That must be why Stalin sought to eradicate religion. From your own source:
"Stalin followed the position adopted by Lenin that religion was an opiate that needed to be removed in order to construct the ideal communist society. To this end his government promoted atheism through special atheistic education in schools, massive amounts of anti-religious propaganda, the antireligious work of public institutions (especially the Society of the Godless), discriminatory laws, and also a terror campaign against religious believers. By the late 1930s it had become dangerous to be publicly associated with religion"
Which reasons, and based on which religion? Don't tell me Christianity, cuz that's not what that religion teaches. And neither does Hinduism or Buddhism. Must be Islam, but I've heard otherwise.
As I said, Stalin was mostly motivated by political and megalomaniac motives. His early life as a Christian made him seek power to "help" his country and the people. Admittedly, it's a weak thread, but it's there. Once in power and he learned of Marxism, and started adopting Lenin's view on how the "perfect" society would be ran, he went about making it happen in as brutal a fashion as he could. He did not do it because he hated something specific, or for other petty motives. He was just purely ruthless to his end. To him, the ends justified the means. This is also talked about in the wiki and some of his biographies. Again, he wasn't hearing voices by the time he was making his communist Russia. He wasn't trying to appease some deity, or a church. He was purely trying to remake a country in the quickest and most expedient methods available to him. Again, he was Christian growing up. Again, he wanted to make the world a better place as that is the learnings he received from his upbringing. Unfortunately, I guess only parts of those lessons stuck.
Other than the fact that if they were truly following the teachings of religion, they wouldn't be murdering people in the first place? You still haven't established B in the first place for it to be dismissed.
Uhh, again many religions DO preach "convert or kill" or "tear down the temples" from Christianity to practically everything. There are very few truly benevolent religions with an actual benevolent past by it's participants.
As for establishing B.. again, I made the connection for Stalin above, but now for Hitler. Hitler is easy, you just have to read his speeches and his book. He grew up catholic, remained a member of the church although no longer "practiced" later in life. His belief system became more personal, but remained Christian at heart. He believed God spoke to him and that the world was meant to be ruled by an Aryan nation. Trying to find an article now on something I remember seeing before. I think it was a PBS, or TLC, or Discovery style show, but it at one showed the letter Hitler wrote to the Vatican asking the Pope to legitimize that he was the defender and soldier of God doing Holy work of eradicating the Jews. In any case, there is a plethora of evidence out there showing the influence of religion in Hitler's actions throughout his life. More so than Stalin at least.
However, this is neither here nor there. I've made my case with sources of how Religion has been the underlying reason behind Stalin's and Hitler's atrocities. Also, one can not deny the current problems the world is facing from terrorists from the Middle East and other places all motivated by religions reasons to kill others.
From the ridiculous premise of this thread, which stated that religion must be eradicated because it's the source of all kinds of evil. I got news for you - imperialism kills people too, on a mass scale no less, maybe we should do away with sovereign nations and establish a global government?
Guns, cars, and cigarettes kill people, you wanna get rid of those too? The reality is it's not religion that kills people, but rather certain maniacs who misuse religious differences to target a certain group. And by that measure, it's no different than the number of other things which can be misused for violent, malicious purposes.
Sigh, you are missing the point. Yes OTHER THINGS KILL PEOPLE. The points are the intent, the extent, the history, and the effects of anything that kills people. Let's go through your examples shall we? Oh and I'm about to go very philosophical on you, because you brought it up.
First let's start with objects. Any object or piece of matter can kill a person. Some more efficiently than others. However, objects in and of themselves have no motives and no intent. Some objects MAY motivate some individuals to kill, like guns for example may make a person want to kill someone just because they own a gun. However, that is not typical and guns in and of themselves have no real power to compel a death. Actually, no inanimate object has any real power to compel people to kill people. While some objects may have more disastrous effects than others, like a nuke, or a hurricane, or a tsunami the more disastrous an object can be the more we as humans take steps to minimize the effects. We build better fortifications against natural objects like a hurricane to prevent deaths. We limit the usage of guns to people of sound minds. We as humans must and DO limit the effects of objects who's intent is nothing more than to exist, but their effects can be very detrimental.
