pug846

This is from the book of Matthew:

16. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? 17. Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.

--
The quote might be referring to men and you can "know them" by their actions, but I believe you can "know" an ideology by what type of crowd it attracts. If an ideology consistently brings about murderers and terrorist...And I don't know that they can even claim that those murders weren't following their holy books. Were things like the crusades all that different that many things that went on in the Bible?

bonduca

Hmmm...two words. Spanish Inquisition.
Two more...Bloody Mary
Two more...Medieval Europe (in general)

Just for starters....

Humans are bloodthirsty bastards, and periodically kill each other off in large numbers. Theist ideology has been no less bloodthirsty than atheist.

Can you prove that historically there have been more atheists than theists in existence? Otherwise, my money is on the theists, for sheer numbers.

Jamie_L

In general, body count is quite relevant. If a hypothetical religion preached that it's believers to kill all babies except their own, and the followers acted on it, we'd all feel fairly comfortable criticizing that belief based on the violent acts.

If a belief system lends itself to being used as a justification for violent acts/atrocities, then we should rightly criticize it. How a belief system is commonly interpretted and put into action by its followers is part of how the belief system stands on it's own." In some ways, maybe this is more important. The OT has all sorts of divinely justified atrocities. Christianity is probably better judged on what people have done with it than by all the bloodshed in its holy texts.

Furthermore, Christians are often spouting off about how you need their religion to be moral, and how those of us without it are bound to be frightfully immoral. If Christianity has historically been used as justification for atrocities, then this is evidence against the idea that Christianity creates morality. Maybe even the opposite is true.

Jamie

ManM

pug846,

You are making the hypothesis that the beliefs of Christianity are responsible for men committing atrocities. I am simply offering an alternative hypothesis, and one which I find much more reasonable. Just as Christianity has murderers in it's ranks, it also has Saints. The same can be found in any religion, and also within the ranks of atheists. This fact leads me away from general criticisms based upon a specific group's actions. Now if all the members of a specific group acted in a certain way, only then I would look at their beliefs as being relevant.

Jamie_L,

You are faced with the same difficulty that I presented to pug846, specifically that there is not homogeneity in the actions of the believers. There are also many accounts of Christians being kind and charitable. Any general critique of Christianity or atheism cannot simply ignore these people. The fact is, there are people whom we would consider to be good or bad within all intellectual groups. What happens all too often is that group A will point to the saints in it's own ranks and contrast them with the sinners in group B, all while ignoring the rest of the picture. And so instead of criticizing an idea based on the actions of it's adherents, I prefer to analyze the idea itself. Seriously, I do not need an example of atrocity to tell me that "kill those who disagree with me" is a bad doctrine. And so I say we let the ideas stand on their own and criticize them accordingly.

We are in agreement about the claim that religion is necessary for morality. If it were the case, we should expect to see a pile of moral religious people and a pile of immoral infidels. But reality does not conform to our expectations, and so the idea must be cast aside or refined. With specific reference to Christianity, I find the idea even more amusing because it is inconsistent with Christian teachings. If we are created in God's image, the very image of goodness, then goodness is a part of human nature. The fall tarnished the image but did not destroy it, and so now both good and evil are within human nature. That being said, all the tools necessary for morality are already found within human nature, and thus are not provided by religion. While Christianity may claim to be a roadmap of sorts, it certainly cannot be necessary for morality. Then again, inconsistency hasn't bothered many Christians before. <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

Vorkosigan

It is a general property of people holding authoritarian belief systems -- Christianity, Communism, Islam, Facism, Nationalism, etc -- that they kill people who disagree with them. The existence of decent people holding these beliefs does not alter that fact.

On the other hand, there are no mass killings by atheists in the name of atheism. Communists killed in the name of Communism, not atheism (they also killed atheists who were not communists).

The second problem with your argument, at least from the Xtian point of view, is that basically it says belief is irrelevant. if people are good or bad according to their individual characteristics, then Christianity is worthless as a moral trainer and guide.

Thanks, I feel that way too.

Michael

Peter P.

