Jeffrey Formosa

I take it no has read the whole thing http://worldzone.net/family/johnand...indexztwo.shtml

I think the Christian religion is a good tool for war because the Romans made it for war. Economy, law and war are the main reasons the Romans made the Christian religion.

Yahzi

1. When I smash your foot with a baseball bat, the crushed cells emit a chemical which causes other cells to emit chemicals which causes electrons to run up your nerves into your brain where a bunch of other cells emit chemicals and nerves. All of this is genetically pre-programmed. Therefore, I ask you: on what grounds do you feel pain?

Maybe because pain and outrage are the freaking point of all the genetic machinery?

2. How can you ask who determines morality after just having asserted that it might be scripted in our genes? Do you think what is scripted in our genes is self-determined?

3. How do we decide anything like this? All people talk: does that mean talking is in our genes. Why yes, yes it does. Does that mean English or Spanish or Greek is in our genes? Why, no it doesn't. How ever did we figure that out? Gosh, could it be that morality is in people's genes, however different the various expressions of it seem? How ever would we go about determining that? Any ideas?

Herakles

So what? The only thing that matters is whether his atheism is what prompted his atrocities. He was also a father. Does this make fathers bad?

The same applies to theists. When some people claim that Hitler was a Christian and therefore Christianity is wrong, it makes me mad. Is his Christianity what prompted his murder of the Jews? No. It was his rascism that caused it.

In regards to the OP, I think that the bad (and good) things some religions cause would have occured anyway. In my opinion, religion is simply an unnecesary middleman used as an excuse for events that would have happened anyway. If organized religion had never existed war, hate, and intolerance would still be here and good people would continue doing good things. Things would just be under another name. Instead of killing each other over the proper way to be baptised, we would be doing it over our political ideologies (not that we already don't).

GaryP

I agree that it is a leap to say that Christianity caused Hitler to kill 6 million people.

But don't you think that 2000 or so years of the church calling Jews "Christ Killers" may have had a little bit to do with the self-justification of his atrociities?

Magus55

If God exists, morality would come from us being created in His image.

RUmike

There have been a handful of atheists like Stalin that have started wars and killed millions, just as theists have. But the difference is that I've never known of a war fought in the name of atheism, whereas many wars have been fought because of religion. Did Stalin kill 22 million people because he was an atheist and his victims were not? I'm pretty sure not.

variant 13

Yes but that would mean that they should show some consistency, looking back over recorded history I'd guess god/s were sick and slightly twisted.

Anyway you're anthropomorphising, projecting what you/humans are on to something.

Hawkpeter

It would seem there is evidence of dogma found both within religion and outside of it.

Regardless of what the dogma is called it always, when taken to the extreme, breeds arrogance.

"When people believe they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave"

- http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html

No matter if people are athiests or thiests there will be wars and atrocities.

"Its human nature!" - If that means that its in our genes or its the result of our endocrinology, without going into the research this makes sense to me. Question is, what are we going to do about it?

We have democracy. I think that is a system that despite its failings at least works well in distributing the power and the authority. I'll take that over any dogmatic regime or religion on the block.

Opera Nut

Read The Popes Against the Jews. Also The Kidnaping of Edgardo Mortara, by the same author.

The Catholic Church had for many centuries called the Jews a problem, accused them of murdering gentiles for their blood, to put on their Passover matzoh, and other such lies. The Jews were expelled, tortured, forcibly converted, kept in overcrowded ghettoes, and always seen as the intractable "problem" because of their refusal to accept Jesus as Lord.

This eventually culminated in The Final Solution of Hitler's Extermination of undesirables, including Jews. This happened in Rome,after the Papal States lost nearly all their territory in revolutions.

Clarence Darrow defended two teenage boys in the kidnap and murder of Bobby Franks. As has been pointed out, he kept them from the death penalty.

Protestants are quite guilty of religious murders as well. Read about John Calvin inviting Michael Servetus to come to Geneva to debate him. Servetus was the world's first Unitarian - Universalist. When he went to Geneva, Calvin barbecued him on a pile of green wood, in order to prolong his suffering.

Mr. Bird

Some messages in another forum on iidb got me thinking about some of the American history I've read and about evil religious people (specifically Xian).

One of my all-time "favorites" has to be Reverend Colonel John Chivington of the Colorado Militia, whose men committed unspeakable atrocities against the Cheyenne. The ordained Methodist minister had this to say in 1864 (from "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee", Dee Brown, pgs. 86-87):

(emphasis mine)

WIthout going into specifics regarding the things he and his men did, here's a man who ranks (in my opinion, anyway) as one of the most evil and vile humans to have ever walked this planet. Though I'm sure some theists around here will vow that he wasn't a "True Christian (TM)"