Atheism

He's dead wrong. perhaps you both should read a little history.

He's dead wrong. perhaps you both should read a little history.

Thanks for making a twat of yourself twice Gob.

Dare I say, 'that's just your opinion'.

The god squad squawks about the Soviet Union. However, what they ignore is that Stalin and company didn't kill anyone because they refused to be an atheist. Stalin and company did not start any wars in order to eradicate theism.

Well they killed a lot of people for a variety of reasons ranging from resisting collectivization, to resisting party priorities or otherwise labelling themselves as "irreconcilables", or finally the crime of being Crimean Tatars or simply Stalin's paranoid fears. Given the avowed atheism of the regime and its widespread suppression of established religion in the USSR, I don't think you are in a position to assert that there was no anti religious violence in all of this.

In short you are making a nonsensical distinction and denial.

I doubt it. The USSR suppressed religion, but the only execution was only religious leaders. It was not "widespread suppression," because the Russian government knew religion just went underground, and many people continued to practice their religion.

Religion in the USSR by Wiki.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Soviet_Union

Gob, I owe you an apology. I thought you were referring to Gervais' fact vs opinion text/img

Confused by the sudden discussion of Soviet Russia I rechecked and see you are referring to 'the atheists killing atheists to prove who doesn't believe in any god the most' text. I don't who brought up the USSR (obviously someone I have on ignore).

Even granting your apparent supposition - the Soviets weren't killing atheists. And certainly not to disprove their disbelief. Go strawman, go!

The Soviets killed anybody and everybody as the whims took them.

The only nonsensical thing operative here is your christian-inspired revisionism. Many Orthodox priests and monks helped Kolchak's White Russians. When captured and found to have done so, Trotsky's troops would execute them. Priests and monks who were not known to aid the White Russians were unmolested. All they suffered was the loss of their income and the maintenance of their churchs and monestaries, which had been previously provided by the imperial bureaucracy, since the early 18th century reforms of Petr Alexeevitch, the so-called Peter the Great.

Tow points here are either being ignored by you, or escaped your notice in the first place. There is no record of the Soviet Union going to war with anyone because they were religious and the Soviets were not. There is no record of systematic persecution of anyone for refusing to embrace atheism.

I didn't assert that there was no anti-religious violence in the history of the Soviet Union, but i do question anyone asserting that there was. When the religionist get their little lace panties in a twist and start ranting about the atheists of the Soviet Union, they are always very short on evidence. I also note that the killing of some priests and monks in the civil war between the whites and the reds is about all they ever refer to. Apparently they are either OK with the persecution and internal deportation of the Ingush and the Chechens, or they don't give a rat's ass what happens to Moslems.

There is one very large and obvious point being ignored here which has escaped notice.

It is that whatever selective evidence is brought forth by either side it is all about the actions of men. Apart from a handful of titular heads of state who were female and surrounded by male ministers, there are no women in the picture.

Thus the condemnations of both sides of each other compute as a double condemnation of men. Thus the Christians and the atheists are but two sides of one coin and the blithe assumption that there is no other coin derives from a deep seated notion that women are of no consequence.

Only a fundamentalist misogynist could take up these positions.

The only logical conclusion is that men should be removed from the higher councils and women put in charge if the condemnations have validity.

Which, of course, they haven't because they are derived from a view of history which is hopelessly inadequate and nothing but personal self-congratulation selectively reading the subject.

The implication that atheists don't have their "little lace panties in a twist" (a misogynist remark par excellence) is ridiculous and a debate point unworthy of adult discourse.

Is she an atheist whore? No she is a person who cares about atheism and about the issues.

As you should know in your capacity as an engineer, correlation does not prove causation. Stalin and Mao killed millions of people. They also were both atheists. They also both had black hair. That doesn't prove, or even indicate, that the killing happened because of their hair --- or because of their atheism.

Could the same be said about religion? Were some or all religions purposefully created to magnify the negative aspects of a person, or is it some indirect effect from the idea of finding solace in justification (with interesting and sometimes twisted interpretation of sets of belief in a religion that one professes) of the traits of human beings in general, such as human's natural capacity for aggression, greed and self-preservation, hatred, bigotry?
In a way, generally and economically speaking, it can be said that the greed of the rich creates wars for the commoners and the poor to fight and loose lives in.

Let me add my worth of my understanding of why religions were "created."
It probably evolved from myths and cults with the belief that there's something "out there" more powerful and intelligent than man. I think the first gods were created from what man observed of our physical earth; the sun, moon, and other common objects found on earth. When man started agriculture - to grow food and domesticate animals, they "prayed" to their gods for a good crop, more rain, or better soil. Those are just my guesses.

I'm sure there are cases where one could. But the inquisition, for example, tortured and killed heretics with the explicitly-stated purpose of safeguarding the Catholic faith. Or to take another example, the conquest and enslavement by European Christians of Africans and American Indians is based on the Doctrine of Discovery, which in turn is based on papal bulls, promoting these things for explicitly religious reasons. Or for a third and final example, the burning of women at the stake for alleged acts of witchcraft executed a direct Biblical command that "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" (Exodus 22:18).

In all three example, we're looking at killings that were directly motivated by religion and enacted in the name of religion. That wasn't just correlation.

These posts are all red herrings.

Do posters wish us all to become atheists and if not why not?

No. I don't wish for that. I don't care one way or the other what someone else believes and don't waste any energy in wishing for things that have absolutely no impact on my well-being.

If, otoh, there are those (and there are) who believe that their faith must be pushed on all others then I care a great deal. Fundamentalism, be it the atheist or the religious, that seeks to impose it's charter on the masses is my enemy.

I do