Stalinesque Communist regimes and others like them persecuted religion and to some extent illegalized it because the power of a religious leader was detremental to their own positions. In thier eyes, allegiance to a religious leader, often in a foreign nation, is allegiance against them. Furthermore, in the example of Stalin, Russian Orthodoxy was long assosiated with royal Russia, the czars, and it doesn't seem to conform with communist ideals to suppost a religion that has been supported by a bloodline for almost half a century.

echidna

Historically I don’t think atheism has had the opportunity to organise itself into a large mainstream body. I fear that if it were to, it would prove no morally better than any other large group of people.

Certainly I’ve seen sufficient atheistic hostility, hatred and bigotry on this site to convince me that there is adequate emotional investment in one’s beliefs to make possible immoral atrocity in the name of anti-theism. Human immorality, just add numbers and organisation. This mass hostility is a tragic property of large groups of human beings.

Once again I think the problem is lumping Xianity (and for that matter atheism) as a single entity. Certainly I think there are many Xian denominations which we would agree teach immoral practices.

However at the same time I think there are also many branches (notably the more liberal ones) which we would largely morally agree with. No, I wouldn’t count these as worthless. Moral teaching is moral, whether it is theistic or atheistic.

The old debate Theism versus Atheism, who’s more moral ? is a little too simplistic for my liking.

Vorkosigan

Originally posted by echidna:
Historically I don’t think atheism has had the opportunity to organise itself into a large mainstream body. I fear that if it were to, it would prove no morally better than any other large group of people.

I don't agree with this. Groups much smaller than the current number of atheists in the world have routinely been involved in murderous actions. Think of the AUM crowd in Japan, the Manson family....heck, there were fewer Nazis in Germany than atheists in the US. The issue isn't numbers, its the type of organization.

Consider the tens of thousands of organizations in the US, from Infidels to the US Chess Association to the AAAS, that do not commit heinous acts. It's not like there's some critical mass above which human nature operates and organizations are simply meaningless. It's the opposite. When organizations are based on belief systems that are authoritarian in nature, such as christianity, communism, etc, violence is inevitable. When they are based on accountability, democracy, due process and open procedures, then evil does not occur.

The thing about atheism is that it has no belief system on which to hang a structure and organization. There isn't any authority one can appeal to. There's nothing to kill or die for. It's just a statement "I don't believe in gods." It entails nothing, other than sleeping in on religious holidays. Even if all of us atheists were organized into one large group there would still be no violence.

Consider too, that many local churches/religious orgs are involved in various forms of violent advocacy, from militias to a$$holes like Fred Phelps. Are any local atheist groups, of which there are many, involved in similar inhuman activities?

Once again I think the problem is lumping Xianity (and for that matter atheism) as a single entity. Certainly I think there are many Xian denominations which we would agree teach immoral practices.

However at the same time I think there are also many branches (notably the more liberal ones) which we would largely morally agree with. No, I wouldn’t count these as worthless. Moral teaching is moral, whether it is theistic or atheistic.


I'd agree to a certain extent, but ultimately theism rests on authority. To the extent that theists reject external authority and follow the promptings of their own hearts, they can be trusted to be moral. Moral teaching is of course moral teaching -- that's a tautology.

In any case, I waas simply pointing out the argument that the first poster was making -- namely, that the way he had constructed his argument, he'd made Christianity worthless as a moral guide.

Michael

Bane

I think if the Christians back during the Crusades and the various Inquisitions had automatic weapons and tanks along with a larger population base to kill they would have easily out done the Communists in carnage totals.

ManM

turtonm,

I disagree with your 'fact'. It is not a general property of those who believe authoritarian belief systems to kill those who disagree. I can quite equally say it is a general property of Christians to be kind and charitable. The reality of the situation proves us both wrong. This sort of generalization is and always will be a dead end.

Personally, I think you have something important in common with all of the groups you mentioned. That is, you claim that a certain way of thinking is dangerous and harmful to society. It logically follows that it would be good to get rid of that way of thinking, and utilitarian ethics can be used to justify all sorts of persecution on these grounds. If you wish to point fingers at a belief, that might be one to contemplate.

Now your second point takes to the extreme what I wrote to Jamie_L. Yes, religion is not necessary for morality. But I would not go so far as to call it worthless. Instead, I look at it as a roadmap. You can certainly find a destination without a map, but having a map makes it much easier. And so I fail to see how you progress from 'Religion is not necessary for morality' to 'Religion is worthless as a moral guide'.