Atheist terrorists are as bad as any other religious extremist

reply to post by ignorant_ape


honestly i have no idea what you are talking about

nowhere did I label anything the Chinese govt did as atheist terrorism

My point was that the Chinese govt is anything but transparent. I have relatives there and many first hand stories about religious terrorism in China, but I really have no interest in persuading anyone who or what religious group they belong in

In this case, your point is still invalid because the Christianity that Brother Yun practices has no relation to the Pope whatsoever. You are thinking of Catholicism??

I read his book, The heavenly Man. There is no mention of a pope or any national affiliation, and that is to be expected of the New Testament Teachings of Christ. So why is the Chinese govt torturing and jailing this man for years and years? Because it simply goes deeper this

- they didnt ban belief in god , or worship - only forbade allegience to a foreign head of state

reply to post by greentaylor

honestly i have no idea what you are talking about

thats because you clearly have not read the thread

Originally posted by MrXYZ

Originally posted by borntowatch

Originally posted by MrXYZ

Originally posted by CoolerAbdullah786

Originally posted by SpookyVince
reply to post by borntowatch

 

You're mixing it.

Religious terrorism is killing for religious reasons.

The Khmer, Mao or Stalin have not killed because of atheism.

Their reasons were other.

But they were indeed atheists. Clearly their lack of belief in absolute morality and the belief that upon death there is nothing else has completely destroyed their compassion. To them when you die nothing else happens so they don't care about the sanctity of life nor believe that it exists. Atheists also have no absolute purpose for living. They have a very pessimistic view of life in general.

You're not getting it...

While religious belief is the reason religious terrorists kill, the Khmer Rouge didn't kill because they were atheists...they did so because they wanted to preserve their power, and therefore didn't allow ANY other means of mass control.

I'm sure most Khmer Rouge ate mostly rice...but "rice" wasn't the reason they committed those crimes

No No no you are not getting it.
Your assumption is wrong. Pol Pot wanted a atheist state, Pol Pot and his communists had power and wanted to change society.
Power was a minor issue, pol pot was restructuring the country.
Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge killed because they saw no value in human life and intelligence.
Making excuses doesnt work, the history is the evidence
Go research the history.


Atheism is a belief system

If atheism is a belief, "off" is a TV channel

Yet here you are preaching and defending.
Clearly if off is off you are an atheist who is on.

You dont preach nothing or defend nothing, You are here preaching and defending your substance of belief, the new atheism is not a tv switched to off.
I am not talking about all atheists, I am talking about those atheists who expound their beliefs, kill people and force their views on others

Atheist terrorists are as bad as any other religious extremist

Communists of Russia and China were also atheists. They killed more people than all of any religious wars on this planet combined, some say nearly 100 millions souls perished under their hands.

This is a new one for me. I have never seen an Anti-Atheist Topic. LOL! And another poster was right...you cannot equate Atheists with Communists. I personally am AGNOSTIC but hey...What the HELL do I know?!?

Split Infinity

Alright, I admit to not reading every single response, so my apologies if someone else happened to mention anything similar to this already. I believe the number one reason for all the wars that have happened and all the ones that will happen in the future is power. It does not matter what religion(s) is/are involved. As a matter of fact, I happen to be one of those people that believes that one of the main tools used to gain power is...religion. So...those of you arguing for the religious...doesn't matter. Those of you arguing for the non-believers...doesn't matter.

Originally posted by Badgered1
Atheism is simple. It's the non-belief in deities.

I'll add to the above:

Atheism is the non-belief in all deities.
Christianity is the non-belief in 99.999% of deities.

That would makes us all pretty similar, really.

All right, first off, there is definitely a correlation between men causing mass-murders as opposed to women. I don't think this is off the mark here. It probably has something to do with how men think, in my opinion. In addition, I wouldn't discount atheism as a reason for mass-murder.

Atheism is a belief system that holds science as its God, and denies the reality of religions. There are probably a multitude of different philosophies that take the place of religion for the atheist, and any one of these, being belief systems, could cause someone to want to extinguish from the earth anyone who does not believe in the same ideals.

A belief system does not have to be divine. In fact, ones that purport to be based in science are often more dangerous, because their followers are outright convinced they know the truth.

When in reality, who knows the truth? Probably no one because it would require believing in both spirituality and science to discover.

Originally posted by borntowatch
Atheism is a religion

No.

