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And on a related note: the most violent and death-dealing ideology in the history of the human race is atheistic communism. For the advancement of its "revolut

And on a related note: the most violent and death-dealing ideology in the history of the human race is atheistic communism. For the advancement of its "revolution/s" the cost was untold tens of millions of lives throughout the 20th Century, more than all the wars of religion ever fought, all piled together, with even the most liberal estimates. Just saying ... man seems to do rather poorly on his own when he departs from the love of God, and the love of his neighbor in view of God's love.

gdl 16y ago
The world has been much, much more populated now than in the past, and we have much bigger weapons. There have been very many religiously motivated wars through the ages. Do you think that, had those wars taken place in a world with similar population and weapons technology as today, they would have been any less destructive than our own? Or is your argument that everyone, including those who love God, try to kill people, and that the atheists are simply better at it due to technology?
- brainproxy 16y ago
  I'm saying a motivated atheist communist has (in his own mind at least) no God before whom he'll stand in judgment for his blunders, failures, excesses, crimes and stupidity.
  - gdl 16y ago
    Okay, so then your argument is that atheists don't believe in God. I completely agree with you.
johnfn 16y ago
It seems like you just strung the word atheist along with the word communism in order to make it seem worse by association. Really, atheism and communism are not inextricably tied: http://atheism.about.com/od/atheismmyths/a/Communism.htm http://atheism.about.com/od/atheismmyths/a/Communism.htm Blaming atheists for causing communism is sort of like blaming heterosexuals for causing the Holocaust. Further, it is very difficult to find violence committed in the name of atheism (it seems to be almost a contradiction in terms). Violence committed in the name of God, on the other hand, has been cited in Internet Arguments so often that now it's almost a cliche.
- brainproxy 16y ago
  Communism is one of atheism's terrible and natural fruits, and many of the communist revolutionaries held as a first-rank goal the suppression, if not elimination of, religions and religious institutions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Book_of_Communism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Book_of_Communism ^^ Go atheism, huzzah! Seriously, let's learn the lessons from "God blocking", not repeat them.
anigbrowl 16y ago
This kind of one-upping (or one-downing, if you prefer) is part of the problem with ideology: deflecting criticism with a tu quoque argument to 'something even worse' means never having to confront one's own failings. The first step away from fanatical authoritarianism (regardless of which ideology it is clothed in) is to reject such zero-sum fallacies. Incidentally, I also think this argument is flawed on the merits. Apart from the lack of meaningful criteria for establishing which Bad Things can be ascribed to religious or atheistic fanatics, it also sidesteps the legitimate question of what Good Things can be ascribed to religious or humanist progress through time - a general problem in politics of course, because people treating each other decently doesn't make headlines.

gdl 16y ago

The world has been much, much more populated now than in the past, and we have much bigger weapons. There have been very many religiously motivated wars through the ages. Do you think that, had those wars taken place in a world with similar population and weapons technology as today, they would have been any less destructive than our own? Or is your argument that everyone, including those who love God, try to kill people, and that the atheists are simply better at it due to technology?

brainproxy 16y ago
I'm saying a motivated atheist communist has (in his own mind at least) no God before whom he'll stand in judgment for his blunders, failures, excesses, crimes and stupidity.
- gdl 16y ago
  Okay, so then your argument is that atheists don't believe in God. I completely agree with you.

johnfn 16y ago

It seems like you just strung the word atheist along with the word communism in order to make it seem worse by association. Really, atheism and communism are not inextricably tied: http://atheism.about.com/od/atheismmyths/a/Communism.htm http://atheism.about.com/od/atheismmyths/a/Communism.htm Blaming atheists for causing communism is sort of like blaming heterosexuals for causing the Holocaust. Further, it is very difficult to find violence committed in the name of atheism (it seems to be almost a contradiction in terms). Violence committed in the name of God, on the other hand, has been cited in Internet Arguments so often that now it's almost a cliche.

brainproxy 16y ago
Communism is one of atheism's terrible and natural fruits, and many of the communist revolutionaries held as a first-rank goal the suppression, if not elimination of, religions and religious institutions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Book_of_Communism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Book_of_Communism ^^ Go atheism, huzzah! Seriously, let's learn the lessons from "God blocking", not repeat them.

anigbrowl 16y ago

This kind of one-upping (or one-downing, if you prefer) is part of the problem with ideology: deflecting criticism with a tu quoque argument to 'something even worse' means never having to confront one's own failings. The first step away from fanatical authoritarianism (regardless of which ideology it is clothed in) is to reject such zero-sum fallacies. Incidentally, I also think this argument is flawed on the merits. Apart from the lack of meaningful criteria for establishing which Bad Things can be ascribed to religious or atheistic fanatics, it also sidesteps the legitimate question of what Good Things can be ascribed to religious or humanist progress through time - a general problem in politics of course, because people treating each other decently doesn't make headlines.