5 ms·

1) Please cite your statistical evidence. 2) Non-christian does not mean non-religious. Indigenous communities the world over have their own religions.

reitanqild 10y ago
> 1) Please cite your statistical evidence. Mao, Stalin, Lenin, Pol Pot; all of them worse than everything even the Catholic church ever did.
- leemailll 10y ago
  At least the four of them didn't invade a land and massacre locals.
  - panzagl 10y ago
    Yeah, Stalin was a sweetheart to the neighbors.
    - douche 10y ago
      Stalin tried awful hard - unfortunately the Finns ended up being tenacious enough to forestall the Red invasion. The Poles and Hungarians were not so lucky...
      - ktRolster 10y ago
        Ukrainians
  - true_religion 10y ago
    I think its fairly interesting that historically the Catholic Church was intertwined with the political system of various European countries. Yet someone when this comes up, those countries are absolved of all guilt despite the fact it was their armies that were doing the deed, and their citizens who would largely receive the benefits. Is this because the countries have changed their names? Or perhaps because the system of government has changed from monarchy to something else, thus people think having a new dynasty or new governmental type has broken ties with the old regime?
- enraged_camel 10y ago
  Counterpoint 1: Christian Crusades. There were seven major ones and a bunch of minor ones. All of them resulted in untold amounts of death and misery, all in the name of religion. Counterpoint 2: On the side of Islam, there were an equal amount of major wars conducted in the name of religion, both against polytheists but also other monotheists. The Ottoman Empire by itself conquered large parts of three continents in the name of Islam and subjugated tens of millions of people. Mao, Stalin, Lenin and Pol Pot may have killed a greater number of people at the aggregate, but that's only because the world's population was a lot larger by that point and there were more people to kill. That doesn't mean that religion is somehow a pacifying factor against violence.
  - EGreg 10y ago
    Subjugating people is bad. Outright genocide of massive proportions is even worse. The common factor here is empires, not religion. The Roman Empire for instance brutally killed many people. The Byzantines killed eg nearly all the Samaritans. The Spanish conquistadors brutally killed and destroyed entire civilizations eg Cortez and the Aztecs (who by the way were an empire themselves). The British and French were slightly less destructive than the Spanish but wound up taking the entire North American continent from the natives, whom they either killed by the sword or disease. Same with the aboriginals in Australia and Maori in New Zealand. True, religion can play a big part. The Ottomans massacred the Greeks and Armenians, together with some Kurdish help. The Crusaders massacred everyone including Christians and Jews. With Mao, Lenin, Pol Pot etc. you had a Communist revolution that was basically a mind virus which didn't care about the human population nearly as much as its own propagation. Most people died from the collectivization of farms, however many others died from political repression. So no, it's not just Islam or religions. It's ideologies and empires. Look today at how ATHEIST China's government persecutes Falun Gong and carries out extrajudicial killins and torture. That's not in Stalin's time, that was a couple years ago. Are you saying atheist governments can't have a terrible human rights record?
    - vacri 10y ago
      The Maori in New Zealand fought the English to a standstill, and forced them into a treaty which still stands today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Waitangi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Waitangi
- didibus 10y ago
  That's a pretty small sample of examples, and they all pretty much could be considered to relate to the same set of beliefs, communism. So maybe communist ideologies have been used for as bad crimes as religion. But that doesn't prove for all lack of religion. In fact there's another example that proves a great many good to the lack of religion, that of democratic ideologies. Now if I hypothesize, it seems I see a pattern, any time power is given absolutly to a fixed, non changing group of leaders, whose only mean of overthrowing is through force, it seems to cause atrocious violence. Such as when religion governs, or single ideologies such as communism or fascism governs, or when a single person in the form of a dictator does. Hence why democracy does slightly better. On that note, ideologies that have as a goal to reign absolutly and supremely, which almost all religion have, and some other non religious ones, like communism and fascism have, then you can probably predict a long term negative impact of society, overshadowing all short terms benefits the ideologies might at first demonstrate. It's also possible to attribute the harshness of communism to having to overthrow another entrenched great power, that of religion. So it should be considered, would a democratic state transition without atrocities to a communist one? Probably. Similarly, a democratic one would probably transition without atrocities to a religious one also. And this all goes back to having a way to transition that is alternate then simply through force. Any transition from a religious state, or a absolute ideology state, like communism, will require atrocious acts, because such state have no other means of self-adapting or correcting themselves. They're not agile in any way.

