Atheists create thousands of Christian martyrs during French Revolution

To further their incidental personal ambitions, it has nothing to do with Atheism per-se. It's like how the fact that Christians kill/commit genocide is proof that they have a concept of Christianity that you disagree with. To paste that rep onto your beliefs which are different to his is inaccurate, same here.

I do not buy the fine tuning argument.

They're still Christians. What I'm trying to say is that these things are just labels, and just how Christian A won't agree with Christian B, Atheist A won't agree with Atheist B. The common factor among all Atheists is that they have no belief in God. To give my non-belief the blame for Stalin's ideologically based forced spreading of Atheism is wrong. We don't hold the same view on the topic. It's just a fallacy from association.

I'm on the far right.

If you'd like I'll give you a list of prominent/amazing Atheists, but this would prove nothing. There have been many horrible Christians just as there have been many horrible Atheists. I don't give you the blame for their beliefs that you do not also hold, please show me the same.

 

According to the book of Revelation the people who were killed have a sure shot of getting into heaven. They lucked out when they were killed for their religious beliefs.

 

All Rassias did was a collection of historical facts , you don't need a scholar to collect information.
Hellenistic religion is more of a philosophy rather than a religion and it was created by people who were not desert nomads

 

How can you be sure they were motivated by personal ambition rather than devotion to atheism? In many cases genocidal athiests have been deeply committed to atheism, they have killed to further the cause of atheism, they have acted as part of atheist organizations/movements, they have sacrificed for atheism, they have proclaimed their atheism.

Have the most prominent atheists been rather awful? Yes or no? On a per capita basis are atheists the worst murderers in human history? Yes or no? Has the atheist movement given mankind nothing but mass murder and emptiness?

Perhaps it's the atheism itself, rather than the peculiarities of Marxist-Leninist doctrine, that is the main problem.

Or you can't.

 

Any idiot can collect information. Examining the information and being able to sift through the bs is another matter. Constantine did not make Christianity the official religion of the empire.

 

Atheists tortured and murdered 100s of 1000s in Ethiopia.

Recording Ethiopia's Red Terror

Red Terror (Ethiopia)

 

Citation needed.

- - - Updated - - -

Citation needed.

 

Question: How can you be devoted to a position of not believing in a God?

 

League of Militant Atheists

Chinese Police Proudly Record Their Torture of Christians

New Reports Tell of Executions, Torture of Christians in North Korea
New reports from former North Korean eye-witnesses indicate that the totalitarian government tortures, executes Christians and people related to the faith.

50,000 Christians tortured and abused in North Korean prisons

North Korean Christians Unlikely To Fare Better Under New Leader

 

"Guided by Bolshevik principles"...
"Struggle against religion is a struggle for socialism"...

Atheism is part of their philosophy but not the reason for everything they did.

Where in that does it show that atheism is the cause? In fact, it talks about how Christianity is regulated by the TPSM. A system that tolerates religion - as long as they are in control of it.

Words like 'atheism', 'non-religious' etc aren't even in that page. Something that IS on that page... "Once you read the Bible, you stop believing in Kim Il Sung"

Seems their cause is Kim Il Sung, not atheism. Nice try, though.

This article also doesn't even mention atheism. It does talk about "“Juche”, the official ideology of the state", though. I wonder which of those two is the 'cause' of these terrible things?

Here's a hint: just because a person or group persecutes a religious person, you don't get to decide that they did it because they're atheists.

 

Isn't it obvious? Atheists can be devoted to spreading or imposing their ideology. And why are atheists so devoted to atheism? Atheists may hate Christianity because they don't want to feel guilty about being so selfish and cruel and unforgiving.

And atheism can also be defined as the "the doctrine that there is no deity."

 

Based on what justification?

Sure, it could, but the vast majority of atheists don't hold such an absolute position.

 

Examining what? hello this is not France ... there are records for everything that happen in the last 3000 years and in native language .
You know your hate cult has written most of their texts in Greek that everyone understands .

L O L

 

Because Atheism demands no such thing.

How can you be sure Emperor Karl wasn't motivated by his Christianity when he killed many thousands of Saxons for not converting? Of course the same applies - you do not hold the same view of Christianity, just as I do not hold the same view of Atheism.

I find myself having to repeat this over and over. How is it so hard to grasp?

Have most of the prominent Atheists been rather awful? No.

Obviously we have no actual statistics going back this far, but Mongolia killed 7.5-17.5% of the world's population (30-60m) in the Mongol Conquests. The Chinese Ming Dynasty killed 7% of the world's population (30m). The Al Lushan Rebellion killed 5-15% (13-36m). The Qing Dynasty killed 5% (25m). Only now do we arrive at World War II, which killed 1.7-3.1% of the world's population (40-72m) and was by no means solely an effort of Stalin. In fact, the Soviets took most of the casualties.

