The most “evangelical” people of the world are secular atheists, and they typically evangelize at the point of a gun.
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Wrong.
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Tell that to the millions and millions of Jews and Orthodox Christians killed by Stalin because they refused to recant their religions and embrace secular atheism.
Indeed, there is no doubt that evangelical atheism in the form of Chinese and Soviet Communists have killed more people than all the religions combined in the history of the world.[/quote]
I had a long drawn out conversation with a few of the theists in PWI explaining that you can’t attach atheism to the atrocities caused by leaders such as Stalin and some of the others.
I believe the thread was called “Is peeing on Jesus really funny?”
[quote]therajraj wrote:
I had a long drawn out conversation with a few of the theists in PWI explaining that you can’t attach atheism to the atrocities caused by leaders such as Stalin and some of the others.
I believe the thread was called “Is peeing on Jesus really funny?”
I really don’t feel like arguing it again. [/quote]
[quote]therajraj wrote:
I had a long drawn out conversation with a few of the theists in PWI explaining that you can’t attach atheism to the atrocities caused by leaders such as Stalin and some of the others.
I believe the thread was called “Is peeing on Jesus really funny?”
I really don’t feel like arguing it again. [/quote]
Whatever helps you sleep at night.
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lol
You got me bro!
Anyways, if you have any interest in reading our discussion, I have posted the link below. It’s actually a pretty good back and forth and low on ad hominems
Couldn’t agree more. Unfortunately, whenever some conservative religious group/organized religion/theocratic structure attempts to “protect the women” or some similar measure to “enforce morality”, some sexually frustrated repressed assholes take this as a licence to assault and threaten women and to despicable crap in general. Regardless whether they’re Jewish, Muslim of Christian.
Case in point - Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the vast majority of Muslim countries…
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Good cases in point…they’re all Muslim countries though.
My observations were more general in nature and not intended to single out any particular religion.
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Most Christians seem to ignore what Paul said about the role of women - I guess it’s not politically correct. Plymouth Brethren take such things seriously however.
The most “evangelical” people of the world are secular atheists, and they typically evangelize at the point of a gun.
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Wrong.
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Tell that to the millions and millions of Jews and Orthodox Christians killed by Stalin because they refused to recant their religions and embrace secular atheism.
Indeed, there is no doubt that evangelical atheism in the form of Chinese and Soviet Communists have killed more people than all the religions combined in the history of the world.[/quote]
Do you seriously believe that Jews and Orthodox Christians were persecuted in the USSR because of their belief in God? Then you are sorely misguided.
First of all, the Church (catholic, orthodox…) is a competing power structure with its separate hierarchy and followers. No totalitarian system can afford to tolerate a separate power structure. See the Chinese catholic church.
Russian orthodox church was a representative of the old order, and in the expanse of Russia sometimes the only manifestation of the State for illiterate peasants, who comprised the vast majority of the population. Therefore, if you’re planning to establish a totalitarian state with a centralized economy and transform (extinguish) the lives of millions you have to eliminate the “competition”. Stalin understood this role of the orthodox church in the imperial / czarist order, being educated in an orthodox seminary.
This had nothing to do with dogmatic clashes atheism / religion. We are not talking about Justinian and the Byzantine empire here. Lenin, Stalin and Mao were too much pragmatic. Mass murderers yes, but cynical mass murderers bent of consolidating their absolute grip of power.
Painting them as some sort of “atheistic crusaders” is plain stupid.
The structure of the catholic church (for example) was set up in late antiquity as a way to circumvent the up-and-coming “barbarian” elites and preserve in a different domain the power of the existing roman(ish) aristocracy. That’s why so many illustrious Roman families in Gaul later fielded bishops.
Pope Gregory later solidified the power of the Church in relation to “worldly” rulers
So like I said, in every major political transformation (French revolution, for example) this symbol and active upholder of the existing socio-political order was contested.
Jews, on the other hand, were an easy target. You’ve got a separate ethnic/religious group which is easily identifiable (again with a separate power structure), you’ve got centuries of European antisemitic traditions and as a nice popular measure you can initiate a pogrom/relocation to Siberian swamps/extermination blaming their (perceived) role in the social economic order for all the ills that have befallen your totalitarian system.
So the line “they oppressed us because of our faith” is bullshit.
‘Marxism-Leninism has consistently advocated the control, suppression, and, ultimately, the elimination of religious beliefs…In practice the state also sought to control religious bodies and to interfere with them, with the ultimate goal of making them disappear.’
‘It was originally believed in the ideology that religion would disappear quickly with the coming of the revolution and that its replacement with atheism would be inevitable. The leadership of the new state did not take much time, however, to come to the conclusion that religion would not disappear on its own.’
'The Soviet leadership debated with themselves of how best to combat religion. The positions ranged from the ‘rightist’ belief that religion would die on its own naturally with increasing education, and the ‘leftist’ belief that religion needed to be attacked strongly. Lenin called the struggle to disseminate atheism ‘the cause of our state.’
The fact of the matter is the Stalin, et al, went after evangelical Christians just as fervently if not more so. Evangelicals posed no hierarchical or power competition threat whatsoever so your convenient little theory above is easily dismantled right here and now. Subsequently, all that yapping above is bullshit. [/quote]
I’m sorry but you’ve obviously got the fundamentals wrong. ANY religious group (Orthodox Christians, Jews, Evangelical Christians…) possessed a different power hierarchy, whether codified in a structure (traditional Church) or in an indirect manner (evangelicals).
