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Religion is not evil

Last of the Fraggles said:
Your argument is disingenuous and if you are going to play this game of shoehorning Communism in to the equation then we'll have to play fair and put on the other side of the scale the Holocaust - after all without religion it wouldn't have happened
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That's extremely dubious. The achievement of Nazism was to take the religious basis for anti-semitism, which no longer appealed to many people, and to replace it with a secular, pseudo-scientific racial purist and nationalistic dogma. I know that Jack Chick is pushing the idea that Nazism was an attempt to impose Roman Catholicism on the world, but that's not what was happening. The Nazis were to sophisticated to go in for the blood libel as their major line of attack. Jewish converts to Christianity were not exempted from the camps. Religious affiliation wasn't an issue.

The reason for this was simple enough - as was pointed out in an earlier post, the communists viewed religion as competition. The Nazis were happy enough to have people profess any religion or none, until it infringed on the party. Then it was enough to lead to imprisonment and execution, as happened to many Christians under Nazi rule in a similar fashion to the Soviets.

The Nazis certainly didn't develop a well-formed ideological antipathy to religion, but Nazi ideology wasn't generally as well-developed or consistent as communism.
 
I'm coming into this argument way late, but as a self identified anti-theist, I suppose I should weigh in.

Let me start by saying I don't hate religion or religious people. My beef against religion has to do with my principles... my own dogma, if you will. My entire family, most of my neighbors... hell, about everyone I know is a Christian of some sort. It would be antisocial to the extreme for me to hold any ill will towards Christians.

The reason I am against religion is simply that I am against dishonesty, falsehood, denial, manipulation, and a whole hoard of other nastiness that you could relate to religion. I merely don't think it's a good idea for people to fool themselves into thinking they know something that they so obviously do not know. Nor do I think it's a good idea for them to teach their children this behavior. Will such behavior be restricted to religion? I think not... unsubstantiated beliefs in one area can bring about further unsubstantiated beliefs, and a susceptibility to woo in general.

I actually find some aspects of religion fascinating. I enjoy some of the stories, and am fascinated by some of the rituals involved. I've especially enjoyed reading some of Piggy's expertise on the historical aspects of The Bible right here in this forum. These are things involved with religion that I don't hate at all. I admire the creative side of it... but think we should stop short of declaring something that has the ability to deeply move us as factual... or even relevant, in some cases. If your basis for belief is how deeply something moves you, you're the easiest mark in the game... and the con game seems to be everybody's favorite business nowadays.

My primary beef with theistic belief is that I think our culture needs to outgrow that kind of foolishness and move on. That is what makes me anti-theist. Nothing else.
 
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Manopolus said:
I'm coming into this argument way late, but as a self identified anti-theist, I suppose I should weigh in.

Let me start by saying I don't hate religion or religious people. My beef against religion has to do with my principles... my own dogma, if you will. My entire family, most of my neighbors... hell, about everyone I know is a Christian of some sort. It would be antisocial to the extreme for me to hold any ill will towards Christians.

The reason I am against religion is simply that I am against dishonesty, falsehood, denial, manipulation, and a whole hoard of other nastiness that you could relate to religion. I merely don't think it's a good idea for people to fool themselves into thinking they know something that they so obviously do not know. Nor do I think it's a good idea for them to teach their children this behavior. Will such behavior be restricted to religion? I think not... unsubstantiated beliefs in one area can bring about further unsubstantiated beliefs, and a general susceptibility to woo in general.
I actually find some aspects of religion fascinating. I enjoy some of the stories, and am fascinated by some of the rituals involved. I've especially enjoyed reading some of Piggy's expertise on the historical aspects of The Bible right here in this forum. These are things involved with religion that I don't hate at all.

My primary beef with theistic belief is that I think our culture needs to outgrow that kind of foolishness and move on. That is what makes me anti-theist. Nothing else.
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:clap:
 
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westprog said:
That's extremely dubious. The achievement of Nazism was to take the religious basis for anti-semitism, which no longer appealed to many people, and to replace it with a secular, pseudo-scientific racial purist and nationalistic dogma. I know that Jack Chick is pushing the idea that Nazism was an attempt to impose Roman Catholicism on the world, but that's not what was happening. The Nazis were to sophisticated to go in for the blood libel as their major line of attack. Jewish converts to Christianity were not exempted from the camps. Religious affiliation wasn't an issue.

