That’s what you’re going with? Hundreds of words from me explaining Stalin’s attitude towards religion, his re-establishment of the church, and how he acted like a living god during his tenure. And you reply by taking my comments out of context, and awarding yourself ten points. That’s a shithouse move.
Fuck me. Is there any wonder people are losing their patience with you?
How can you honestly expect me to engage with your comments when you continue to pointedly, strategically, refuse to acknowledge your factual errors (like on Hitler and Stalin) and the substance of my points, keep making the same arguments irrespective of how we’ve answered them and refuse to answer anyone replies to them. Your entire attitude to this debate has been intellectually dishonest.
Fifth time of asking. The regimes you has characterised as ‘irreligious’ are actually very religious, only with a living person diefied and worshipped rather than a celestial god. States like Communist Russia, China, North Korea etc which might self define as Atheist or Secular demand the kind of blind devotion and adoration to the leadership as churches demand of their gods. Discuss.
When you’ve answered that, and acknowledge your errors, I’ll comment on some of the other points you’ve made. Until then, I’m not engaging with this nonsense.
On the surface of it it’s wonderful that people are moved by their faith to help others. Many atheists are also, only they are doing so with no promise of reward, no expectation that it’s all being noted in God’s ledger.
My issue with religious charity is that it is so often conditional on the recipient to sign up the the faith. I see the stall often in my city offering soup to the homeless. By all means come in, have some soup, sit in the warm. And while you’re hear, in your desperate state, my friend here is going to talk to you about God and the bible.
I find it sickening. Religion isn’t an enemy of wretchedness. It wants the weak and the desperate. All the easier to brainwash.
The biggest example of this was Mother Theresa. There was nothing good about her. She was cynical and opportunistic. And going into the poorest parts of the world with a message that was primarily against contraception was especially evil. If you haven’t seen Hitchen’s documentary about here, it’s essential viewing.
I might take the approach of asking the same question of the churches or ekklēsia, of Mithras, Zeus, Odin, Thor, Apollo, Athena, Osiris, Isis, Artemis etc. etc. etc.
All of these mythical figures had huge followings at one time or another. How did their ekklēsia / churches get started?
Evidently it does not require them, or Jesus Christ, to have actually existed for a church dedicated to their worship to come into existence.
Christianity had very little impact upon the Roman Empire, certainly not before Constantine legalised it in 313CE. Constantine is considered to have viewed Christianity as a viable means of exercising control over a diverse and essentially deteriorating Empire, but he [Constantine] reputedly only became a Christian on his deathbed.
In 313CE the number of Christians in the Empire is variously estimated to be between 5% and 11% of the total population.
The dramatic growth in the number of Christians in the Empire only happened after 380CE when Theodosius I decreed that Christianity should be the Roman state church and that all other religions were banned.
Ok so from mascots perspective there’s no evidence of Jesus, moving on to the next of the abrahamic faiths what about Islam? What about the faith of 1.8 billion followers? Whom the prophet Mohammad has actual evidence of existing.
Same answer as Jesus. Even if you can prove your messiah existed, you still have to prove he was divine and actually did the feats ascribed to him - which is obviously a lot more difficult.
There are perhaps a handful, many of very dubious provenance, given that the early church was particularly fond of forging documents to suit its needs.
This is a classic example of the kind of nonsense you throw around.
Lamaitre was an ordained Catholic Priest, and a professor of Physics (a contemporary of Einstein). However how was very clear he kept his religion entirely separate from his science, and viewed them as separate magisteria (to borrow a phrase from Stephen Jay Gould).
When the Pope declared that Lamaitre’s work was evidence of the truth of Catholicism, Lamaitre was actually annoyed, claiming that his theory had nothing to do with religion, and his work on the Big Bang did not contradict or connect with his religious beliefs - it was entirely neutral. He worked to dissuade the Pope from making proclamations about cosmology and seeking to use science to bolster the religion.
Setting all that aside, we have to ask to what part of Lamaitres life do we credit his work on the Big Bang. We know he tried to keep his faith and his science separate.
