreases abuses. If removing religion does not decrease abuses, there is obviously no causal connection between the two. I've given plentiful examples of where I believe non-religious motivations have resulted in equal abuses, feel free to refute me.
2) Demonstrate how it is logical that "religion" is the "cause" of all these abuses committed by religious people throughout history, but is not likewise a "cause" of all the incredibly great things that have been done by religious people throughout history. I find it absolutely incredible -- practically absurd -- how many atheists pick and choose their information to suit their arguments, a VERY non-scientific and non-rational approach to the discussion. People here have made the explicit claim that religion "teaches violence and murder", while ignoring that those same religions also teach love, harmony, and respect. People here make long lists of the atrocities committed in the name of religion, but ignore the many great sacrifices and humanitarian efforts that have also been made in the name of religion.
It is, in fact, a tactic typical of those who seek to teach intolerance. You take the actions of one PART of a given population, and generalize that to apply to EVERYONE within that population. Where would our world be today without people like Gandhi? Like Martin Luther King? Their actions -- and the results thereof -- were motivated and driven by deep religious beliefs.
Sorry...this post really does ramble a little too much. Please try to keep responses mainly to the final portion of this post.
Kopji
Philosopher
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I find it difficult to believe that the millions of mentally ill people are better off in a world which promotes credulous and uncritical thinking.
It is the special domain of religion that often rewards insanity or gives it a place to fester and become something terrible. Organizations thousands of years old with the single purpose of fostering progress by means of authority.
Sure not all, but where would religion be without saints and demons, voices, visions, or answered prayers? It would have died out long ago. And so those who suffer from mental illness are often the acceptable sacrifice of those who feel the need to believe is a greater good.
It is the special domain of religion that often rewards insanity or gives it a place to fester and become something terrible. Organizations thousands of years old with the single purpose of fostering progress by means of authority.
Sure not all, but where would religion be without saints and demons, voices, visions, or answered prayers? It would have died out long ago. And so those who suffer from mental illness are often the acceptable sacrifice of those who feel the need to believe is a greater good.
Wow... It didn't take you very long to Godwin this thread now did it?
What particular argument?
Yes. And?
What does nationalism has to do with atheism?
If you can give religion credit for the good thigs done in the name of religion. Then you can blame religion you the bad things done in the name of religion.
Unless you can show that we argue that religion is the cause of violence on the macro level, you dear sir have set up a strawman. And religion being the cause of love, human rights and charity? Sure, if the Jumping Purple Kangaroo of South West minnesota created the world, then logicaly he must have created love, human rights and charity...
I see... Who presented the argument that good things done in the name of religion is only coincidental?
Once again: If you can give religion credit for good things done in the name of religion, you can also blame religion for the bad things done in the name of religion.
Who presented that assumption? I dunno but it smells like a strawman to me. Oh and that was a nice assertion ther btw. People also fight and die for SURVIVAL, RESOURSES, JEALOUSY, FEAR, GREED and many other reasons.
Lets
Wait. If a man puts on a dynamite west and goes out to kill infidels, believing that he will go to paradise and be awarded there... Are you saying religion isn't the cause? Or if a pious monk chains someone to a rack and tortures that someone because he thinks he/she is a heretic? Just because torture and killings have been done for other causes than religion does not mean that in the cases I mentioned religion shouldn't be blamed.
show me.
yes, see this is done in response to religious people who cherrypick religious texts to suit their needs at the time.
Love harmony and respect, unless you are an infidel, heretic or unbeliever THEN YOU SHALL DIE!.. no sory that was over the top, but have you read any religous texts lately??
As often as not this is done in response to those who only see it fit to bring up good things.
We do?? When? Where?
And there you go, only presenting one of the sides.
What and miss out on the glorious Godwin you did? Riiiiiight.
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Aw. And I was intending do reply while this debate was still friendly. I knew I should not have waited. 
Wolfman, I largely agree with your opinion regarding religion too often having to take the blame for conflicts which have their basis in something else. I see the possible elimination of religion as about as meaningless as a similar elimination of all culture. However, I don't share your opinion when it comes to human nature. Throughout history, every culture has not had the same degree of abuses, atrocities and wars, and by eliminating certain aspects of our culture, such as intolerance, I do believe we can decrease the amount of mindless patriots and zealots to virtually zero. I simply do not consider religion to be such an aspect worth eliminating.