The reason for this was simple enough - as was pointed out in an earlier post, the communists viewed religion as competition. The Nazis were happy enough to have people profess any religion or none, until it infringed on the party. Then it was enough to lead to imprisonment and execution, as happened to many Christians under Nazi rule in a similar fashion to the Soviets.

The Nazis certainly didn't develop a well-formed ideological antipathy to religion, but Nazi ideology wasn't generally as well-developed or consistent as communism.
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Oh, I know its dubious. So is your shoehorning of Communism into the debate. My 'without the existence of religion there can be no Holocaust' argument can be made even more dubious if you like... without religion there are no Jews in the first place so you can't carry out a horrible campaign of anything against them.

Hell, without religion you don't even have Communists trying to eliminate it, so we can apportion that atrocity to the existence of religion as well.

Ridiculous arguments? No more so than saying we need to look to Communist China to understand what happens to society without religion.
 
westprog said:
Go do it, nobody's stopping you. Since Tsig can read a post where I say that atheism is not a belief system, and refute it by saying "No! atheism is not a belief system!" I have no interest in going back over what I've already said quite clearly. Last Of The Fraggles seems to have come up with some actual points, which I will address.
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You are unwilling to provide said evidence. So be it.
 
westprog said:
Go do it, nobody's stopping you. Since Tsig can read a post where I say that atheism is not a belief system, and refute it by saying "No! atheism is not a belief system!" I have no interest in going back over what I've already said quite clearly. Last Of The Fraggles seems to have come up with some actual points, which I will address.
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If people are misreading your posts that badly then maybe you should take more care in the composition of your posts.
 
Last of the Fraggles said:
No more so than saying we need to look to Communist China to understand what happens to society without religion.
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There are two ways to consider how a society without religion. We can look at how other societies have developed, or we can use an entirely theoretical approach. I see no point in ignoring actual experience.
 
tsig said:
If people are misreading your posts that badly then maybe you should take more care in the composition of your posts.
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If Egg was able to read my posts and fully understand them - and to summarise what I was saying quite clearly - then it seems to me that the problem lies elsewhere.
 
Belz... said:
You are unwilling to provide said evidence. So be it.
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Am I unwilling to go back over my own posts and repost them with annotations and footnotes? Yes. If other people aren't willing to read them carefully in the first place that's an issue for them.

I've noticed this tendency in argument before. X posts something. Y misunderstands it, or misrepresents it. X corrects the misrepresentation. Y insists that the original interpretation was correct, and keeps sieving through X's old posts to try to prove that his opinions aren't what he claims they are. It's a pointless waste of time.

I don't regard my posts as holy writ to be pored over. They are a way to express my opinions, which I'm happy to continue to do. I've no interest in trying to figure out why someone else can't understand what I've been saying.
 
westprog said:
Am I unwilling to go back over my own posts and repost them with annotations and footnotes? Yes. If other people aren't willing to read them carefully in the first place that's an issue for them.

I've noticed this tendency in argument before. X posts something. Y misunderstands it, or misrepresents it. X corrects the misrepresentation. Y insists that the original interpretation was correct, and keeps sieving through X's old posts to try to prove that his opinions aren't what he claims they are. It's a pointless waste of time.

I don't regard my posts as holy writ to be pored over. They are a way to express my opinions, which I'm happy to continue to do. I've no interest in trying to figure out why someone else can't understand what I've been saying.
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The two bolded passages contain a subtle clue as to the real problem. Telling someone they are wrong without bothering to care why they think as they do is not conducive to actual communication, especially when it may be you who is mistaken after all.

westprog said:
Oh, the secret agenda theory. Well done exposing it. That's my evil plot foiled.
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He didn't say "secret," he said "ridiculous." I think the argument you're trying to make is pretty obvious to all concerned.
 
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Beelzebuddy said:
The two bolded passages contain a subtle clue as to the real problem. Telling someone they are wrong without bothering to care why they think as they do is not conducive to actual communication, especially when it may be you who is mistaken after all.
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I'm interested in the justifications for their arguments. I'm not interested in the personal motivations that might have led them to believe their arguments.

