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> Christianity even today is used to excuse persecution and oppress. I guess that is totally fair as long as we also keep in mind that most of the biggest crim

• soosjak_kajooks 10y ago
  Except, of course, the genocide of Native Americans - which was done by self proclaimed Christians.
  • reitanqild 10y ago
    Doesn't refute my point that the fact that Christians as well as "Christians" oppressed the Indians were mostly coincidental; had Europeans been atheists the results would have likely been very much worse for the natives.
    • mikeash 10y ago
      I would love to know why you think atheists would have been worse.
      • reitanqild 10y ago
        Because of evidence from atheist leaders from the French reign of terror through all communist madmen until today. No religion, not even if you count Hitler religios (dubious claim in the first place I'd say) comes close to Mao and Stalin.
        • mikeash 10y ago
          I'd say the Taiping Rebellion was just as bad. When you consider that they didn't have access to the sort of industrialized death that people on your list did, I'd say it was much worse.
          • reitanqild 10y ago
            TIL. Upvoted. Still hard to beat 20th century communist atheists in efficiently killing off their own populations or French revolutionaries in being creatively evil.
            • mikeash 10y ago
              I would say that nothing beats the genocide of the Americas for sheer scope, numbers, duration, and cultural loss. All of your examples ended in a decade or two, that lasted centuries.
              • hourislate 10y ago
                My intent is not to diminish the genocide of the Americas but.... I don't think you realize how many people Stalin, Mao, Hitler have killed. We all know Hitler had to resort to incineration to get rid of the bodies. Stalin filled mines with the remains of Ukrainians and others. They couldn't dig holes big enough to bury the dead. I have no idea what Mao did with the 50-80 million bodies he had on his hands. Between just these 3 guys your looking at well over 100 million people and that is not including war dead. Just people being exterminated for various reasons. So to say that nothing beats the genocide of the Americas is not accurate.
                • 0134340 10y ago
                  The Nazi movement had Christian influence. Whether it influenced the movement in a malicious way is arguable but Nazism wasn't an entirely secular movement. Hitler used the term in Article 24 of the 1920 Nazi Party Platform, stating: "the Party represents the standpoint of Positive Christianity". - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_Christianity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_Christianity And to be intellectually honest, none of those you stated committed atrocities in the doctrine of atheism because it has none. Don't throw atheism under the bus when someone criticizes your religion because atheism is the lack of belief in gods, nothing more.
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      • deleted 10y ago
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      • panzagl 10y ago
        Catholics (and especially Jesuits) were given the task of baptizing natives and turning them into Christians. The church often came into conflict with the ruling class over their treatment. Other Christian churches often had the same obligations.
        • mikeash 10y ago
          I'm not sure what that has to do with it. Everybody was religious, of course there were religious people on both sides of the "should we murder everybody in sight?" question.
      • einhverfr 10y ago
        Atheists would have been worse because it is not a problem of religion per se. Western Christianity always held out hope that the church could oppose the state (and sometimes did). There is no real room for any competition to the state in a fully atheistic society. That's why Mao and Stalin were so bad. It wasn't because of atheist doctrines (outside of atheistic political doctrines), but there was too much power concentrated in too few hands.
        • mikeash 10y ago
          I don't see how that has anything to do with religion. Having multiple opposing powers is happens without religion, and having a single powerful authority happens with religion.
          • einhverfr 10y ago
            Religion is a social pattern and it connects to other social patterns too. Also I think it is important to scope that "atheism" is usually a shorthand for "Western, Secular Humanistic Atheism" which is philosophically an off-shoot of Protestantism in general and Calvinism in particular. You get a different set of results when you look at Buddhist Atheists or Hindu Atheists for example (because in neither of these traditions is religion dependent on belief like it is in Christianity). Hope that helps.
    • i386 10y ago
      The burden of proof for your statement lacks about 2000 years of history
    • fennecfoxen 10y ago
      >had Europeans been atheists Silly counterfactual. A more interesting one would be if Europe had remained firmly Pagan instead of substantially Christianizing in the first millennium AD. In that case, one could imagine that no great religious alliances would oppose the Ummayad and Ottoman caliphates, nor would Byzantium hold out as long as it did... eventually we might be looking at an Islamic colonization of the New World, as the well-regarded Islamic traditions of science and scholarly inquiry ultimately discovered America. A big question would be whether colonization and conquering would proceed at the same pace without the Spanish efforts, and if not, whether smallpox resistance and the like could have taken root and afforded the native American peoples a better fighting chance. And would the same ethnic groups be represented among the colonists? What slavery practices would we have seen?
    • ittekimasu 10y ago
      That's a good point; British "agnostic" "liberals" (incl. notably Mill), often defended the British task of "civilizing the barbarians" the world over.
• 0134340 10y ago
  Still, none of those were committed in the doctrine of atheism. Atheism has no doctrine yet you can point to many people who kill today and many in the past who point to their holy texts after they've cut people's heads off, drowned "witches" and otherwise stole life and land in the name of their gods.
  • reitanqild 10y ago
    Splitting hairs? A number of atrocities has been made in effort to rid the world of the plague of religion. Call it ateism or what, point is they made a point out of being non-religious and they were extremely cruel and effective. Now, listen up. I'm not here to attack atheists or non-believers. I only do when they start by proclaiming how religion is the root of all evil.
    • posterboy 10y ago
      You are right to partially dismiss this, because the Indians weren't oppressed because of religion. The sense of supremacy responsible, racism and narcissism etc., are rooted way deeper. However, the points you argue weren't stated as absolute as you make them (using exaggeration as literary device?). On the one hand, "holding itself to be the universal ideal of correctness" is a correct characterization of religions. On the other, your view is partial in favor of religion, while religions as well state that atheism or any other religion is the root of all evil.
• formula1 10y ago
  Absolutely. Abuse of a name that anyone can claim will often attract ambitious people with intentions that dont coincide with what was intended. Jesus is particularly interesting because he practiced love and forgiveness yet people still use his name to justify actions. Atheism is perhaps the scariest form of this as it often intends to supplant hope with the desires of the state or a leader. When looking at christianity it fractured from Roman Catholic and took forms in what usually best fit fir their specific regions. But the message remained the same and a church likely can be considered a safe haven despite alternative interpretations. With atheism there is no code of ethics abd as a result there is no way to predict their behaviour except with they are likeky to be elitest and insistant.
• eru 10y ago
  Who are you talking about?
• dang 10y ago
  We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12194834 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12194834 and marked it off-topic.