On Mon, 11 Dec 2006 01:03:54 +0100, "Starman"
wrotF:

Go back to school boy ! (not sunday bible school) REAL school and learn
something for god (he dosn't exist) sake

Man you are so ignorant that it hurts !

Religion is the main course regarding mass killing through history !


Jeez! Calm down. Switch to decaf and let's ponder this issue
like intelligent people. I am quite educated, BTW.
Your reaction leads me to believe that you think religions
which claim to preach morality, peace and hope, in fact bring
intolerance, violence and destruction. I say, that by far the biggest
examples of intolerance, violence and destruction in human history are
those wrought by militant atheism, underpinned by bogus (I'll get to
that shortly) science. Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot come to mind.
Religions might not bring perfection, but Atheisms have 100 times
worse track record.
At an empirical level, these 4 regimes must represent a good
85% of the atheist regimes (weighted by number of citizens) in
recorded history (the atheist phase of the French Revolution may well
account for another 2-3% which was about as bloodthirsty). Atheist
regimes are actually quite rare, representing say 20% of the regimes
(weighted by citizens) in recorded history. The only theist regime I
can think of which practised/allowed mass murder of its citizens on a
comparable relative scale was in Rwanda (representing say 0.1% of
regimes). So at an empirical level, the association between atheist
regimes and mass murder is very strong - far worse than smoking and
cancer.
What is the mechanism? Mao, Stalin and Pol Pot all claimed to
be Marxists and Marxism "the science of history" was the essential
underpinning ideology that allowed them to perpetrate their massive
crimes. The essence of Marxism is dialectical materialism and a denial
of the existence of God - indeed Marxism was specifically developed as
an anti-Christian philosophy. Hitler's Nazi-ism was admittedly far
more confused than Marxism, a sort of anti-Marxism which was based on
the popularised Darwinism of Haekel (the Dawkins of his day) and
picked up the widely-held German view that "survival of the fittest"
was a scientific and moral principle (and that, of course, the Germans
were the fittest!).
But more fundamentally, if you don't believe in God it is very
hard to believe in a morality that will constrain you when you have an
enormous amount of power. Christian leaders, however powerful, know
that they are "under God" and that they do not have ultimate power,
but are themselves under judgement. Atheists, manifestly, do not. An
absence of constraints on the abuse of power leads, understandably, to
an abuse of power.
Incidentally, these 'darwinian' views were very common in German
intellectual an military circles in the early 1900s, and very widely
held by the German General Staff. It was this that shocked Vernon
Kellogg, a Stanford professor who was posted to the headquarters of
the German general staff during the period of American neutrality in
World War I and was shocked to find German military leaders, sometimes
with the Kaiser present, supporting the war with an "evolutionary
rationale." They did so with "a particularly crude form of natural
selection, defined as inexorable, bloody battle." His subsequent book
"Headquarters Nights" helped bring the US into the war.
I obviously don't suggest that all atheists are immoral - many
smokers do not die of cancer. But atheism and power is an
exceptionally dangerous mixture.
I wonder if you consider humans to be animals - most atheists do.
And that view does lead to the rivers of blood of the 20th C - not in
all cases, but in enough to cause massive concern, and over 100M
deaths.
Of course there are ethical atheists. I certainly respect
them. However, false ideologies do not only correspond to erroneous
beliefs. They can also lead to terrible actions. The Church has not
been free from this kind of error (crusades, inquisition), but the
twentieth century atheist regimes are truly frightful examples.
I really get tired of the bull**** criticisms of Christianity
as a carniverous beast on society. An unbiased examination of history
proves otherwise, as well as demonstrates how atheists "conveniently"
forget Stalinism et al from their diagnoses of society's ills.