reitanqild 10y ago

> 1) Please cite your statistical evidence. Mao, Stalin, Lenin, Pol Pot; all of them worse than everything even the Catholic church ever did.

leemailll 10y ago
At least the four of them didn't invade a land and massacre locals.
- panzagl 10y ago
  Yeah, Stalin was a sweetheart to the neighbors.
  - douche 10y ago
    Stalin tried awful hard - unfortunately the Finns ended up being tenacious enough to forestall the Red invasion. The Poles and Hungarians were not so lucky...
    - ktRolster 10y ago
      Ukrainians
- true_religion 10y ago
  I think its fairly interesting that historically the Catholic Church was intertwined with the political system of various European countries. Yet someone when this comes up, those countries are absolved of all guilt despite the fact it was their armies that were doing the deed, and their citizens who would largely receive the benefits. Is this because the countries have changed their names? Or perhaps because the system of government has changed from monarchy to something else, thus people think having a new dynasty or new governmental type has broken ties with the old regime?
enraged_camel 10y ago
Counterpoint 1: Christian Crusades. There were seven major ones and a bunch of minor ones. All of them resulted in untold amounts of death and misery, all in the name of religion. Counterpoint 2: On the side of Islam, there were an equal amount of major wars conducted in the name of religion, both against polytheists but also other monotheists. The Ottoman Empire by itself conquered large parts of three continents in the name of Islam and subjugated tens of millions of people. Mao, Stalin, Lenin and Pol Pot may have killed a greater number of people at the aggregate, but that's only because the world's population was a lot larger by that point and there were more people to kill. That doesn't mean that religion is somehow a pacifying factor against violence.
- EGreg 10y ago
  Subjugating people is bad. Outright genocide of massive proportions is even worse. The common factor here is empires, not religion. The Roman Empire for instance brutally killed many people. The Byzantines killed eg nearly all the Samaritans. The Spanish conquistadors brutally killed and destroyed entire civilizations eg Cortez and the Aztecs (who by the way were an empire themselves). The British and French were slightly less destructive than the Spanish but wound up taking the entire North American continent from the natives, whom they either killed by the sword or disease. Same with the aboriginals in Australia and Maori in New Zealand. True, religion can play a big part. The Ottomans massacred the Greeks and Armenians, together with some Kurdish help. The Crusaders massacred everyone including Christians and Jews. With Mao, Lenin, Pol Pot etc. you had a Communist revolution that was basically a mind virus which didn't care about the human population nearly as much as its own propagation. Most people died from the collectivization of farms, however many others died from political repression. So no, it's not just Islam or religions. It's ideologies and empires. Look today at how ATHEIST China's government persecutes Falun Gong and carries out extrajudicial killins and torture. That's not in Stalin's time, that was a couple years ago. Are you saying atheist governments can't have a terrible human rights record?
  - vacri 10y ago
    The Maori in New Zealand fought the English to a standstill, and forced them into a treaty which still stands today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Waitangi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Waitangi
didibus 10y ago
That's a pretty small sample of examples, and they all pretty much could be considered to relate to the same set of beliefs, communism. So maybe communist ideologies have been used for as bad crimes as religion. But that doesn't prove for all lack of religion. In fact there's another example that proves a great many good to the lack of religion, that of democratic ideologies. Now if I hypothesize, it seems I see a pattern, any time power is given absolutly to a fixed, non changing group of leaders, whose only mean of overthrowing is through force, it seems to cause atrocious violence. Such as when religion governs, or single ideologies such as communism or fascism governs, or when a single person in the form of a dictator does. Hence why democracy does slightly better. On that note, ideologies that have as a goal to reign absolutly and supremely, which almost all religion have, and some other non religious ones, like communism and fascism have, then you can probably predict a long term negative impact of society, overshadowing all short terms benefits the ideologies might at first demonstrate. It's also possible to attribute the harshness of communism to having to overthrow another entrenched great power, that of religion. So it should be considered, would a democratic state transition without atrocities to a communist one? Probably. Similarly, a democratic one would probably transition without atrocities to a religious one also. And this all goes back to having a way to transition that is alternate then simply through force. Any transition from a religious state, or a absolute ideology state, like communism, will require atrocious acts, because such state have no other means of self-adapting or correcting themselves. They're not agile in any way.