Atheism is

NOT

a religion.

Connect your brain and try to start thinking about the idiotic things that you are stating as universal evidence. You are obviously talking about things that you have not the slightest ideas about.

Originally posted by borntowatch
Thats an answer from a 11 year old school child, are you 11 SV?

Slightly over 3 years. In Jupiter years of course, which everybody knows is the absolute universal reference of counting time here down on earth.

Originally posted by borntowatch
Pity you cant justify your at best base comments with any evidence.
Pity the average fool here on ats gives you a star without seeing you justify your unreasonable and unfounded comments.

Clearly proof has no value here on ats, clearly the average clown hat reading your comments shows the ignorance of those who star your fumbling words.
Evidence justifies your position, you have NO evidence.
I dismiss you categorically, please accept the accolades of fools...it fits you

Originally posted by borntowatch
Atheism/communism has killed more people than all the religious wars together, thats a fact
Stalin caused 43 million deaths at the very least
democraticpeace.wordpress.com...

Deaths Caused by Christians:
1562-1598 – French Wars of Religion – France – 4 million
1095-1291 – Crusades to the Holy Land – Middle East, Spain, Africa – 1.5 million (This does include all sides of the conflict)
1184-c. 1860 – Various Christian Inquisitions – Europe – 17,500
scottfromsc.blogspot.com.au...

Let me mock your inane comments some more, read this site that exposes your ignorance
thekingdomcome.com...

Atheism is a religion with a fairly hefty death toll, so effectively you are also right.

Seriously, when are you going to stop? You are making yourself ridicule. You are arrogant, if not insultant. You are using fallacious arguments to "prove" what your hatred of atheism wants to prove. You look much more yourself like an integrist. Your methods are those of fascists. You despise and insult whenever someone tries to disagree with you.

Atheist terrorism does not exist. Terrorists, killers of all sorts, dictators, blah, have all their own motives to kill, which motives are other than their atheism. They do not do it because they are atheists. They do it because of other reasons.

I suggest you stop posting on ATS. You're reducing the average quality of the site with posts like yours. It is very sad to see.

Or else, you also have the option to consider that others might have a right to a different opinion, instead of unloading your own truth (which, besides, is not even true) as fact.

Will this fit in your head? Atheism is NOT a religion, nor a "belief in nothing", far less even a "belief that life is worth zero". Your very first statement, the subject of your thread in itself, is already flawed. And all of your answers smell hate, despise, anger and close-mindedness.

Relax and open to the others.

Originally posted by darkbake
Atheism is a belief system that holds science as its God

That's complete nonsense. Scientific literacy and atheism are not particulary correlated. Trust me, there are just as many stupid atheists as there are stupid religious people. Also, the majority of the world's christians have no problem with science - this seems to stem almost exclusively from fundemantal christians in the US.

, and denies the reality of religions.

That would be silly, like denying the existance of helicopters, lamp posts or small children. Religions exist, and have done for many thousands of years.

There are probably a multitude of different philosophies that take the place of religion for the atheist, and any one of these, being belief systems, could cause someone to want to extinguish from the earth anyone who does not believe in the same ideals.

Atheists don't share, or hold to, any particular belief system.

A belief system does not have to be divine. In fact, ones that purport to be based in science are often more dangerous, because their followers are outright convinced they know the truth.

For atheists that are interested in science, just like their religious counterparts, new ideas that challenge current thinking are always the most interesting. It's called progress, which the religious extremists in this particular forum seem hell bent on averting. I'll say it again - the majority of religious people embrace science. Only a few of you don't.

reply to post by borntowatch


Again, they killed for POWER and didn't use atheism as an excuse... Religious believers do, and that's a FACT!

reply to post by borntowatch


I have also been to Cambodia - believe me there's a heck of alot more bodies down there!

OP is gyetting alot of stick for this thread and i have to agree with the majority. However people have killed in the NAME of atheism but whether that was their real motives is highly unlikely. Power seems more likely.

The best example is Stalin....
Whilst he was actually raised a christian and trained as an orthodox priest once he came to power he 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.

Stalin's role in the fortunes of the Russian Orthodox Church is complex. Continuous persecution in the 1930s resulted in its near-extinction as a public institution: by 1939, active parishes numbered in the low hundreds (down from 54,000 in 1917), many churches had been leveled, and tens of thousands of priests, monks and nuns were persecuted and killed. Over 100,000 were shot during the purges of 1937–1938

Now killing 100,000 people because they believe in religion when you are trying to force atheism on them is about as close as it's going to get to atheist terrorism IMO.

reply to post by MrXYZ


@ Mr XYZ if you read the above post you will see you are incorrect on this.

