EPIC FAIL: The God Delusion

[Foster Zygote]

How self-centered of you.

How so?

 

[pgwenthold]

Possibly. Churchill was very good at rallying.

At the risk of Godwinizing this thread... "everyone" is wrong.

Almost all Germans in 1940's, members of Nazi party or not, were raised Christians and were Christians. Even if Hitler himself was not (which is debatable), he simply was not in power long enough to move populace from is Christian upbringing to something else. These sort of things take generations.

This is one thing that I always point out. You can claim Hitler was atheist. First, you would be wrong, and second, it doesn't matter. As far as I know, Hitler never killed a single person, aside from himself. I may be wrong, but it is close enough.

Those millions of people who died at the hands of Nazi soldiers were not killed by Hitler, atheist or not. They were killed predominantly by God-fearing German soldiers, who actually believed that God was with them, as it said on their belt buckles.

Who cares what Hitler secretly believed?

 

[bozman]

"The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and cooperation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life."

Adolf Hitler, Proclamation to the German Nation at Berlin, February 1, 1933

"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people."

-Adolf Hitler, in a speech on 12 April 1922 (Norman H. Baynes, ed. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939, Vol. 1 of 2, pp. 19-20, Oxford University Press, 1942)

 

[The Man]

An unfortunate comparison! I'll say this for multiverses: there's no one currently claiming that The Multiverse condemns me to a lake of fire.

Isn’t that the premise of the Multiverse, that everything happens in one of those universe or another? So the Multiverse does indeed condemn you to a lake of fire in one universe and just perhaps to the Gulf of Mexico (with a lighter) in another.


ETA:

Looks like I was beaten to the punch (line that is).

But in all the infinite universes, there must exist at least one where you've been condemned to a lake of fire.

I claim that -you- happen to be in the one universe amongst all those universes that are to be condemned into a lake of fire!

All the multiverse copies of you will be fine, though.

 

[H3LL]

Religion is like a virulent, violent, unpleasant, retarding and destructive disease within human society.

Why would anyone want to replace a disease with anything?


"I'm glad my measles have gone. I must pop out and catch chicken pox".






.

 

[Marduk]

This is one thing that I always point out. You can claim Hitler was atheist. First, you would be wrong, and second, it doesn't matter. As far as I know, Hitler never killed a single person, aside from himself. I may be wrong, but it is close enough.

Those millions of people who died at the hands of Nazi soldiers were not killed by Hitler, atheist or not. They were killed predominantly by God-fearing German soldiers, who actually believed that God was with them, as it said on their belt buckles.

Who cares what Hitler secretly believed?

well Winston Churchill cared, or he wouldn't have written this in the "The Sunday Chronicle", 27 June, 1937

“There are two strange facts about these non-God religions. The first is their extraordinary resemblance to one another. Nazism and Communism imagine themselves as exact opposites. They are at each other’s throats wherever they exist all over the world. They actually breed each other; for the reaction against Communism is Nazism, and beneath Nazism or Fascism Communism stirs convulsively. Yet they are similar in all essentials. First of all, their simplicity is remarkable. You leave out God and put in the Devil; you leave out love and put in hate; and everything thereafter works quite straightforwardly and logically. They are, in fact, as alike as two peas. Tweedledum and Tweedledee are two quite distinctive personalities compared to these two rival religions

as for who cares, well the winning populations who had been drawn together by Leaders on both sides by referring to the enemy as Godless, Religion was the glue that held the Allies together, its no surprise that the quote "there are no atheists in foxholes" originated in WW2

Hitler never killed a single person

So if he was on trial today he wouldn't be culpable for 6 million jews then

 

[Dunstan]

The "what will you replace it with?" question always seems concerned with someone other than the person asking it.

That is, I have yet to encounter someone who says anything along the lines of "well, gee, you're probably right, it looks like my religion and all the others out there really haven't produced any evidence to support their claims. But since you haven't given me some other belief to replace it with, I'm going to go on believing in something that I don't actually believe."

The "where's your replacement" question seems to me to be inherently patronizing; it's based on the premise that the little people need something to believe in, so let's not inquire whether what they believe is true or not.

And frankly, I think atheists are more persuasive if they're not "selling" some alternate belief system. The moment you start doing that, you open yourself up to accusations that your arguments against religion are just biased attacks on "the competition." (Of course, even without offering such an alternative, atheists still often get dismissed as belonging to "just another religion.")

