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And speaking as an athiest, so have been many of those from my side of the arguement. I don't exactly celebrate Mao's ,Stalin's or Ernesto's birthdays, but they in no way represent all athiests do they?

Cheap ass shots like this are just pure and simple bullshit, that do absolutely nothing to advance any form of discussion. But hey if it gives you that nice warm superior feeling, fill yer boots.

   

Have you read anything that's been said so far? I already covered this, several times now. It isn't a "cheap-ass shot", it is reality. Some people who are very religious are also very violent. Just because you and your particular brand of religion do not agree with violence does not exempt others from being religious and violent. If you can't differentiate between yourself and others, I would suggest that you get your head checked by a qualified psychologist before trying to make logical arguments.

   

It is a cheap shot. There's as many non religious people who are violent as well. Those three, as well as Saddam and alot of other tinpot dictators, are perfect examples. Just because you can argue they go against secularism or atheism, doesn't discount the fact that they were atheists that committed violence.

I mean if I made a blanket statement like "Only religious people make good artwork", and back it up showing beautiful Gothic churches, the Sistine Chapel, and other examples, doesn't mean A) Religion made them good artists, or B) that they represent even a significant portion of religious people.

   

A cult of personality is not the same as a religion. A religion, I think, outlasts one person. And I'm not sure that Stalin could be classified as a cult of personality. Wasn't he more or less just a strongman? As for Hitler, I'm sure there are others here that know better than I, but my undertanding was that he wasn't particualrly religious and that he used it occasionally as a tool.

The fact is that people find almost any excuse to kill each other. Religion is just one of many ideologies, often a convenient one. But I really think it's difficult to argue that religion has any special relationship to the use of violence. Admittedly, it figures as a dominant theme throughout history, but the 20th century, which was the advent of atheism, was also the bloodiest century. Communism--avowedly atheist--was a prime contributor.

I would say that people whose ideologies are more extreme are probably more predisposed to violence. Wise pople of all faiths and creeds know that aggressive violence rarely brings about the solution sought.

On a personal level, I can't really say that, of all the folks I've met, that I can draw any conclusions on the predisposition to violence based on religion. A lot of people are religious just because they were brought up that way. Regular shmoes in my opinion.

   

My point is that it takes religious belief to spread violence. Feel free to disagree, but don't tell me that just because you're religious and non-violent that there are no religious and violent people.

Religion does not confine itself to institutions that are thousands of years old and have temples for worship. Religion can be defined by a set of very rigorous and hardset beliefs. Maoists are very religious people, for instance, as they subscribe to the personality cult of Mao Zedong.

   

That is foolish. Violence can spread by hate and jealously, which has no affect on any "religious" force.

   

I didn't make such a statement. I'm saying it takes a religious person to spread systematic violence, not that only religious people can be violent. There are also people who are not religious who are violent, but their violence is far less systematic.

   

Not all violence belongs to the religious. To say so would be stupid. But the stamp of official approval for permitting violence, when granted by the religious leadership or by a sect or cult leader, adds a different level to whatever violence occurs. Society is still unfortunately hardwired to automatically listen to religious leaders, no matter how egregiously dangerous their utterings may be. As such violence in God's name, even committed by sects in the Western world, can be given a free pass that the more routine violence committed by mere criminals or the mentally unbalanced receives condemnation for. I'd consider the state-sanctioning of mega-murder to be of no essential philosophical difference from that of the violence approved by an ayatollah issuing a call to jihad.

I'd say right now that, on university campuses, the mass media, and among the intelligencia of the far left, quasi-religious revolutionary violence done "IN THE NAME OF THE PEOPLE!" has almost always been excused by a manipulative and skillful set of operatives whose end goal has always been the overthrow of the Western democracies. It's one of the genuinely bizarre occurences of the last hundred and fifty-odd years that, for example, the mega-violence committed by fascism/Nazism is universally condemned while the mega-violence committed by socialism/Communism is always accompanied by a cadre of zealous defenders. I've always found this completely baffling considering that the only major difference in the violence was that the Nazis liked filming it, and kept better records of it, while the Communists obviously preferred aiming for record-setting body counts.

   

What he said!

   

Well, we differ in our definition of religions. I'd say the contributing characteristic is the zealotry and extremism of a particualr ideology. You seem to define any extreme ideology as "religion" ("a set of rigorous and hardset beliefs"); I don't agree with that identification.

Interesting, though, that the term "zealot" is based on Simon of Zealotes, who was an apostle.

   

Stalin had a personality cult but his violence seems to mostly have stemmed from the fact that he was certifiably insane, and actually believed people were out to get him, not merely that his ideals entrenched in policy were good enough reason for killing those he considered expendable.

Hitler, too, had a personality cult. He was considered by his followers to be the superman that would lead the Germans to a thousand years of planetary rule. They believed this so strongly that they would do anything to fulfill his dream, no matter how inhumane.

But what is the difference between cult and religion? It seems to me that the difference has always been a very fine, if almost non-existant line.



That is my point. They find a reason, and that reason becomes their religion. They couldn't justify their violence any other way.



I don't think the majors wars of the 20th century were driven by atheism, but rather beliefs of a different kind, and certainly not a lack of belief.

The first world war, once it was underway, was driven by a fanatical belief that each nation was fighting for their freedom, while it was having the exact opposite effect, conscripting more and more lives into a human meat grinder.

The second world war started with the fanatical belief that Jews had financed the first world war and were therefore a problem that the world needed to be rid of, and that Germany should take over the world and rule it for a thousand years.

The expansion of the Russian empire was driven by a fanatical belief that communism, no matter how bastardised, must be spread across the world, and that the Russian nation were the best people to fulfill this destiny.

The destruction of South America by the hands of successive American administrations was driven by a fanatical belief that communist ideals, no matter how good or bad, should never grace the doorstep of the western hemisphere, regardless of how many lives were ruined or destroyed in the process of implementing this policy.



Of course you can be religious and non-violent. I haven't said otherwise. Religion is a tool. It can be used for purposes both good and bad. A hammer can be used to build a house or it can be used to smash your neighbour's head and steal his house.

   

Well that's intersting, but I think the thing to keep in mind is that I'm right and you're wrong. ha ha ha!

   

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