hatsoff

No. I just don't like the way everyone is treating Bede's OP, which frankly makes a lot of sense. Sure, it's not a convincing argument, but it offers up some interesting points.

No; there is one truth. It's just that in this case it is not identifyable.

hatsoff

I wouldn't know. Maybe we as a then-predominently Christian nation wanted to discourage pagan practices. Maybe the government believed Japan's religious beliefs were harmful to them or us. Or maybe it never happened at all, and you're mistaken about the whole thing.

Toto

More specifically, the American occupation forced Japan to separate religion and government, and forced the emperor to renounce his claim to divinity in the Shinto religion.

There was no comparable attempt that I know of to reform the German churches that had supported Hitler or the fascist forces in Europe.

hatsoff - it is best not to speculate if you don't know.

Tigers!

Netither atheists nor theists come out of such an argument as this without blood on their hands (no pun intended).
An earlier poster was talking of communism deaths, found this article
http://www.geocities.com/decommuniza.../Communism.htm.

One thing puzzles me though. If atheism was such an important part of communist thought (since materialism was the basic doctrine) pace Marx, Lenin, Mao etc: then why is it disowned?

johno

Atheism is nothing more than the opinion that god or gods do not exist. To connect atheism with killing people is fallacious . Therefore though atheists may kill lots and lots of people, they cannot do so because they are atheists. People who believe in the heliocentric system of planetary motion killed more people than the atheists or the christians, probably about the same number as those killed by the atheists and the christians put together. Believing in the heliocentric system is an existential matter: it is either true, false, or undecidable, just as atheism is either true, false or undecidable: neither beliefs have any moral implications.

johno

Djugashvillain

That website is grossly out of date; at least as it applies to Soviet Russia, and I have no doubt that the rest of the figures are similarly exaggerated. The most recent source I have concerning the Soviet Union during its purging years is this:

Barely seven million deaths, and certainly under ten million--not even approaching the ridiculous figure of twenty million your website gives.

hatsoff

That has been my point all along.

Djugashvillain

The key words here being 'if you don't know', and by the content of his post (correcting a factual mistake on your behalf), I think he meant 'if you don't know the facts', meaning that ignorant speculation is best left unsaid.

Dargo

The problem is that Christians can find plenty of verses in the Bible that support anti-semitism. This allows them to feel that their hatred is pleasing to god and that tolerance would not be pleasing to god. Modern Christians have fortunately gotten a lot better in this area.

This has certainly not been true historically. Martin Luther who was highly respected by German Protestants was a major Jew hater. He even said something about how we are at fault for not killing them. Luther might well have approved of Hitler's "solution" to the Jewish problem.

hatsoff

I didn't make any factual mistake. I admitted ignorance and Toto made a rude remark. My point remains: We often don't know what has happened; and when we do, we still often don't know why. That leaves us only to speculate.