 

[Soapy Sam]

The assumption of a need to replace religion is probably unjustified in the case of most posters here, who have made it plain in the past that they did not "lose" their faith, but simply never had any.
What "took the place of" religion in their lives - ie filled the time they might otherwise have spent in church or religious activity, was any other social activity, philosophical or academic pursuit, hobby, shopping, sport ... in short anything at all that humans do that is not religion.
It's like asking what replaced football in my life. Nothing. I was never remotely interested in football.
If the OP means "What would replace religion in the wretched lives of believers if they lost their faith", I'd expect the answer to be exactly the same; one (or more) of a huge range of social activity.

 

[Dunstan]

I also think it's a little silly to dismiss an entire book as an "epic fail" for not addressing in detail something that was tangential to the stated purposes of the book. It's a little like saying that Origin of Species was an epic fail because it doesn't explain abiogenesis.

 

[cienaños]

While I agree that belief in supernatural god(s) has helped the species survive as a whole throughout history, that does not qualify it as something that should continue just because it has always continued.

From where I stand, Agnostic with a Pantheist bent seems to be the most logical, reasonable option.

The truth is no one knows (Agnostic). The truth is nature and the universe are enough to, to quote Einstein, "fill the thinking person with a feeling of humility." (Pantheism).

 

[cienaños]

I also think it's a little silly to dismiss an entire book as an "epic fail" for not addressing in detail something that was tangential to the stated purposes of the book. It's a little like saying that Origin of Species was an epic fail because it doesn't explain abiogenesis.

Doh.

Yes, the thread title is a bit misleading I admit. To be clear, I am not calling the entire book an "epic fail," it is only the final 30 pages or so that I found to be so.

 

[welshdean]

<snip> "What are you gonna replace it with?" <snip>

I never, ever reply to a thread without reading every response, but I couldn't get past this.

Why does religion need replacing, there's a new one along every ten minutes, they can't all be right! How about looking after your friends, family, neighbours, disadvantaged, far away, fellow human beings. I don't need religion of any flavour to do that.

As an aside, my eldest, 8yr old Elizabeth asked me the other day; "Dad, my teacher said that kids in Africa haven't got any books to read, can we send them some of my old ones?" It turns out that my local library has a 'drive' to provide (I hate this phrase) third world countries with second hand books. We picked out about 20kgs of books that were too young for her, my second eldest girl didn't like or want and they were too 'girly' for my little boy.
The librarian shall take delivery Friday.

There is no religion in my house, that particular nonsense has been usurped with a certain degree of altruism, not forced on my kids, simply a case of 'monkey see, monkey do"!

 

[Marduk]

"What are you gonna replace it with?" In this, Mr Dawkins fails, pathetically.

No he made it very clear

Pantheism is sexed-up atheism

I am unsure of which connotation to take on his opinion here its either
Sex sells, or atheists just arent sexy

 

[pgwenthold]

So if he was on trial today he wouldn't be culpable for 6 million jews then

roll your eyes all you want, but it's stupid since I never said he didn't have any responsibility. It's just that pretty much every one of those millions of people who were slaughtered in WWII were killed by christians. Whether Hitler was or was not does not change that.

 

[Marduk]

roll your eyes all you want, but it's stupid since I never said he didn't have any responsibility. It's just that pretty much every one of those millions of people who were slaughtered in WWII were killed by christians. Whether Hitler was or was not does not change that.

I didn't bring Hitler into this thread, why don't you decide on your own how relevant he is to religion. I was making a completely different point to what you got into and I didn't use Hitler to make it
(added for extra emphasis)

 

[bozman]

So what would it mean if Hitler was an actual atheist? I don't know why anyone would think he was, other than "well he was really bad so he didn't have god!" BS. He referred to himself as a Christian all the time.

 

[Orphia Nay]

Religion is like a virulent, violent, unpleasant, retarding and destructive disease within human society.

Why would anyone want to replace a disease with anything?


"I'm glad my measles have gone. I must pop out and catch chicken pox".






.

It's called The God Delusion - once you've got rid of a delusion, you don't have to go out and buy the complete works of David Icke.

 

[pgwenthold]

I didn't bring Hitler into this thread, why don't you decide on your own how relevant he is
(added for extra emphasis)

again, you are completely making up strawmen. Whether Hitler was an atheist or not does not matter in terms of whether we should blame atheism for the atrocities of WWII. Even if he was, it took massive cooperation of millions of christians in the Nazi army in order for it to happen so don't put all the blame on him and his supposed atheism.

 

[154]

There is no delusion in Jesus Christ.

No excuses.

You decide.

 

[bozman]

Someone always has to bring up Hitler.