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If the whole world were atheist, would the world be a better place?
- Thread starter Spiderman
- Start date
Specify please
It's a link with a lot of specifics. Did you click on it.
I recognize that you think this sort of thing is compelling.
Maybe the specifics have disappeared because you just jumped from a parallel universe where afterlives are real to one where they aren't. Mandela Effect and all that, right?
Its bull, not one item is evidence
Evidence : the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid.
Its bull, not one item is evidence
Evidence : the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid.
The Kilted Heathen
Crow FreyjasmaðR
And sources of that are...?
Said where? By whom?
I sincerely doubt that. So long as there are riches and land to seek and plunder, human greed will win out. One doesn't need a god to justify taking something from a weaker neighbor, one only needs the might to do so. I'm sure there would be less slaughter through somewhat recent history without Abrahamic religions, but to put such a number on all of religion is quite silly and dramatic, I think.
One source is Yaroslavsky himself. Who records in his reminiscences how a boyhood friend was shocked to hear young Stalin say, “You know, they are fooling us. There is no God.”
Members of the Politburo, secretaries etc, those who had daily access to Stalin at work. And his daughter.
Wars of religion in which In excess of 800,000,000 deaths occured.
Albigensian Crusade, 1208-49
Algeria, 1992-
Baha'is, 1848-54
Bosnia, 1992-95
Boxer Rebellion, 1899-1901
Christian Romans, 30-313 CE
Croatia, 1991-92
English Civil War, 1642-46
Holocaust, 1938-45
Huguenot Wars, 1562-1598
India, 1992-2002
India: Suttee & Thugs
Indo-Pakistani Partition, 1947
Iran, Islamic Republic, 1979-
Iraq, Shiites, 1991-92
Jews, 1348
Jonestown, 1978
Lebanon 1860 / 1975-92
Molucca Is., 1999-
Mongolia, 1937-39
Northern Ireland, 1974-98
Russian pogroms 1905-06 / 1917-22
St. Bartholemew Massacre, 1572
Shang China, ca. 1300-1050 BCE
Shimabara Revolt, Japan 1637-38
Sikh uprising, India, 1984-91
Spanish Inquisition, 1478-1834
Taiping Rebellion, 1850-64
Thirty Years War, 1618-48
Tudor England
Vietnam, 1800s
Witch Hunts, 1400-1800
Xhosa, 1857
Arab Outbreak, 7th Century CE
Arab-Israeli Wars, 1948-
Al Qaeda, 1993-
Crusades, 1095-1291
Dutch Revolt, 1566-1609
Nigeria, 1990s, 2000s
Note the list does not included those killed by Hitler (Catholic) and Stalin (Georgian Orthodox Christian), Pol Pot (Buddhist), their wars were not based on religious greed
The Kilted Heathen
Crow FreyjasmaðR
So then the quote is attributed to Stalin. And as for people who knew him, it's also a well-known fact that those people were all but forced to provide "official" accounts of him to maintain the illusion necessary to the "cult of personality" that was Stalinism. (N. N. Maslov, "Short Course of the History of the All-Russian Communist Party") If they said that he loved moonlit walks on the beach and puppies, it was officially so.
It also still does not follow why a Christian - much less a theist - would work with the League of Militant Atheists to actually destroy religion in the Soviet Union. And one thing that Stalin was, was a Marxist; Marxism being infamously against religion, with Marx himself saying that "Communism begins where atheism begins". Why on earth would a Christian believe that? A Soviet slogan was even "Let us drive out the Capitalists from the earth, and God from Heaven!”
You also mention Pol Pot as being Buddhist, but this is just as fallacious. While he may have been raised Buddhist, this means next to nothing; I was raised Christian, and yet now I am hardly so. Pol Pot himself banned religions - Buddhism included - and violently persecuted them.
Yet again, this does not mean that "atheism leads to violence" or any such statement. It is purely a recognition that people - even atheists - have the potential to be absolutely terrible.
Okay, you gave a great list of Abrahamic wars, with a few smatterings of Hindus and Buddhists. Some of them like the Thirty Years' War could not very strongly be considered "religious wars"; while that war began as a religious spat, it quickly became a continuation of the French-Habsburg rivalry which was about... *drumroll* land. Others you just give entire countries, or people like when you just say "Jews". That tells us little in regards to wars (and with them, especially when you say it doesn't include the actions of Hitler). Others, like the Boxer and Taiping Rebellions, seem more to be wars against religion rather than wars of religion.