You’re Stalin, and you want to start a massive purge of very vaguely defined “rich peasants” and “burgeoise” and you’ll tolerate someone promoting (at least nominally) non-violence, adherence to a set of written moral laws and supreme authority of a supernatural being. C’mon.
If you want to implement total control of the population and make them loyal to the Party and ultimately the State, you have to eliminate competing structures and consequently competing moral/social role models.
Why did the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages persecute heretical sects who, small in numbers, preached direct contact with God such as the Bogomils? Challenges to the power structure.
North Korea took this even further by supplanting the nuclear family with a pseudo-religious veneration of Kim Il Sung, for example, eliminating another (negligable) challenge to the absolute rule of the State.
Please, do read something about history and religious history before providing ignorant blanket statements.
But I guess its easier sticking to the “They hate us because we believe in X” line. Things are much simpler that way.
‘Marxism-Leninism has consistently advocated the control, suppression, and, ultimately, the elimination of religious beliefs…In practice the state also sought to control religious bodies and to interfere with them, with the ultimate goal of making them disappear.’
Sounds like you’re agreeing with me here. A simple three person Bible study in a peasant’s home was enough to get the participants sent to the gulag. So Bible believers represented a challenge to the power structure - the power structure that was 100% atheistic.
10-4.
We had competing ideologies in the USSR and the stronger one was intent on stamping out the competitor. The religion, or anti-religion if you will, of atheism wanted to muscle out the church, whichever church you wish to address.
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Uhh… Let me explain this one more. It is related to being the sole power wielding total control over the population, in economic, spiritual and social aspects.
You are ascribing these characteristic of the Soviet regime as inherently stemming from their atheism, which is not the case.
It stems from their characteristic as a totalitarian regime bent on controlling the population.
Anyway, in order to understand the persecution of the evangelicals in the USSR, you have to understand the method behind the madness of Stalin’s purges. All elements of society, whether religious, ethnic or political deemed connected or somewhat influenced by foreign influences were marked for extermination/deportation.
Anyway, Stalin was a pragmatic psychopath who during the German advance in the winter of '41 / '42 actually allowed public observations of Orthodox Christmas as a method of raising public morale. The measure was of course short lived.
My point is, Stalin and Mao were atheists, but their actions were not caused by dogmatic atheism but by their desire to wield absolute power.
Yes. Although Occam’s razor cannot be applied everywhere. Like history, social development, science…
Dogmatic atheism WITH the enabling sword of totalitarianism AND dogmatic theism with the enabling sword of totalitarianism produce IDENTICAL actions.
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No. because atheism in and of itself does not call for any kind of concerted action.
Communism was an eschatological movement that just happened to be atheist the atheism in and of itself was neither a sufficient or even necessary reason for the atrocities.
Now let me explain this once more. Atheism IS a religion. It has a core set of beliefs related to the supernatural, in this case the lack thereof but nonetheless related, but antithetically. Like many religions throughout history once it assumed ultimate political power, i.e., totalitarianism (China, USSR, Vietnam, North Korea, etc.), it sought to eliminate competing ideologies, or other core belief systems. This has also obviously happened with theistic religions (see Islam and Catholicism during the Middle Ages).
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And this is why it’s not worth arguing again.
Their argument requires you to accept that atheism in itself is a religion. Which is bullshit. It’s like saying baldness is a hair colour or theism is a religion.
You have to attach something to atheism in order to get to killing people. If both sides can’t agree upon this, you can’t move forward in the discussion.
Their argument requires you to accept that atheism in itself is a religion. Which is bullshit. It’s like saying baldness is a hair colour or theism is a religion.
You have to attach something to atheism in order to get to killing people. If both sides can’t agree upon this, you can’t move forward in the discussion.
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Exactly. “Atheism” as the name obviously says, is the opposite of “theism”. In order to qualify as a religion it needs to have a codified set of customs, procedures and rules (don’ eat pork, confess your sins to a man dressed in black who doesn’t have sex…) that govern its followers and shape their worldview. You can’t claim a religion is by, definition, rejection of religion.
Lumping together Epicurus, Hume, Stalin, Lenin and Mao for example as followers of a coherent “religion” is plain stupid.
Making a logical leap that the social manifestation of atheism is communism is irresponsible at best and used, as it seems, mostly in US internal policies.
Mind you, if someone’s labeling a country “atheist”, they may as well use examples of Japan and Sweden, possibly even adding together all buddhists, depending on the definition.
Their argument requires you to accept that atheism in itself is a religion. Which is bullshit. It’s like saying baldness is a hair colour or theism is a religion.
You have to attach something to atheism in order to get to killing people. If both sides can’t agree upon this, you can’t move forward in the discussion.
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Exactly. “Atheism” as the name obviously says, is the opposite of “theism”. In order to qualify as a religion it needs to have a codified set of customs, procedures and rules (don’ eat pork, confess your sins to a man dressed in black who doesn’t have sex…) that govern its followers and shape their worldview. You can’t claim a religion is by, definition, rejection of religion.
Lumping together Epicurus, Hume, Stalin, Lenin and Mao for example as followers of a coherent “religion” is plain stupid.
Making a logical leap that the social manifestation of atheism is communism is irresponsible at best and used, as it seems, mostly in US internal policies.
Mind you, if someone’s labeling a country “atheist”, they may as well use examples of Japan and Sweden, possibly even adding together all buddhists, depending on the definition.
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I do understand religious people though when it comes to atheists.
Since most people crave a structured believe system however illogical it may be, it makes sense to be very suspicious of non believers.
The lack of organized religion leaves a vacuum which is going to be filled with something, and that something is almost never pretty.