I also do not understand why you bring up all the good things done in the name of religion. How are they relevant to the point you are making? As far as I can understand, you give no credit to religion for anything done in its name, good or bad.
Curnir, you made some good points, but to better understand your argument I must ask you: Why do you think we invented (I suppose you don't consider it God-given
) religion in the first place? And why did it become harmful?
I don't understand your explanation for cherrypicking, though. Surely the stupid arguments of theists do not excuse the use of similarly stupid arguments amongst atheists/antitheists? Or perhaps you were not attempting to excuse them?
Wolfman, I largely agree with your opinion regarding religion too often having to take the blame for conflicts which have their basis in something else. I see the possible elimination of religion as about as meaningless as a similar elimination of all culture. However, I don't share your opinion when it comes to human nature. Throughout history, every culture has not had the same degree of abuses, atrocities and wars, and by eliminating certain aspects of our culture, such as intolerance, I do believe we can decrease the amount of mindless patriots and zealots to virtually zero. I simply do not consider religion to be such an aspect worth eliminating.
I also do not understand why you bring up all the good things done in the name of religion. How are they relevant to the point you are making? As far as I can understand, you give no credit to religion for anything done in its name, good or bad.
Curnir, you made some good points, but to better understand your argument I must ask you: Why do you think we invented (I suppose you don't consider it God-given
) religion in the first place? And why did it become harmful?I don't understand your explanation for cherrypicking, though. Surely the stupid arguments of theists do not excuse the use of similarly stupid arguments amongst atheists/antitheists? Or perhaps you were not attempting to excuse them?
Darth Rotor
Salted Sith Cynic
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So, the Commandment "Thou Shall commit no murder" isn't part of the Faith?
I won't try to speak from the Sura of Al Quran, but it seems the Jews and Christians don't, from the core tenets of their Faiths, agree with your assessment. Of course, the Mosaic Law does proscribe the death penalty for such things as murder and poisoning, but that seems to fit into a normative action, a societal norm -- execution -- rather than the personal crime of murder.
KJV Matthew 19:18: He saith unto him, Which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness,
I realize there is considerable debate, and discussion, on the hermeneutics involved in correctly deducing the connotations of that commandment.
DR
Darth Rotor
Salted Sith Cynic
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One can refer to Hitler without Godwinning a thread. In this case, the historical issue was contextually sound, and not a comparison of someone, or anyone, to Hitler. The mere mention of Germany, 1933-1945 is not by default a Godwin evocation. Wolf was citing a historical pattern, Not Making An Analogy.
The valid citing of Third Reich, Nationalist Socialist Ideology was very much on point.Wiki in this case said:
Beyond that, wolfman crafted a fine post.
It's a factor in his decision, the cause would seem to be a great antipathy for whoever it is he wants to blow up, a loss of hope, and despair. Even without the promise of Paradise, I'd expect to see the occasional suicide bomber, though I can't argue that it would be as, or more, prevalent if the religious angle were used as part of the sales job by the recruiter.
Playing the blame game, but to what end? Is this done to make you feel better about yourself?
As you did not demonstrate that you actually know what Godwin's Law is, please inform yourself (from the summary I included above) so you can better spot it in the future, and also spot when it isn't proper to cry foul in the name of the Sainted Godwin.
Analogy does not equal example.
DR
Except that a prohibition on "murder" is not necessarily incompatible with a specific command to "kill." "Murder," after all, is simply unlawful killing -- if it is commanded by law, it's no longer murder, but duty.
Yeah. And very little of the debate -- and none of the knowledgeable debate -- suggests that it's a blanket prohibition of the sort you seem to infer. How many of the "crimes" of the Old Testament are to be punished with death?
Darth Rotor
Salted Sith Cynic
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drk, I do not infer the blanket prohibition, nor did my post do that, since I was making the distinction between murder and "killing", which you also made. We seem to be in agreement, not disagreement, on this.
From my post, which you did NOT quote:
That suggests to me that "thou shalt not kill" is a less than sensible rendering of the passage into English, since within the same book of the OT is a list of who gets executed for what. So, lawful and unlawful killing, your more elegant rendering of my thought.
