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Permalink Reply by Danny on May 1, 2011 at 8:06pm

I haven't read the full conversation up to this point because of how extensive it is, so sorry if I'm repeating something already said. However I heard someone say once that saying atheism is a religion is like calling bald a hair color.

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Permalink Reply by Tolti on May 1, 2011 at 11:49pm

I don't deny that there are fanatics on both sides.  The problem is that religious (Christian) people take it further and need, want, are commanded, etc to 'preach the gospel', converting the 'unbelievers' as part and parcel of their beliefs/religion.  Atheists have no such agenda.   The religious are focused on 'winning souls to jesus', while atheists having no belief because there is no evidence for a belief in anything supernatural, much less a god, to 'convert' people to.  I think more often, atheists are trying to stimulate critical thinking; religionists, by the dictates of their dogma, must accept the dogma---it is what defines them as christians.  Questioning their religious doctrine/dogma is unacceptable, they must accept it, without question.  This is faith.  Faith is the basis and major tenant of christianity.  I don't think someone could be a faith-less christian; it is the 'accepting that for which there is no evidence', that forms the foundation for the christian religion.

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Permalink Reply by Mo Trauen on May 2, 2011 at 12:27pm

I do deny that there are fanatics on both sides.  Name just one atheist "fanatic".  Cite me one case of someone being killed by an atheist simply because he was religious.  Cite me one case of atheists killing believers by burning them to death.  Name one country where belief in god is punishable by death.  Name one country where this has EVER been true.  (Conversely, nearly every country on Earth either has a law making atheism punishable by death, TODAY, or once did.)

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Permalink Reply by Arcus on May 2, 2011 at 12:49pm

Well, I could dig deeper to find a good source, but I think I can confirm this unsourced statement if you don't want to take it on face value (though I'm pretty sure that at least one time, somewhere in the USSR, somebody got killed because they were religious. It's really just the numbers which are historiologically contentious, not the very claim itself):

"Antireligion was the government's (note: USSR) policy, so many religious leaders, monks, nuns, and priests were executed by the government.^{[citation needed]"}

And sorry for being a smartass, but I don't like mistakes. :)

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Permalink Reply by Mo Trauen on May 2, 2011 at 1:06pm

Sorry, but I don't think you will find a reliable source for that claim.  The official policy may have been atheism, but the church and the clergy were not eradicated.  Only those who opposed the regime, whether motivated by religion or politics, would have suffered this fate.  If you look at the history of the USSR, the communists were surprisingly tolerant of religion at first.  They did not ban it, etc.; they simply disfavored it (especially compared to the favored position it had held under the Tsars).  They took church property, certainly, but they took anyone's property they felt they needed (or wanted).  What happened was the that the religious declared war on them (to the extent they weren't already at war with them) over their atheism and their removal of the church's favored status.  Very similar to what happened in Spain, Argentina, and Chile.

 

Cite me a single case where an atheist killed another person simply for being a believer.  You can't because there aren't any.

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Permalink Reply by Arcus on May 2, 2011 at 1:24pm

From Red Terror (atrocities) on Wikipedia:

"Members of the clergy were subjected to particularly brutal abuse. According to documents cited by the late Alexander Yakovlev, then head of the Presidential Committee for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression, priests, monks and nuns were crucified, thrown into cauldrons of boiling tar, scalped, strangled, given Communion with melted lead and drowned in holes in the ice.^[31] An estimated 3,000 were put to death in 1918 alone.^[31]"

Unfortunately, I cannot directly quote the book as it is not scanned by Google Scholar yet. However, if you are interested in double checking:  Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev. A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia. Yale University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-300-08760-8 page 156

The book appears to be a bit of a Bible on the subject, and the author is held in very high regard. I would additionally claim that the "communion with melted lead" bit could be concidered an act of pure anti-religion as it holds a massive amount of symbolism, and not just a punishment for "opposing the regime". I cannot substanciate this claim, but I cannot see any logicical reason why anyone else than the religious would be killed in such a symbolic way.

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Permalink Reply by Axel H. Ahlberg on May 2, 2011 at 2:40pm

It's a pretty bold, and unprovable, asssertion that no atheist has ever killed a theist because that requires a perfect knowledge of history.  I expect that more than once in history someone has discovered the hypocrisy of organized theism in a very negative way such as child rape or other priestly malfeasance and not only renounced theism but sought revenge through murder.

And there's a corollary tale here about assumptions we all may make from time-to-time about atheists.  We hold no higher ground intellectually than theists if atheism is our only added value to society. The resort to violence to solve problems has long been a part of human makeup, and atheism, by itself, is not a cure or a prevention of that.  If we seek to claim moral superiority merely through atheism then we're going to have to broaden the definition to include some moral code.

While I would assume, lacking the means to conduct a useful proof, that the statistics surrounding murder of atheists by theists as opposed to the murder of theists by atheists is heavily weighted toward murder by theists, the really important distinction is that of theist-motivated murder in general, whether the victims were theist or atheist.  And I further believe based on a gross-scale reading of history that the clash of cults of theists, poly- or mono-, has generally resulted in wholesale slaughters of innocents.  But in fairness to theists, many of these slaughters were really territorial or ego confrontations which used theism as the excuse to instill blind obedience.

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Permalink Reply by Mo Trauen on May 2, 2011 at 3:13pm

@Axel:  Seeking revenge for hypocrisy and crimes such as child rape is not the same as killing solely for thinking the "wrong" thing, which is what the religious have done to us--and still do in some places.  It is that sort of killing--based purely on fanatical hatred--that I was getting at.

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Permalink Reply by Mo Trauen on May 2, 2011 at 3:09pm

Thanks.  I will look into this.  I may have overstated my case.  Though, I would say that even if true, it doesn't compare to the implacable hatred and fanaticism the religious have shown us.  To match that, there would have to be entire countries where religious belief by itself was punishable by death.  I think I can say with some certainty that such has not happened.  If it has, it is certainly not well known.

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Permalink Reply by Arcus on May 2, 2011 at 3:15pm

"I may have overstated my case. Though, I would say that even if true, it doesn't compare to the implacable hatred and fanaticism the religious have shown us."

Completely agree, and I apologize for having to make an attempt to disprove that particular claim... But if we allow ourselves to falsify our history like religion's claim of having been "mostly peaceful", we're just not any better than they are. And we should be imho.

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Permalink Reply by Mo Trauen on May 3, 2011 at 12:52am

I will note for now, even though I haven't read Yakovlev's book--much less any of its background sources, that it appears that only a relatively small number of priests, monks, and nuns were put to death.  If the Soviets were killing them SOLELY for their religious beliefs, this would not be true--the number of victims would be much greater.  I don't know how the victims were selected, but religious belief alone almost certainly could not have been the criterion even if the methods of execution indicate it played a role. 

 

Thus, I am not sure that this refutes my original statement at all.  My original statement was that atheists have never killed believers simply for believing.  Believers, however, made the extermination of non-believers a centuries long campaign.  Nothing except non-belief was required for imposition of a most gruesome death.

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Permalink Reply by Dave G on May 2, 2011 at 5:25pm

Mo, I am sure that if one dug deeply enough, a case of an atheist killing a theist due to being a believer could be found. There will always be people who are mentally deranged. However, the important point is that, unlike most religions, there are no atheist teachings that command such actions, nor are such actions either commonplace or approved of/supported by groups of atheists.

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