It is grand scale generalisation, with inflammatory language, such as “no consideration of the rights of the life she carries”.
My head is fried by this.
I have a friend who is catholic by birth, christian by nature and with possibly the highest morals and ethics I know. She believes in God, believes in heaven and behaves as such.
She was to the forefront of the Irish Repeal movement on the abortion legislation referendum.
This polarisation of how groups “should” behave is not helpful.
I am appealing to those posters who use any form of terminology linked with mental ill health when discussing Adolf Hitler to consider a few issues:
There is no real evidence, and limited anecdotal evidence that Hitler was diagnised with mental illness. In a retrospective study in the nineties Fritz Redlich noted paranoid traits, but concluded that Hitler knew what he was doing, and relished doing it. Possibly his diagnosis, if he merited one was closer to anti social personality disorder with narcissistic traits.
Using terminology, even using stigmatising words associated with mental illness to describe Hitler is convenient and way off the mark. It is human to seek excuses for abject evil, “he must be mad” etc.
It is stigmatisation of those with real mental health problems to place that evil bastard in their midst.
Apologies, rant over.
Religion is a very simple and a complex concept at the same time, according to me.
I was born and bred Hindu, in the city of Hyderabad, India. A city built by the Muslim Nizams, with a fair share of current population either being hindu or muslim. Today I have friends of all religion: Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Sikh and Parsi. I even managed to speak to someone Buddhist monks a few years ago. I know some Jain families, a religion I doubt many of you might know.
I never saw any indifference in our views of what religion is when speaking to my friends.
No one ever gave me a speach on world harmony, WMD, etc.
All religions have a simple concept: you are part of a fragile ecosystem. Religion will tell you what is right, do that. Simple.
Unfortunately we are in a rat race to earn money. We don’t have time to realise what is right or wrong. Just spend some of your time to understand what your religion says. But, NO. That is not my priority.
This is where I see the problem stems up from.
All religions have GOD, not to scare you. Simply to show you the right path. Read your books and ask him/her, you will realise what is going wrong. But NO.
So what do we do? Recruit an interpreter. He is going to tell me what is right and wrong, in the name of the God. And those people (no offense to any religion, I have seen a fair share of such people in Hinduism that I am supposed to be following), who will interpret things for their benefit.
This is where I think religion becomes a very complex concept. We are giving the biggest asset in our body, OUR BRAIN, for someone to utilise for free.
Instead, in isolation, think what I did or I am going to do is right/correct?
I want to write a bit more but time is limited. I am not a frequent poster either so not eloquent as the others. I hope I got at least a point of mine across.
At the time of all those pioneers, in order to pursue a career in science (or natural philosophy, as it was called then) belief in god was the default position, and in many cases you needed to have the sponsorship of the church to advance your theories.
But while we are at it, let’s say a prayer for all the scientists and thinkers murdered by the church, because their findings were considered heretical.
We could make this some sort of totting up exercise if you want? I guarantee you that religion wouldn’t do well out of it.
I’ve already answered the point about Stalin, Pol pot, the Kim Jungs etc but you ignored it. These were deeply religious cultures, only they had replaced worshipping an imaginary god with worshipping a person, elevating their leader to the status of a deity. As Hitch put it so well, these are not regimes suffering from an excess of reason!
The point is wherever you find secular values in the ascendency, you also find improving living standards, life expectancies, greater freedom, healthier people, human rights, and freedom from persecution and oppression. Where you find religion in the ascendency you find brutality, oppression and human misery.
If you want to make a comparison, let’s look at the ten most secular societies, and the ten most religious and see how they track across key indicators of human well-being. Again I am certain that this study would not go well for religion.
All you are proving here, is exactly what people you are arguing with have suggested - that the bible is a confused, contradictory mess, which is exactly what you’d expect from a book with multiple authors, assembled over centuries and edited periodically to suit various political and social agendas.
But it doesn’t really matter what Jesus said in the bible, as none of it is true. Whenever I have any kind of discussion about religion with any religious person it is amazing how little they understand the flimsiness of their evidence, and how deeply unimpressive I find it. They seem to think that if you say something and give it a cheaper and verse, it conveys this unimpeachable weight.
I could argue for the literal truth of Harry Potter by the same logic. If someone disagrees with me I can just say ‘ah but in Chamber of Secrets, Chapter 6, page 12… Basically you can’t argue for the truth of a book using that book as the main source of evidence. That’s circular logic and it doesn’t work.
If you disregard the bible, there is no evidence for Jesus. No archaeological evidence. No contemporaneous accounts. Nothing.
Personally I think there was someone knocking about, whose followers were desperate to crowbar into the Old Testament prophecies, but then you couldn’t really move for apocalyptic end times preachers at the time. But the Jesus literally written about in the bible? Not a chance.
No it isn’t. Less people = less crime. Has it ever occurred to you that the reason churches are so opposed to abortion is because they want as many members as possible?
I understand your arguments, but they don’t really hit the point I was getting at. After years of being a convinced atheist, I discovered that contrarily to what I believed until then, there is something after all. Since I discovered it, my life has become a much more interesting one. One more worthy to be lived. That is all.
It’s all about personal experience as far as I’m concerned, not abstract belief.