Now, moving away from objects, lets get to things much more dangers. Those are things that can compel people. The problem is, these aren't objects. They aren't tangible. They are IDEAS. The most dangerous "things" to life on this planet are ideas that compel people, animals, or anything living to kill anything else. From hunger, to megalomania, these intangibles make people kill. At which point one must then focus on the intent and motive of the "idea" that compels people and decide if it's something that must be fought against and suppressed. Killing another living thing out of hunger, well, that has been deemed acceptable. This is because either the action or inaction is going to eventually cause something to die. We as humans in society have given a pass to killing other living beings for food. However, even there we still draw lines. We don't normally kill each other or pets for sustenance. We have also deemed the idea of defending yourself when faced with the fright of mortal danger from another living being as an acceptable compelling intangible. Be it from a hungry bear or another human looking to slay someone, the defense of your own life is a motive we all agree on as humans as acceptable and moral.
However, there are plenty of intangible ideas who's intents are NOT considered moral. They are NOT acceptable. Some ideas are more powerful than others in compelling people to kill than others as well. The problem with these, is that they can compel individuals to actions who's effects would be as disastrous or more so than any hurricane. As we build sturdier walls to prevent the effects of a hurricane, so we must as humans find ways to mitigate the disasters that can be produced by some intangible ideas.
It has been shown and proven, that various religions CAN be such an idea. That is the driving point to the whole argument. It's not to dismiss that there are other things than can cause as waste of life, dismiss other things that are immoral, or dismiss problems humans face. No, it's was an argument against ONE aspect. A focus study if you will. That being Religion and it's effects in the past and what it can be in the future. To deny it's past is to be doomed to repeat it. To deny that the idea of "religion" has not been mostly detrimental to life on this planet is beyond ignorance. Again, this is not to say that there are other things in this universe, from tangible to intangible, that are just as dangerous or more so. This is not to say that "religion" can be good either, as I stated some religions above such as Deism, Confucianism, and others that have a history of benevolence.
However, it is in the opinion of Bill Maher, and many others, that the bad out weighs the good. He, like many others, feel one doesn't need religion to be moral, and to know right from wrong. He, like many others feel that the possible wiping of mankind from the face of this planet is enough justification to disassemble any and all forms of religion. He feels there is no justification for it's continued presence.
Now, whether you agree with that statement or conjecture is something else entirely. However, trying to disassemble the talking points with as I said earlier, strawman tactics, is really lame. A truer debate would have been over his sources, talking points, facts, and counter claims. Someone opposed to his idea of mankind being better off without religion at the helms of our minds would have found reasons for it to be there with actual facts of why. The problem is, most of ATPN seems incapable of this kind of discussion and we get in my opinion, "stupid shit" from quite a lot of you.
case in point:
Doc Salvage Fan said:
/facepalm
You sir...are batshit crazy.
Yah, real classy. Doc Salvage Fan, you sir sure know how to prove a point and make an argument! /sarcasm
and yet it was followed by another... who tried a talking repose.
Amused said:
One day I hope you realize that atheist proaganda can lie and be misleading just like theist and political propaganda.
Your head's been filled full of bullshit.
Amused, yes it is quite possible every historian I know, every book I read, every account, every documentary, every "autobiography" out there relating to those two gentleman, or perhaps you were referring to the point of religion ever being the reason behind human atrocities, was all part of some vast propaganda conspiracy.
Nope, I was not at the Crusades. Nope, I did not speak directly to Hitler, Stalin, Bin Laden, Caesar, Augusts, Alexander, Gengis, or sooooo many other people in prominent roles in history who ended up committing human atrocities. Ooops, I mean "allegedly" from your statement above. I guess since I wasn't there in person, it's all just one big lie huh?