Now we come to the great purge, which killed 8-61 million people for crimes against the state that very rarely had anything to do with religion. The great leap forward and associated famine had literally nothing to do with Atheism and was the direct result of Communist reallocation of the food supply to the cities.

The vast, vast majority of human genocides have nothing at all to do with Atheism. A very slim minority were perpetrated by Atheist leaders who wanted themselves to be God within their country (ie: North Korea, USSR). In any case, their beliefs are irrelevant. As an Atheist I do not agree with them in their genocidal tendencies, and it has nothing to do with my lack of religious beliefs.

Does your lack of belief in Ganesha make you kill people? Does a Hindu man's lack of belief in Jesus make him kill people? So why does my lack of belief in either make me kill people?

Atheism doesn't do anything. By definition it abstains from doing things, because it is the absence of belief in a claim. Nobody does things because they don't hold a belief - it takes a positive belief structure to inspire people to action.

The things these people did had nothing to do with their Atheism, but with unrelated scientific ambitions.

Explain to me with an actual argument and not irrelevant guilt by association fallacies how my absence of belief in Gods makes me kill people. Go ahead.

http://brainz.org/50-most-brilliant-atheists-all-time/

Stop being an idiot.

 

The internet. I'm talking about the internet. Don't believe everything you read on the internet.

Yeah, I know. History is a hilarious thing isn't it? No, in all seriousness Emperor Theodosius, not Constantine made it the official religion. Constantine only made it legal.

Don't believe everything you read on the internet.

 

I disagree. Why the uniquely massive human rights violation by atheists? Atheism/materialism is dangerous because it diminishes man.

Here's a quote about John Locke: Locke contemplates the consequences for mankind if there were no God and no divine law. The result would be moral anarchy. Every individual “could have no law but his own will, no end but himself. He would be a god to himself, and the satisfaction of his own will the sole measure and end of all his actions”.

LINK

Because Jesus called for forgiveness, kindness, human dignity.

I hope we can at least agree that many atheist leaders and sects have motivated atheists to torture and kill.

I understand what you are saying. I just disagree.

Marx? Nietzsche? Lenin? Stalin? Mussolini? Sartre? Hitchens? Harris? Rand? Who are you prepared to defend?

Good point.

Don't skip over the 94 million killed by atheist Communists.

This is dishonest. The atheist Communist leadership punished the (often religious) common people because they resisted atheist tyranny. Atheism was of central importance to Communism.

The vast vast majority of people have not been atheists.

This is the best that atheists can come up with!? First, some on the list are not atheists. Let's examine the names - a few plutocrats, some celebrities, and these:

Freud – Man was diminished in the pseudo-scientific ravings of this pervert.
Strauss - supported the Nazis
Nehru - That bastard deserves a lot of the blame for the Indo-Pakistan conflict.
Rand - happy when her selfish supermen mistreated the poor
Watson - racist
N. Chomsky – apologist for genocidal Communist dictators
Zuckerberg - weasel






Anyway thanks for illustrating my point.

 

Then you have simply failed to grasp the difference between causation and (alleged) correlation. There is no reasoning with a person who cannot see that difference.

 

I've been busy, so sorry for the delay.

Those living in glass houses shouldn't throw stones and all that.

However, let's look upon what Bartolome de las Casas, a Christian priest who participated in the colonization of the world in the first half of the 16th century had to say on the matter.

http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/bdorsey1/41docs/02-las.html

Those who survived were enslaved, murdered, displaced, and otherwise brutally treated by all of the Christian colonizers.

HA HA HA HA HA HA! The slave traders originally justified their enslavement of Africans as legitimate because they were either animist or Muslim, and therefore okay to enslave. Then, when they started to convert to Christianity in the Americas, they justified racial slavery based on the "Curse of Ham".

Tu quoque arguments are irrelevant.

And no true Communist would engage in mass murder. There, glad we cleared that up.

Yes, the monarchs of Europe were soooo anti-Christian that the Hapsburg monarchs of Austria-Hungary were devout Catholics, George V was the head of the Church of England, Nicholas II was a devout Orthodox Christian, and nearly every other head of state was heavily involved with some form of Christianity, outside of the Ottoman Sultans, who were Muslim.

As for Clemenceau's own faith or lack thereof: it's irrelevant, as his nation was attacked by Germany.

That would be why both sides were trying desperately to prepare to invade the other for the entire duration of the Pact,eh?

Perhaps you should read what Lenin himself said?