Originally posted by Acessallareas
reply to post by MrXYZ

 

@ Mr XYZ if you read the above post you will see you are incorrect on this.

edit on 18-7-2012 by Acessallareas because: redeit

That post actually confirms my assessment!

They went against religions because religions are a means to control the masses...ergo something that was a threat to their power. Atheism wasn't the driver.

Read the post again

Religious terrorists on the other hand commit their crimes BECAUSE of religion.

reply to post by borntowatch

the belief that all humanity are nothing but animals. All humanity have no real value. Life is of no importance.

Give me one reason why the existence of a God or an afterlife gives life MORE meaning. Give me one reason to think that an animal's life and a human's life aren't valuable. Humanity ARE NOTHING BUT ANIMALS, but that only deprives our lives of meaning IF you're a complete jackass who has something against animals.

The fact that when I die I am gone, actually DEAD, makes life MORE meaningful and MORE valuable because of its scarcity. If anything the promise of eternal life or eternal punishment CHEAPEN life in the here and now.

but I think its worth noting that atheism has more bloody hands and a larger death toll than all the religions put together.

This is debatable. The point I would make is that atheists do not kill because of atheism, where as there are Christians/Muslims who's violence is directly linked to their beliefs. Atheism is an absence of belief, so it's near impossible to draw any connection between the violence of atheistic regimes (usually communists) and the fact that they don't believe.

more violent with less values.

Most atheists have values similar to their Christian counter-parts, at least in the Western world, this is because despite the differences in beliefs the society has reached a sort of collective morality and system of values. Contrary to popular belief religion often holds back moral progress because many sects propose an absolute morality that cannot be altered. The stereotype of atheists having no morality is grounded in ignorant misconceptions.

Are there violent regimes that are atheistic? Sure there are. You can draw a connection between a Muslim's desires to destroy infidels and reach paradise and his decision to blow himself up. But you can't draw a connection between an atheist's disbelief in Allah and an afterlife and his decision to kill someone.

reply to post by borntowatch

Its a religion.

In order for atheism to be a religion...

theism has to be a religion.

Are you prepared to tell Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and those who practice Shinto that they are all actually part of the same religion?

Atheism is the negation of theism, it is a disbelief or lack of belief in gods, in order for it to be a religion simple theism needs to be a religion. And yet there are religious atheists, those who practice ancestor worship and some Buddhist sects are technically atheistic... and there are non-religious theists, such as deists or simply those that seek their own path and reject religious labels.

By the way, has anyone in this thread come up with a credible example of "atheist terrorism"?

I believe that such a thing does not exist - therefore I would call into question the very substance (if it even deserves such a label) of the OP.

Thread and post like this make me take religious nut jobs less and less serious

All the ignorance... your priest taught your young mind well.

Hey, next time, read a book or research something without bias, instead of sticking to SOMEONE else's ideals.

Oh yeah keep telling us how we pray to Darwin and hold science convention every Sunday so we can eat and drink Darwin's flesh and blood.

And don't forget to read on your holy book that killing is bad, you know, otherwise you would not have a clue whether killing is good or bad. While you are at it, make sure your Slaves are obedient!

Originally posted by MrXYZ
That post actually confirms my assessment!

They went against religions because religions are a means to control the masses...ergo something that was a threat to their power. Atheism wasn't the driver.

Exactly. The purpose was maybe the removal of religion, in the facts, but the reason was not religion in itself. The reason was merely political, i.e. communism was rejecting the idea of religion, and because he wanted to apply communism to the letter, then religions had to be fought.

It was not a fight of "I don't believe in your god therefore you must die".
It was a fight of "The theory of my political ideologies says that you must not have a religion".

Very different. But try to explain this to some person who thinks that atheism is a religion...

[Edited to add:]
Actually, indeed, Stalin was a Christian Orthodox. He was religious. He just couldn't openly admit.

Originally posted by luciddream
don't forget to read on your holy book that killing is bad

... but in the name of which they decided that they had to run crusades anyway, killing innocent people including kids, raping women, burning entire villages.

Popes are historically speaking, the most amazing mass murderers.