And I suggest that you should reread what I posted. X might be right or wrong in what he thinks, but he knows what he thinks, and when Y tells him he really thinks something else, he's entitled to tell Y he's flat out wrong. It doesn't matter whether it's X's fault for being misleading, or Y's fault for not reading carefully. X is entitled to defend his own ideas - he's under no obligation to defend what Y thinks X thinks.



He didn't say "secret," he said "ridiculous." I think the argument you're trying to make is pretty obvious to all concerned.
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Funny, half the recent posts have dwelt on how obscure I've been. So what I'm saying is obscure but my agenda is obvious?
 
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Last of the Fraggles said:
Oh, I know its dubious. So is your shoehorning of Communism into the debate.
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I justified the identification of Communism with atheism (N.b. not the reverse, contrary to what has repeatedly been claimed) by posting specific links and claims that supported my position.
 
westprog said:
So what I'm saying is obscure but my agenda is obvious?
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Precisely. The technical term is "obfuscation."

All we've seen from you so far is a smokescreen of misdirection and redefinitions, where all arguments you dislike get told they're misunderstanding you and should go back and reread what you posted.

Here's what we're seeing in the context of your variable... stuff.

Assume a common and controversial argument, A.
X joins in on an A thread and argues for A'
Y infers that it's the same old A with an apostrophic fig leaf
X continues to insist that the argument is a completely different one, despite that it would make it a non sequiter in an A thread.
Y counters that A ~= A', does X think Y was born yesterday?
X tells Y to reread his definitions, A != A', though curiously the ' is derived a bit differently now.
Y flat out accuses X of trying to pull a fast one with the obscurity.
X accuses Y of being deliberately obtuse.
etc

I don't think we've yet encountered the case, as we did in the ECREE thread, where a third party Z rejects A' on its own ground, and X retorts under the assumption that Z, like Y, was secretly arguing against A because Z didn't really understand X's ', or X substitutes a third meaning, A'', that X was supposed to have been arguing the entire time.

That won't happen until almost page 40 when some kind soul joins halfway in and tries to seem reasonable, so you've got a while yet to think up different ways to weasel out of it.
 
Beelzebuddy said:
Precisely. The technical term is "obfuscation."

All we've seen from you so far is a smokescreen of misdirection and redefinitions, where all arguments you dislike get told they're misunderstanding you and should go back and reread what you posted.
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That's the opposite of what I want. If they misunderstood what I posted, then why keep going back to it? Why not just accept that my views are what my views are?

"That's not what you said before. I'm not going to go back and quote it - but I demand that you do, to prove that you believe what you claim to believe".

I realise that it's a lot easier to just gather round Epix and taunt him, but it's hardly productive.
 
westprog said:
I justified the identification of Communism with atheism (N.b. not the reverse, contrary to what has repeatedly been claimed) by posting specific links and claims that supported my position.
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And yet neither atheism nor communism are the topic of this thread.
 
Theism isn't necessarily evil, but provides premises that can justify anything.

Atheism isn't necessarily good, but doesn't provide premises that can justify anything.

Of course I'm an antitheist. I'm also an anti flat earther, an anti-homeopathist, etc. I'm generally anti-wrong.
 
westprog said:
That's the opposite of what I want. If they misunderstood what I posted, then why keep going back to it? Why not just accept that my views are what my views are?
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They don't believe they've misunderstood a thing, and your assertions otherwise have been less than stellar. Similarly, there's what your views are and what you say your views are. The former doesn't change much, while the latter seems to be somewhat more fluid. To use rramjet as an example again, his "views" had a half-life of about 4 pages. More than ten pages back, odds are you could find himself directly contradicting his latest screed, all the while asserting that his position hadn't changed and taking offense at people who called him on it. This went around several times, in almost a perfect circle.

Let me see if I understand your argument right:

1) Catholicism is a facet of religion.
2) Communism is a facet of atheism.
3) Catholicism has killed a lot of people.
4) Communism has killed a lot of people.
conc. Tu quoque

Is that about right? There are two things you aren't seeing here. One is that 2) is false, as people have been trying to tell you and you've been condescendingly dismissive of their arguments, another is that a tu quoque argument is a fallacious one so you don't really got much point anyway.
 
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