I mean, we could also pull up a list of non-religious wars. Philip and Axelrod’s three-volume Encyclopedia of Wars lists 1,763 wars fought throughout human history. Of those, only 123 (7%) are religious in nature.
Look, Stalin may or may not have said it as as child or student, there is no evidence either way. The only records are from third parties after the fact (long time after said events and after his death). And making stupid comments about moonlit walks as comparison is irrelevant.
The word is "nationalism", (god bless America ring any bells?). Bear in mind millions of atheists were also killed or excited to labour camps.
Banning opposition to his rule does not mean Pol Pot was atheist,
"Pol Pot targeted not just different religions as differences, but education, science and medicine too. Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge were composed of Buddhists and Pol Pot himself was a communist and Theravada Buddhist."
Was Pol Pot an atheist? - FreeThoughtPedia
As yet you have made assertions that only make sense to American revisionist history which brands communism as evil (McCarthyism) and anything not American style nationalism as "anti everything we hold dear"
They were all wars started in the name of religion, whether for a particular label or against it.
And it seems the 7% (ill take your word) accounted for over 800 million deaths which was my contention from the beginning. One thing is for sure, given the ubiquitous nature of religion,the vast majority of fighter held some sort of religious fairth.
You've asserted that:
1) Stalin was a Christian whilst he was in the Kremlin
2) Pol Pot was a Buddhist whilst in charge of the Khmer Rouge
What evidence would demonstrate to you that they were atheists?
There's no shortage of world leaders through history who tore down religion to make way for their own.
There's also no shortage of world leaders who used temporary alliances to achieve their aims.
So then why didn't Stalin actually eradicate religion? He didn't; he diminished its power and brought it under his control, but his regime ended up officially allowing churches.
Issuing licenses and official approvals to churches, monasteries, priests, etc., doesn't seem like the action of someone who is looking to eradicate all religion. Don't you agree?
Simple factual evidence.
Given that both these individuals are dead, you aren't likely to be able to pull a direct question and answer response of "Are you an atheist?" "Yes I am an atheist".
What would therefore constitute "simple factual evidence" in you're view?
I guess all the Churches Soso razed means nothing. Or that he implemented a 7 day workweek.
No. The Soviet Union wanted the elimination of religion. It is mistaken to treat the use of different tactics or the fact it would take time to achieve to interpret that they had any other intention.
Stalin was head of the USSR during the Atheistic Five Year Plan (1932-1937). The Goal was the total elimination of Religion in the USSR within five years. It can't get any more obvious than that.
Stalin's five-year-plan for atheism
The attitude of the Bureaucracy towards the Church has passed through the usual zig-zags of Stalinist policy. During the ultra-left period of forcible collectivisation and the Five Year Plan in Four an attempt was made to liquidate the Church and its influence by government decree. Starting in 1929 churches were forcibly closed and priests arrested and exiled all over the Soviet Union. The celebrated Shrine of the Iberian Virgin in Moscow – esteemed by believers to be the “holiest” in all Russia was demolished – Stalin and his Government were not afraid of strengthening religious fanaticism by wounding the feelings of believers as Lenin and Trotsky had been! Religion, they believed, could be liquidated, like the kulak, by a stroke of the pen. The Society of Militant Atheists, under Stalin’s orders, issued on May 15th 1932, the “Five Year Plan of Atheism” – by May 1st 1937, such as the “Plan”, “not a single house of prayer shall remain in the territory of the USSR, and the very concept of God must be banished from the Soviet Union as a survival of the Middle Ages and an instrument for the oppression of the working masses.”!
Paul Dixon on Stalin’s Five Year Plan of Atheism
The purpose of issuing licenses was to steadily reduce the number of "licensed" churches using underhand tactics, primarily by getting people to vote for closing their own church to make it appear "democratic".
6-day. They abolished Sundays so people couldn't celebrate the Sabbath.
Soviet calendar | Wikiwand
Documentary evidence by peers would be a good start.
Not McCarthy style propaganda that seems to make up most of the "evidence" that many Americans use as history.
That's right: it doesn't matter.
Stalin's actions match with what we would expect from a violent man who wanted to eliminate threats to his power and wanted - like many theocrats - to re-shape religion according to his values.
Yes, things could be very nasty for someone in the Soviet Union whose religious beliefs didn't match those endorsed by the leader of the country, but the same could be said for a Protestant living in the Papal States... and you wouldn't say that the Pope was an atheist, would you?