Khalliqa

Curious,

Has there been a dominant philosophy that has not produced war?


~Peace~
Khalliqa

thentian

The best way to learn about religious persecution in the Soviet Union is to simply read about the history of the Orthodox Church. Wikipedia has a good article here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Orthodox_Church

The total number of clergy put to death were about 100 000 during the bolshevik and stalinist eras. That is certainly a horrifying number, but nowhere near the number of 40 million so often toted by theists. I strongly suspect that number is reached by adding together numbers of deaths in the various purges and including the huge number of people who died of hunger after the early failed agricultural reforms (collectivisation).

It is certainly not unjustified to say that the clergy was persecuted "in the name of atheism", but it is likely that the real motive was to confiscate the property of the church in order to improve the goverments rather bad economic situation.

Demon

The Earth is round, but what if Hitler and Darth Vader said so? :grin:

Minimalist

That fine xtian, Henry VIII, did pretty much the same thing. Perhaps he was an atheist, too?

Martian Astronomer

If you believe in a round Earth, you might as well help build the Nazi Death Star.

Noe Sandoval

Soviet history never fails to disturb. Thanks for the research.

So about as many clergy were executed by the state as witches burnt at the stake. And for property of all things. Disturbing coincidence. Unfortunately it seems that the 40 million statistic will continue to be used by people like Dinesh D'Souza and Rabbi Shmuley, while their listeners eat it up. I don't think that number is ever going away no matter how many times we refute it .

Rofl!

dr lazer blast

Its not guilt by association. If you take a small glance at history, you will see that christian dictators haven't come close to the numbers set up by stalin and the other atheists, which implies that atheism has something to do with it.

Also it has nothing to do with the number of religious people killed, but the number of total people killed. The 20 million killed by stalin are religious, intellectuals, whatever, but the point is the evidence shows that atheist rules kill more of their citizens, A LOT MORE of their citizens than religious leaders do.

Noe Sandoval

Wouldn't it be more accurate to attribute the deaths to Stalinism and Maoism? The philosophy the communism must be violently established and violently protected from criticism?

Other points have been brought up in this thread as well, such as the fact the the post-World War II population was significantly larger than the population of previous times. Added to this the Soviet Union had a far more advanced collection of tools at its disposal.

ModernHeretic

This may be true of Marxist countries such as the Soviet Union, but what about western democracies such as France, England, and Sweden where many/most people are atheists?

While it may certainly be true that Stalin killed a lot of people, I hardly think this demonstrates that atheism leads to killing people. Personally, I don't think it makes a lot of sense to kill people because of what you don't believe. Rather, I would argue that Stalin killed a lot of people partly because he was a Marxist, and partly because he was a paranoid authoritarian dictator.

GenesisNemesis

Have you ever thought that maybe it's communism that has something to do with it, or fascism, perhaps? The reason Stalin killed off so many people wasn't because he was an atheist, but it was because he was trying to create "factory farms", for "collective farming" purposes (strictly communist, I might add), along with other things. This is basic history.

Now, does that sound like anything the atheists today are trying to do?

Why would an atheist kill so many intellectuals who would do nothing but benefit society? Perhaps it was because Stalin was... a communist? Perhaps it was because he didn't want the communist party overthrown? Yes? There is no reason to assume that Stalin killed so many people simply because he felt he was free from all moral "obligations" because he didn't believe in God. Einstein didn't believe in a personal God either, but that didn't stop him from being a compassionate person. Does that mean you have to associate Einstein with communism and Stalin? Certainly not.

Even if one is free from all moral obligations, that does not mean they will automatically start killing people.

Moreover, do you think Genghis Khan was an atheist because he killed so many more people than Christians? Do you think Julius Caesar was an atheist, too? Just how many atheists do you think there are who have ruled throughout the centuries?

Thank you very much.