Why did you think I don't, or didn't, see that?
DR
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No, just pointing out that if you want to claim the good, you have to aknowledge the bad.
And pray tell what do you mean by "feel better about yourself"?
The extent to which religion supports, or even demands, killing of the Other, in contexts other than non-judiciary.
We've agreed, for example, that "thou shalt not kill" is a bad translation; scholars world-wide appear to believe that "thou shalt not murder" is closer to the original meaning. However, just as an executioner may kill in the performance of his job without committing "murder," so also may a soldier (and several other professions as well).
The question then becomes whether killing of the religious Other is lawful, and whether it is even "commanded."
Deuteronomy 13 seems relevant here:
Proselytizing for false gods is to be punished by death.
Hmmm....
Meadmaker
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I have read very little of "Mein Kampf", but by coincidence I was browsing it in a local bookstore the other day.
In a section on anti-semitism, Hitler said that the big mistake made by previous anti-semites was to base their anti-semitism on religious grounds. The proper reason for anti-semitism was to oppose them on racial grounds, totally independent of their religion. The objection was that these people, with all of their hideous faults, were not really Germans at all, and yet, people acted as if they were. They were able to claim German citizenship just because they were born in Germany, which he saw as wrong.
Of course, had their been no religion, there would have been no history of anti-semitism, and it seems inconceivable that the Jews would have remained distinct from their surrounding ethnic groups without their religion.
brodski
Tea-Time toad
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Are you saying that there is no tradition of religious homophobia?
My take on this is that you take God or the omnipotent all being out of the
equation, people will still ways to diversify and divide people according to ethnic groups and such.
The best example is actully my own country, Denmark, which as many observers have note, is the most godlike or secular contry in Europe (not in the sense of followers of the faith, but in the sense of the secular orientation). I have had to defend individual muslims, africans, afro-americans, on various debate boards on the internet, since the take on these people are that they are not as intelligent as white people, more prone to terror than other people and such things. (this is not the place to discuss whether or not this is correct, I just mention to show that people will find other explanations as to why people are inferior to other people = god does not need to bee in the equation at all).
Of course, religion is not the CAUSE of war, religion can be used to justify why people go to war over say certain fields or pieces of land or to justify why e.g. slavery is good or bad, or all those things of which religion has be accused of doing. Certain people in religion, like the priests in the Spanish
Inquisition, did to harm to other people in the name of religion, they did hunt down heretics in the name of God. :whine: . And sanctioned by the Roman Catholic Church.
To, me it is the people who decides which way each religion should be acted out, either in a bad way or a good way.
equation, people will still ways to diversify and divide people according to ethnic groups and such.
The best example is actully my own country, Denmark, which as many observers have note, is the most godlike or secular contry in Europe (not in the sense of followers of the faith, but in the sense of the secular orientation). I have had to defend individual muslims, africans, afro-americans, on various debate boards on the internet, since the take on these people are that they are
not as intelligent as white people, more prone to terror than other people and such things. (this is not the place to discuss whether or not this is correct, I just mention to show that people will find other explanations as to why people are inferior to other people = god does not need to bee in the equation at all).Of course, religion is not the CAUSE of war, religion can be used to justify why people go to war over say certain fields or pieces of land or to justify why e.g. slavery is good or bad, or all those things of which religion has be accused of doing. Certain people in religion, like the priests in the Spanish
Inquisition, did to harm to other people in the name of religion, they did hunt down heretics in the name of God.
:whine: . And sanctioned by the Roman Catholic Church.To, me it is the people who decides which way each religion should be acted out, either in a bad way or a good way.
Darth Rotor
Salted Sith Cynic
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My, what a bloody handed bunch those Semites were and are.
It seems as though Mohammed took those words to heart, given that the apostate Muslim is similarly to be executed. The old spiritual goes
"Rocka my soul in the bosom of Abraham"
but perhaps might be written as
"Rocks to my head if I don't pray like Abraham . . . "
DR
Darth Rotor
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To be fair and balanced, sure.
The blame game is zero value added. The purpose behind the desire to blame is more interesting to me than the fact that one can assign blame. To elevate one's self above another, in one's own estimation, is a motive for blame. It may or may not have been yours, but given the environment, I suspected it. (I may be wrong.)
DR