As far as I can see he advanced his scientific theories using the scientific model, in exactly the same way as other theories.
The Big Bang theory wasn’t ‘revealed’ to him. It wasn’t developed as a result of praying or looking to scripture. It was developed because he advanced theories, tested them diligently and had them peer reviewed.
So do we conclude that we have religion to thank for the Big Bang theory? Nope. It was developed by a scientist, following the scientific method, and in collaboration with other scientists. That scientist was also a devout Catholic, but I don’t think you can mix the two and Lamaitre himself would probably get cross if you did.
Expected response from @RedOverTheWater: Thank you for acknowledging Lamaitre was a Catholic
Your initial assertion, that religious people or regimes have committed wrongdoing, is obviously correct. I do not argue against that basic fact. It can be illustrated on a small scale and a large, systematic level, depending on what we might be talking about. So far, we are on the same page, at least generally.
Now here is where the gap emerges…
My contention is that ALL people (caps for emphasis, not shouting!) whether religious, irreligious, secular or atheist, have committed wrongdoing, whether in a small way with small consequences, or in a larger systematic way, with larger consequences.
This is true because it is part of the human condition, regardless of religious belief, but that basic point does not seem to be conceded by you? That’s what I find intellectually dishonest.
So first back to our friend Stalin. Yes. Definitely an atheist. It’s amazing to me that it needed several rounds of to and fro before that much was admitted by you. Of course he was baptized as an infant in the Orthodox Church. Everyone of his time and place would have been. But then he grew up. He read Marx. He left his religion behind. Oh, and then got a little bit killy, polishing off 9-20M people.
But we seem to want to argue the toss over whether or not he was an atheist? Fuck me!
So if we can’t agree on basic history, let’s look at current news. I referenced the officially atheist Chinese government, which today is systematically committing genocide against the Muslim Uighurs. Tons of organizations that are not religious at all, like Amnesty and so on, are trying to highlight the horrors and call them out on it, because it is dead wrong.
And what is your response? Instead of simply acknowledging the industrial scale wrongdoing of this atheist regime, you instead chose to bring religion into it by saying it is because the leaders (atheist leaders, my qualifying word) are acting in a quasi-religious way and demanding blind devotion from their followers?
Fuck me! There we have it. Religion is responsible when religious regimes commit wrongdoing, and religion is also responsible when atheist regimes commit wrongdoing?
Going beyond that, it’s disappointing to hear you say shithouse move and people are losing patience with me. It seems ad hominem, and not what I expect in a good faith conversation, and from a mod too.
If you are unable to acknowledge that atheist regimes have been, and currently are, responsible for mass atrocity, it is intellectually dishonest and further conversation gets more difficult.
Your responses have been whataboutisms, mate. Your response to the genocides, atrocities, displacements and systemic impoverishment committed by religion is basically saying, ‘well, yeah but look at those guys who did the same thing’ while the premise of your stance is also to state that being religious, and in your case Christian, is to be rather above those niggly massacres that everyone keeps referencing. So if religion commits the same atrocities, by your reckoning, how is that making it better as you so claim? You can’t be better than everyone else by committing the same horrendous things and say that’s the way of it, surely?
Also, as an aside, referencing Constantine is a bit of a misnomer as he made all religions free to practice without persecution in the Empire not just Christianity, held the council of Nicea that determined what went into the Bible and what wouldn’t (centuries after the supposed events, by the way) and then got baptized on his death bed to ‘guarantee’ his entry into heaven against the sins he might have committed as Emperor.
Huh? ‘Manuscript support’ is the basis that this guy is claiming that contemporaries of Caeser and noted historians in the 1st century suddenly become centuries removed? He, and you, jest. Surely.
How many people have been killed in the name of atheism as opposed to by atheists?
Why, proportionally, are there more than double the number of paedophiles in the church than among the general population?
Why were some gospels left out of the bible?
If a moral code is uniquely derived from a Christian faith, how come you can find almost identical moral codes across all faiths as well as secular societies?
