I’ve have talked to a lot of atheists (theists too, but mostly atheists) lately trying to understand why they became atheists. A lot of them said that religion is responsible for so many deaths.
I tried telling them that religion itself isn’t responsible for these deaths. instead political leaders are responsible for these deaths.
I told them that Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Kim Jong Il, and Ho Chi Minh, were all atheists yet they killed millions too, but I don’t blame atheism for that.
My question is why do so many atheists I talk to believe that religion is THE cause of so many wars?
Posted: November 4th 2009
logicel
Show me a country that supports Enlightenment principles (human rights and secularism) and which has been responsible for the deaths on the scale that Communism, Nazism, and Religion has caused.
This canard has been properly rebutted time and time again. You don’t kill in the name of a lack of belief in gods (that is, atheism), you kill for a god or for a country or for a dictator.
In addition, I am an atheist not because religious belief is dangerous, but because there is no evidence supporting religious beliefs (that is why religious faith is required).
Posted: November 4th 2009
Eric_PK
Because we’ve studied history.
To go to war you need to motivate the people who will do the fighting and those who will have to support them and go without. But the majority of the people in the world are decent folk and just want to get along, so you need a way to get around that.
You start by establishing an us vs. them mentality, and for that you use nationalism and religion. Religion is the far more powerful trigger because it’s easy to establish that we believe in the right god and they believe in the wrong god. You can even use concepts like “Jihad” or “Crusade” to directly tie what you want to do to a religious belief. Note the use of “godless communist” in the US.
Next, you need to ratchet up the fear. Not only are the others bad, but the are dangerous to us.
Then you need a trigger that allows you to do something. It doesn’t have to be related to what you really want to do, just something you can use to rile up the population.
In the crusades it was the muslim menace. In Vietnam it was the gulf of Tonkin incident, and in the Iraq war it was 9/11. Note that the second was fabricated, and the third utterly unrelated to the goal.
Europe is an interesting case study. For thousands of years it had been the site of a tremendous number of wars, culminating in the two world wars, and yet now it’s arguably the most peaceful place in the world, with no launched wars of agression (with the exception of Britain’s support of the Iraq war and the Falkland’s war) in 50 years. And they’re very much less religious than other areas.
The middle east, on the other hand, is quite religious and embroiled in continuous conflict.
Yes, that is an oversimplification, but to discount the role of religion in the middle east conflicts would be silly.
The dictators you mention are not using atheism as a rallying cry, they just choose to be non-religious when it suits them. The soviet union was officially non-religious because churches were institutions that could challenge the power of the state, but private religious beliefs were tolerated to various degrees at various times.
I don’t understand enough about the asian societies and religions to be able to talk reasonably about them, but I do know that their religions tend to be very different than western ones.
All this is documented well in history books, and you don’t have to go far. If you want an eye-opener, take a look at the writings of Martin Luther and Jews and the support of Hitler by the Catholic church.
It was a bit of a shock as a ex-Lutheran to find out what Luther really believed…
Posted: November 4th 2009
Dave Hitt www
Because we read history books.
Posted: November 4th 2009