An Atheist's Take on Christian Prayer.

Tearing down church buildings, persecuting Ukrainian Catholics (which, for the duration of the USSR, was the largest illegal church in the world)...for two

 

A lack of belief tore down buildings and persecuted people?
That seems to defy known physics.

 

But those who do, crow the loudest.

A lack of belief did not.

An evangelical disbelief did.

 

I'm having a hard time with this one. Even if it's loud, public disbelief, how does disbelief tear down buildings and persecute people?

 

It's all in the conviction, dude. Just like the other way around. It is not belief on itself that oppressed science in the past. It was a specific conviction based on faith. In that term was the conviction that religion should be banished from sovjet society based on disbelief or a lack of faith in religion.

 

The problem I see is that a belief in a deity purports a supreme authority with pre-written rules and laws that do not meet today's social constructs, morality in particular. Anything that comes from that belief is obviously flawed for multiple reasons from the start.

The lack of belief has nowhere to go with a lack of belief; anything that comes from a person with a lack of belief becomes purely based on the individual.

Did I say that clearly enough? I'm a little tired this morning, not sure if that's as succinct as it sounds to me right now.

 

I would say it is the individuals experiences more times than not that define their thoughts deeds and actions, anything wholly and completely original is rare indeed.

So no, not from the individual just as you parrot what other anti theists / atheists have said most of our understanding is inherited through experience not self taught. Also if you are proclaiming there to be no creator you are making assumptions that are impossible to prove.

No.

 

You are probably not clear enough. So when a person beliefs in a certain deity his morality and actions are less individual? Also, to be clear the former post you dlsliked was solely related to the issue about the soviets' lack of religious faith and imposing that view on their religious fellow men with suppression and destruction. I don't understand an intelligent person can't see how clear that example is in regard to the lack of faith subdiscussion here. I just tried to explain.

 

The samy way that when christians have political power, they build a theocracy.

Are you seriously unaware that there was a thing called the soviet union?

 

I think the same thing is still going on in North Korea.

 

Yup.

And china. They harvest the organs of living practitioners of banned religions. PEACEFUL religions.

 

If you're talking about post 65.....that was me. I was aiming for the green thumb but my fat thumb and small screen (phone) decided to hit the red thumb instead. My bad

 

Oh my, I apologize to Evangelical Atheist then. Lame to immediately have judged that it was him anyway... The rest of the content happily still stands!

 

I'm trying to think of another way to ask this that doesn't sound petty, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to fail.

No one is saying that Russia did what they did because they didn't believe in elves.
So why are people saying that Russia did what they did because they didn't believe in deities?

 

Read my post, I did not say that.

I said it was an evangelical disbelief. An opposition to the belief of.

Much like you have.

 

I'm not saying you did, I said people, as in, to whom it applies.
However, the point I guess I'm getting to in asking is, a dictator will use whatever tool is best to become and remain a dictator, yes? So the argument presented is that atheism was used the same way religion was used, so it's all awash.

My argument is, when you throw a prefabricated deity in as the authority, you include a lot of things that are, in few words, unscientific, immoral, unprovable, and then instill laws backing up those things.

When you throw in atheism...read as...when you throw in a lack of belief in gods...there is no prefabricated set of anything to instill laws for - there is only a lack of belief. The only thing that can be derived from a lack of belief is that a person doesn't believe in gods.

Beyond that, it's a personal desire. Even if someone wanted to make it illegal to believe in gods, that desire doesn't come from a lack of belief, that comes from something else entirely. But someone who relies on the alleged words of gods/a god carry with them everything negative that god has said.

Another way to put it would be: If one asserts that there simply is a deity and nothing else can be known about it, no worries. But that's not how it works. People always assert a specific deity, with claims of knowledge of how their god behaves, what their god has said, what their god expects, and these people are getting their information from the same source.

If one asserts that they don't believe in a god and there's no reason for anyone else to, the only step that can be taken further is based on pure self-indulgence. For an atheist to assert that there can't be a god is going too far, and even scientists will agree. That's not the same as saying there's no reason to believe in gods. So, for a dictator to take that further and deny people the "right" (which isn't really an applicable term, because no "rights" will ever be established that allow/disallow us to think and feel) to believe in gods is of course wrong, but that decision isn't because of a lack of belief in gods, whereas a decision to kill certain groups of people is likely and has happened because their god says to.

 

^whose God tells them to kill entire groups of people? Isn't that the self indulgance you're talkIng about? Twisting the words of God and using the publics faith to manipulate them into furthering an agenda....that doesn't come from believing that comes from humans exploiting believers.

You're not seeing the double edged sword here. Believing or non believing doesn't cause what you're talking about. But the opposition to either can and has.

 

Is it easier to convince people to do things because their culturally accepted deity says to do so, or to do things for no reason?

 

There's always a reason. Could be a deity, a man with a fancy suit, or a man with a gun to your head. What's easiest isn't always most effective.

 

I think where Evangelical Atheist goes off the track is in assuming that because there is no specific content to atheist non-belief, atheism per se can't be held responsible for anything bad. But because there is supposedly a specific content to religious beliefs, religion can be held responsible for anything bad done by a person espousing religion. I see several things wrong with that. First, the non-belief of atheists doesn't appear to offer significantly more resistance to evil than the beliefs of the religious. All atheists aren't Marxist-Leninists, but good Marxist-Leninists are atheists. Dialectical materialism, the core ideology of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and the Dear Leader of North Korea, incorporates atheism, and the regimes of those despots actively suppressed religious belief. To get ahead in those societies, a person would have to be an atheist. Second, religions are far from monolithic in their beliefs, and it is difficult to see how some of them enable the abuses you complain about. Quakers are notoriously non-violent, and there are several other Christian groups who seem unlikely to be mobilized for violence by some religious demagogue (Methodists, Episcopalians, Disciples of Christ, etc.) Hell, the Catholics have even gone pacifist. Third, social scientists who study violence find that demonization of one's opponents is a common prelude to abusing them. When a person systematically collects a dossier of all the transgressions of a particular group without mentioning any redeeming good that the members have done, and without distinguishing among subgroups who might not be guilty of those transgressions, (s)he's setting the stage for possible discrimination or violence against them. For a good example of a prominent atheist doing just that, try Christopher Hitchens' God Is Not Great: How Religion Poison's Everything. Poor Gandhi is blamed for causing the breach between India and Pakistan. Martin Luther King is berated for his plagiarism (undoubtedly something his Christian background is responsible for), but his leadership of the Civil Rights movement was because of his Humanism. Etc., etc. That kind of hate speech, or "evangelical atheism", sets the stage for violence.