Are atheists being more illogical than agnostics?

Ok, I agree in that case, proportionally atheists simply do not compare to theists. It's just that when someone says that I figure they ran into one of those many microcosms where they might be the ones in the majority.

On atheist forums, for example (those can be off putting even to this atheist).

I shun such association as well, but at the same time wonder if I can really bemoan some of the pernicious influences of religion in society while criticizing their efforts to change things.

I don't necessarily criticize their efforts to change things. For example, both Dyslexia and i have many times pointed out that some of the best private social services available in this country come from Catholic Social Servies and Lutheran Social Services. At the same time, i have slammed the Baptists who give little and expect much. The men in the Open Shelter in Columbus, Ohio used to complain that they got a scanty meal from the Baptists once a week, and sat while it grew cold as the Baptists prayed over them. There is (or at least once was) a free lunch program at the Grubb Street Catholic Church community center which fed all comers until the food ran out, and handed out baked goods which were delivered by an old woman (she was old enough that i suspect that by now she is no longer with us) who visited all the supermarkets in town every day in her station wagon and picked up their baked goods. She then delivered it to the Food Bank, and places like Grubb Street. There was also a whacko evangelical minister who ran Faith Mission, usually considered the most dangerous shelter in town because he took everybody, and had no security (and no realistic expectation of providing security). He prayed over them, but he didn't make them wait while he did it, and probably fed four or five thousand homeless men every day.

However, i don't believe that religion ever made a bad man good, nor did the want of the benefit clery ever make a good man bad. I believe that these selfless people would have been selfless without the dogma. Perhaps i delude myself on that point, but i doubt it.

I mean atheist advocacy organizations. I find them off-putting and don't want to participate in them, but sometimes wonder if I should support their advocacy to help offset the enormous amount of advocacy for the theist positions.

To be quite honest, this side of the pond evangelical Christians aren't really that much of a problem. We get the odd Jehovah's witness popping in for an argument but that's about it. There are certain atheists who are a total pain in the arse, never passing an opportunity to take a pop at religious types.

A prime example of this is Simon Hoggart, political sketch writer for The Guardian. I stopped reading his column long ago, which is a shame because he is quite a gifted writer. I want to know about the theatre of politics that is Westminster, not why all Christians are wrong.

OK . . . i gotcha. I find them distasteful, as i said, and i don't participate because their behavior is exactly that of the god squad exstremists whom i condemn.

I fully agree with you but on what account do you doubt yourself on that Set ?

Because i don't dismiss out of hand the posibility that religious indoctination may lead people to do "good works" which they might not otherwise have contemplated.

Agreed but such indoctrination does n´t make a special case for the potential of doing good is just one more cultural tool...

Isn't Faith what is wrong? If everyone had a bit less Faith, and a bit more Doubt we'd all get along a lot better.

Speaking in masses, no it is n´t faith, rather it is a cultural clash, tribalism...faith at best it is the trigger but not the gun.

I wonder, is my impression correct that absolutist-religionists are more likely than relativist-atheists to commit ideologically inspired murder?
Stalin and his minions were atheists, but also absolutists.

I don't know, if I were to answer your question I'd just be bullshitting.

Whenever an organization has an element of ideoloty to it, it will attract hangers-on that are zealous, incompetent, and off-putting to almost everyone outside their own echo chamber. Atheist organizations are no exception, but the same is true for entirely different organizations. For example libertarians and Objectivists in political Usenet groups have always tended to tick me off, even when I was a much more hardcore libertarian than today. The same is true for Linux evangelists, even though I like Linux. In all those cases, the bond of a common ideology attracts insecure hangers-on.

But I think it's unfair to judge entire organizations by their hangers-on. A few months ago, Failure's Art and I attended a fundraiser for American Atheists in Washington, mostly to see Richard Dawkins up close. Among the participants were the leaders and spokespeople of several other atheistic lobbying groups. I didn't get the impression that they were preachy and annoying people.

Another way to test my point is to search youtube for videos of the Atheist Alliance International conferences (2009 here, 2010 here). Do the presentations strike you as preachy and annoying?

I don't think we know that Stalin was an atheist (although he probably was, at the least fuctionally)--he did start his adult life in an Orthodox seminary. The official Soviet biography's claim about him rebelling against the established church and imperialism is not born out by the records, which simply note that he eventually failed to pay his tuition.

The problem i have with this view is that it is promoted vociferously by christians who attack atheism, rendering as Atheism, and equating it with religious confession. Stalin didn't have people killed because they refused to embrace atheism. He didn't go to war to promote atheism. The so-called martyrs of the Russian Orthodox church were priests and monks who supported Kolchak's White Army in the civil war with Trotsky's Red Army. They died for a political reason. Priests, monks and nuns who did not oppose the Boshevik state were left to their own devices. The problem was that Petr Alexeevitch, "Peter the Great," had made the church an organ of the state. All priests, monks and nuns were paid a salary by the state, and the churchs and monestaries and convents were supported by the state. The successful Bolshevik revolution withdrew that support, and the church in Russia simply starved to death.

Stalin's first big murderous crime was the deportation of the so-called Kulaks. Despite the hysterical claims of far too many people, somewhat less than 500,000 died--bad enough, certainly, but not the millions that some people allege. The Bolshevik revolution came in November, 1917 (October in the Julian calendar--hence, Red October), after the Russian revolution in February (March in our calendar). But the Bolsheviks did not immediately succeed to power, and the two other large revolutionary parties--the Social Revolutionaries and the Peasants' Party--had "redistributed" land to many peasants. Marx understood that peasants who had gotten land would now want the revolution to end. They may have been glad to overthrow the previous status quo, but they had created a new one which they wished to preserve. So Stalin created the legend of the Kulaks, deported millions, which killed hundreds of thousands, and collectivized agriculture--in the process killing Russian agriculture. Not that he cared about that--preserving the ferment of revolution preserved his justification for his power. Atheism was no part of the equation, which was entirely political and politically ideological.

There we get down to the kernel of the phenomenon. Fanatics like that, absolutists if you prefer, use ideology, whether religious or political, to justify the program which puts them in power and preserves their power. Christianity spread quickly across Europe despite the contempt that many "pagans" had for it as petty rulers saw the value which an established church had for them. They protected and preserved the church, and the church povided the ideological rationale for their power.

So i'm not even sure that it's always a case of absolutists. The absolutists may be pawns as much as the oppressed peasant for whom the distinction between Tsar and Chairman of the Central Committee is meaningless. It can just as easily be a case of expedience in the service of personal ambition.

"the death of one is a tragedy. the death of thousands is a statistic."
i THINK he might of said that...

This seems true to me!



This also seems true to me as well!

I think that the sad truth is that we all may have psychopathic traits but some people have them to such a degree that they are the real deal!


This seems true as well!

I think that absolute thinking should be taught to be a bad thing in schools and that logical reasoning, scientific method and open mindedness should be the valued instead! But then we would have to rid all the world of religions and I don't think that will go very well.



If we could cure this we may rid the psychopath's ability to cause as much harm to society!

Someone like Hitler may have been psychopathic. Stalin was sociopathic--he wasn't necessarily mentally unstable, he just didn't care about anyone else.

...For any dozen religions shut down hundred would be born...
(Don´t fight fire with fire)

No no no, Hitler was an Austrian and Stalin was a Georgian. You Americans really don't get Geography do you? Where the Hell is Sociopathia anyway? Is it even a country?