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/dec/03.htm

Lenin then goes on to say, in short, that while the vanguard Socialist party of which he is a part is officially atheist due to the adherence to materialist philosophy they have, that does not mean the party should be closed off to those with religion.

And only a pro-Colonialist stooge would be desperate to defend colonialist governments.

However, Indonesia invaded East Timor for two reasons: revanchist beliefs that East Timor was part of the greater Indonesian cultural group and thus should be included in Indonesia and a fear that the leftist post-colonial party that was popular in East Timor was going to go full-Communist and Suharto was a fascist and thus terrified of anyone who thought Marx had a few good ideas. Needless to say, had the Dutch and Portuguese never colonized the Indonesian archipelago, we'd probably never have seen such violence in East Timor.

Actually, around 65% of Israeli Jews believe in a deity of some sort, which is still the vast majority.

Plus, I bet that has absolutely nothing to do with Christian persecution of Jews for the past 1400+ years or anything. I don't particularly care for what the Israeli state does, but I understand its trepidation at having a non-Jewish state housing the majority of the Jewish population on earth, given the pogroms, murders, expulsions, and general hostility towards Jews in Christian states since at least the reign of Justinian.

I guess that's why China is disappearing so fast. :V

More seriously, if you look at actual demographic data, there are only about 20 nations on earth with population rates in decline, and it's a very mixed bag, including such nations as Russia, Croatia, Jordan, South Africa, and so forth and the only nations disproportionately represented are Eastern European nations, though, the reason for declining birth rates in those nations may be due more to poor economic conditions and ease of access to birth control rather than anything else (and I can't blame them; if they don't want to try to have children when they can't afford to care for them, then that's their prerogative). Otherwise, there are numerous atheist nations with positive growth, such as Vietnam, Canada, China, Denmark, and so forth. It may not be explosive growth, but that's irrelevant, as most data supports that people with higher qualities of life have fewer children and those nations with the largest growth rates tend to be impoverished and rather undeveloped.

 

Our country has been in the hands of the atheists for a couple hundred years now. What, you thought America was Christian because most of our representatives claim to be Christian? Would carry more weight if the politicians up on the Hill actually acted like they were Christian. If this is a Christian Nation explain how abortion is legal. Secularism rules America, yet Nuns or Priests are not being hunted down and killed.

 

Oh, the religious, almost exclusively Christian and Deist, French Revolutionaries were slaughtering the heads of the Churches and aristocracy and you somehow managed to blame atheists?

Buahahahahahaha. Perhaps you should've read more than a few words in the (apparently) first history book you've ever opened and done some research before you attempted to declare that the 'lack of belief in deities' can EVER be held accountable for an ideology it never, and cannot by definition, possess.

Try again?

 

Although much of what Las Casas had to say was true, he did exaggerate a lot to get the attention of his people back home so they would fix things in the colonies. With that being said, it cannot be taken as an accurate account.

 

Except that it's corroborated by Native accounts of colonial cruelty throughout the Americas.

 

Your sidestep from the statistics I provided showing that vastly more genocides have been committed (which much higher casualties) have been committed under religious rule will be excused for the moment, mostly because I think this is entirely irrelevant.

Evidence that Atheists kill people too! is fun, but it doesn't provide any evidence that a lack of belief in God demands these actions. It does nothing of the sort. Point out to me where in my rejection of your religion I am supposed to get all this additional fluff about communism and genocide.

Communism and genocide are positive actions and hence require positive reasoning. Nobody kills others without some sort of reasoning behind it - be it self serving or political in nature. Show me how these additional claims logically follow from no claims at all.

I have no interest in additional claims - all I am concerned with is the lack of belief in your God - as this is the common denominator to all Atheism, and I do not agree with positive Atheism anyway. You're attacking something else that I do not agree with and have never expressed sympathy for.

In short, please attack my actual position: that the evidence is lacking for the existence of God. Show me that this sentence demands killings and genocide and I'll agree with you 100%. The rest is just appeals to consequences and strawman arguments.

Locke is an advocate of natural law. He sees no other source of ethics but through God. I do not share this position.

As far as I can see you haven't even attempted to make an argument except one from authority. I like Locke, but I do not blindly agree with him when I feel the evidence leads in the opposite direction.

THANKYOU!

So you see, I am an Atheist, you are a Christian. These are labels used to denote certain positions on claims. Naturally, there is a lot of variation within the Christian faith and you do not agree with everyone. There are Mormons and Catholics and Protestants and Baptists and Westboro Baptists These people all accept that Jesus was the messiah, but they vary considerably on other things.

Jesus being the messiah is the common denominator for all Christian faiths, just like how a rejection of the claim for the existence of God is the common denominator for all Atheist positions.