By the way, I’m not in the slightest putting in doubt natural selection, or any other proven biological mechanism. I also don’t believe in an interventionist god. My position is that I don’t believe in anything I can’t feel and sense by myself.
Sorry to dip back into this thread, but just spotted this casually thrown out and it is simply factually untrue.
Stalin restablished the Russian Orthodox Church, legalising their activities and allowed them to hold services, celebrate Christmas and Easter, and gave them the monasteries that had been seized by the revolution in 1917.
There were myths and rumours in the 1940s Soviet Union that Stalin was secretly a l believer and had ascribed the victory of the Red Army in the Battle of Moscow to divine intervention (and he supposedly had a religious icon flown over the city as the Nazi’s approached to encourage that divine intervention) This is likely untrue, but the reintroduction of religion to public life in the USSR by Stalin was unexpected, and concerned many devout believers in the revolution, which had outlawed religion in 1917.
Stalin was very calculating and probably realised that he needed the backing of a church to reinforce his iron grip on the country. Much of the Soviet Union remained religious between 1917 and 1943, albeit in secret and despite it being criminal to practice. It’s also been suggested that the Allies persuaded Stalin to loosen the countries opposition to religious expression, as such oppression was detrimental to the war effort.
Whatever the reason though, your statement was that Stalin tried to eradicate Religion from the USSR. The opposite is true. He brought it back after 26 years of religion being outlawed. And then used religion to tighten his grip on power.
I’m sure you’re aware of this and not bothered (
) but my issue with this is that it’s a deeply unscientific proposition.
You would need to define what that something is and then find a way to establish its existence beyond your private revelation.
Of all the justifications for religion, the ‘I just know there is something’ argument is the most weak of all. I could also ‘just know’ something entirely different, and this gets us absolutely nowhere. Are we then having a debate about who knows it more, or are we putting aside objective truth in favour of us both having a private and bespoke version of reality?
For my own part, I don’t consider my own gut feelings about things a basis for what’s true. I’m a human being, riddled with infallibilities and unreliability, and I can accept that my sense lie to me all the time. My eyes see things that aren’t there. My ears hear things that aren’t there. And my brain is guilty of all kinds of moments of sensory confusion, that tells my that whatever my place in the web of life, I’m definitely not a scientific instrument.
Of course it’s not scientific. 
And that’s exactly why you’ll never see me trying to convince anyone about what I feel, or be angered if they think differently than me.
And again, as you still seem to believe that I’m arguing in favour of religion: I keep myself well away from any religious group, and even more, from any official church. I’m NOT in favour of them.
But that doesn’t mean that atheism should be the only valid standard position.
Spirituality (is that a word in English?) is something that can be experienced as I said before, very un-scientifically. Some people might find to it indirectly, through a pastor or a priest in a church/temple, but it’s a deeply personal course, helped by individuals one comes across. And yes, that key part can’t be put in words. It can only be experienced by oneself.
And as I said, if that key part is found at some point, then life becomes richer, more colorful, with a sense of purpose. I’m not able to express it more precisely than that I’m afraid, and that’s why I’ll never found any new religion. 
That’s the stance I have trouble with. You think that you get more out of life because you believe in the supernatural which cannot be tested, can’t be demonstrated and can’t be proven. Good on you if you think that but my learned friends and I on this side of the house much enjoy life without the almighty thanks very much.
That’s the misunderstanding about Atheism. Nothing about atheism rules out the existence of a god, just that it hasn’t met its burden of proof.
Isn’t that a function of how loosely atheism is defined though? I’ve seen definitions vary between the extremes…
Well in that case, we agree. Just in time before the match! 
Just caught up, been out all day, got home, watched the match and reviewed here.
As I thought about this thread I realized that I’ve not read anything here from any atheists that isn’t widely known. I am concluding that at present the conversation is fruitless as positions are entrenched, and mutual understanding isn’t growing, and respect is in danger of being on the wane.
I said earlier in the thread that I am a follower of Jesus, or at least I try to be. I find that in all aspects of life it is better when I pursue that. That’s my personal story on the religion thread.
Peace and love, and adieu to this thread.
Well, you didn’t seem to know Hitler wasn’t an atheist or that Stalin actually brought religion back into Russian public life…
If the Abrahamic god turned up tomorrow and said hello, I’d absolutely accept that he existed, no longer be an atheist and accept I was wrong. I wouldn’t worship him though as I’m not overly keen on huge parts of his books.
So what would it take to shake your christianity? What if Thor turned up tomorrow or Lord Ganesh? Entrenched I’m not as I’m perfectly willing to change my opinion based on facts and evidence. Are you?
My atheism is like this
Is there a God?
I don’t know, but there isn’t good evidence for one, and in fact the evidence seems to suggest there isn’t, so it doesn’t make sense to live my life as if there is one, and certainly not devote myself to one particular description of a god from the 100,000 or so people have come up with down the years.
As @Klopptimist says, not particularly entrenched. Show me the evidence, and I’ll change my mind in a heartbeat.
Just as a point of reference, in our lifetime there will never be evidence that a god doesn’t exist under a rock on the third moon of Jaglon Beta. Of course you then get into the discussion about what constitutes a god…….
Comes down to this for me. If god exists, why is he playing the world’s greatest game of hide and seek? As he turned up all the time 2000 and more years ago, why doesn’t he show himself (or herself) now? There’s zero good reason why not.