And the Crusaders weren't politically motivated? You have a very selective view of history.

According to Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, atheism is a core belief of communism.

So when it comes to Christians, the religion is all to blame. When it comes to Atheists, the politics is all to blame.

By the way, throw in a few low-brow insults and maybe I'll think you are well educated.

You are telling me that the church blessed soldiers and generals and whatnot to go off to war for political reasons. Hmmmmmm. If you are willing to insult the church so bad, go ahead.

Maybe because there is no religion in athiesm. Did that cross your mind yet?

Oncemore, name one part of the word or definition of athiesm that even refers to how you should feel about and treat other people.

Oh yea, I couldn't care less how educated you think I am.

Actually, I DO have a rather low opinion of the Catholic Church of that time. Does that surprise you?

"Oncemore, name one part of the word or definition of athiesm that even refers to how you should feel about and treat other people."

Why should I when you keep making my point? Atheism frees the communists to define right and wrong by the pursuit of a particular political reality: communism. That is why commies oppressed Christians, Muslims, and Jews. The pesky religions elicited loyalty, and a code of behavior, that would inhibit the goals of the state.

Atheism, by eliminating obstacles to the justification of the imposition of communist reality (say, by starvation as a policy goal to accomplish forced collectivitation), bears some causal relation to the effects of the imposition of that reality.

Why do you think commies were such ardent atheists? Its not like shared wealth and religion are mutually exclusive? See the Jerusalem Church in Acts and Liberation Theology. The problem was religion was a competitor, and inhibited useful and necessary behavior (from the point of view of the commie state).

Afterall, the commies are the only political movement to adopt, as a matter of national statement and belief, atheism.

AH, the old "evils of history" argument. Boy this NEVER gets old! "The Crusades! The Inquistion!" Cries the atheist. "Stalin! Pol Pot(etc.)!" Christians may respond. Then both say "Hitler!" at the same time- I was actually recently debating this somewhere in this forum, whether or not Hitler was a Christian(I maintain he wasn't at all although he may have played one on TV)
Why do these debates always come down to this? And why does it matter?

Alive!!

I don't think Communism oppressed religion because it "deprived them of right and wrong." I think that is a Christian spin on the reason "Communist" countries embraced atheism. They oppressed non-atheists and religious groups because they felt that they were a symbol of "bourgeois decadence," and a way for the ways of the past to live on--through the church. Religion was not the only thing that the "Communists" oppressed--let's get real now. And let's not forget the Orthodox Church in Russia helped to oppress people under the Tsars. And Protestantism is a religion designed to reinforce middle-class values. But, of course, Stalinist or Maoist justifications for oppression of any group just because of what they believe does not make the action right, they just serve to explain their actions better than the oversimplifying spin that was suggested above.

And anyway, starving millions of people was not an action motivated by atheism itself and that was the point I think dmv was making. I don't think he was suggesting that "Communist" regimes did not oppress religious groups--they did, of course.

[This message has been edited by Le pede (edited February 07, 2001).]

This meme stuff is really interesting, If you look at it in an evolutionary context, a meme's success is determined by the success of the host. So something about the christian meme has been very succesful in order to survive this long. People with this meme have for whatever reason survived well, produced a lot of offspring, and prevailed above a lot of other memes.

"Meme" is a metaphor No "meme" has been shown to actually exist. Just because Dawkins likes the idea, doesn't mean it's true. Genes are actually distict from their expression; such separation cannot yet be discerned between memes and ideas or behaviors.

Frankly, with all due respect to Dawkins and Minsky, I think memetics is a dumb idea. Ideas, ideologies, cultures and scientific theories all evolve in qualitatively different ways from species; more importantly, they evolve in qualitatively different ways from each other.

Comparing people here to Nazis, Stalinists, etc. is usually not productive, especially in one's first week here. Neither theism nor atheism has a corner on good or evil.

Marx opposed religion because in his time, the church was firmly allied with the state, lending theological support to temporal political authority. No political revolution would have been possible without ideologically neutralizing the influence of the church.

[b]
I think memetics is a dumb
[b/]

Yea, everyone has one and noone thinks theirs stinks.


Comparing people here to Nazis, Stalinists, etc. is usually not productive, especially in one's first week here. Neither theism nor atheism has a corner on good or evil


Not sure who that was aimed at, I think we've all been here more than a week. My comparison was a response to a charge made by someone else that athiests are like Nazi's when athiesm only implies lack of belief in something, not some sort of mandate that all athiests are to de-evangelize the world and impose anything on anyone else. Christians and Nazi's have both done quite a bit of imposing and did so because they DO have these mandates. This is the distinction I was trying to point out.

I think the distinction between a meme and an idea is that a meme has embedded within it a means to spread and means to adapt and the ability to change it's host. The wheel was a good idea, but it doesn't have any method of inspiring its propogation other than the fact that it is a good idea.

Christianity has within it each of these. If it can take root, that person is then compelled to spread it. That person is fundamentally changed, and the language of the bible is so vague, people are able to stretch it to fit anything at all.

So if all of that sounds "dumb" to you, sorry to waste your time, oh, and thank you for informing us of our dumbness.

David

Ernest Sparks

How about a bit of the old boy himself:

Viruses of the Mind, Richard Dawkins, 1991

Ernie