Stalin was to my position as Karl was to yours. We may agree on the core, but all the other stuff he did was unrelated to that core. If you feel differently then go ahead and logically link a lack of belief in God with communism and genocide and the such - just like how you and Karl both agree that Jesus was the messiah, but you disagree on most other stuff.

You disagree with this other stuff and hence it would be dishonest of me to attack Karl's separate views on Christianity and paste this onto the core. The same can be said for you attacking Stalin's separate views on Communism/genocide and pasting them into the core of Atheism.

It's called a strawman. Please attack my position and not Stalin's.

Define "many". Many people of all political+religious persuasions have been convinced to kill/torture. Once again, please address my position, not their additional beliefs surrounding drinking the kool aid and killing people. I am not a Nihilist.

That's fair enough

Why must I defend them?

I do not agree with Marx's political beliefs, I do not agree with Nietzsche's philosophy, I do not agree with Lenin's nor Stalin's Communism. Sartre I've found to have some quite interesting views, but I do not share them (the same feelings I have toward Socrates). Hitchens I always found to be too antagonistic, but I don't see anything "wrong" with him per se. Harris seems like a nice guy, but I'm sure there's stuff we disagree on.

Rand is more complex due to my libertarian political views. I always found her to be a bit of a reactionary who had too much anger built up over the USSR and her subsequent move to the USA. I find her too motivated by personal issues and too indifferent to the inner workings of her theory. I do not agree with her on selfishness or altruism. As I understand it actively believed there was no God, so I don't agree with her on that either.

My guess is you wanted me to pick a couple that I liked, then you'd go and find some actions/beliefs completely irrelevant to my specific position on religion and attack them instead of my position itself.

Sorry? Where did you get this figure from? In World War II ~60 million died, 24 million of them from the USSR.

Perhaps you meant some sort of cumulative total, I'd very much like to see how you arrived at it.

BUT YOU'RE YET TO SHOW THAT COMMUNISM IS OF CENTRAL IMPORTANCE TO ATHEISM! Urgh, I'm so sick of repeating myself that I think I'm going to have to miss work

Alright, it's clear this conversation has nothing to offer either of us. I have made my argument and you have made yours. We're at a dead end where we simply disagree and repeating our disagreements back at each other isn't changing anything.

On a side note, I don't believe in God. I don't believe in genocide or murder. I am a complete pacifist in every sense except self defense. I believe in non-coercive interactions between all individuals. Does this, by your estimation, make me not an Atheist? If not then fine, call me what you like. It is not my position that we or anyone should murder or commit genocide. It is my position that the existence of God has not been demonstrated to a sufficient extent to justify belief.

All else is either a strawman or semantics.

 

You are all overlooking the greatest factor in this.

Virtually ALL genocides are committed by people over the age of 15. Well over 500 million people have been slain by adults throughout history. Every single one of the most prominent villains of history has been 15+!!! On a per-capita basis, vastly more murders are committed by adults than under 15's.

Clearly, something about being an adult REQUIRES you to become a genocidal murdering maniac.

 

Las Casas' brave criticism is a great example of how Christianity benefits society. Las Casas criticized those behaving in an un-Christian manner. Christianity offers a firmly established, broadly accepted ethical code upon which criticism can be based.

And let's not demonize the Spaniards. The Black Legend (La leyenda negra in Spanish) is mostly just anti-Hispanic bigotry.

An extraordinarily weak argument that ignores Jesus' fundamental teachings. Pseudo-scientific racism from materialists/atheists served imperialism.

Here's where your argument falls apart. Marx was a lying, intolerant hairball who craved violent revolution. Lenin was a mass-murdering dictator. A true Marxist-Leninist should eagerly oppress and kill.

Since the time of the "Enlightenment", many crowned heads hated Christianity and persecuted Christians. Read up on Voltaire's fawning over brutal monarchs.

Foolish to blame Germany alone for the war. France threatened Germany, France's ally Russia had mobilized its army.

Atheist Clemenceau was also one of the principle architects of the vindictive Versailles treaty which helped lead to WW II.

LOL Pretty words.

Now let's look at the real Lenin: Lenin Paints Himself Black With His Own Words

Many Zionist leaders have been atheists. Obviously no Christians in the Israeli leadership.

Nor should you.

Jewish people have not always been victims.

Just one example: Stalin's Jews
We mustn't forget that some of greatest murderers of modern times were Jewish

Denmark has a very low birth rate (#204 out of 236) as does Canada (#191). Canada's would be even lower if not for (often religious) immigrants from Latin America.

China's birthrate is low too. (#176) Thanks to the CCP's one baby policy millions of baby girls have been aborted for the "crime" of being a girl..