[Nuke]

im quite fond of Vlad Dracul III. hes got do be my favorite christian murder machine. not only did he murder of people, he did it in the most cruel way, by stuffing a gargantuan pole up the ass (and other orifaces as well) of anyone he wanted dead, until they died over the course of several days. a lovely form of torture-execution known as impalement. hey-sus's puny little nails pale in comparison. vlad slaughtered every muslim that dared enter christian land, and a few of his own people as well. he had no problem impaling mothers and their infant children. marduk wrote a series of tracks about the whole thing, ****ing brutal.

that said i dont think any religious group prophetic or otherwise is completely innocent of slaughtering people of other faiths. everyone has slaughtered and everyone has been slaughtered, everyone has enslaved and everyone has been enslaved. frankly i think all humans deserve hell. too bad its a construct.

[IceFire]

Wow...thats....morbid.

[Ford Prefect]

This scorekeeping is meaningless bull****. No one's proven anything by tallying up everyone's historical kill count. Whether or not people believe in god doesn't matter half as much as whether they're able to cultivate a sophisticated understanding of their beliefs, and we won't know how many people are capable of that so long as most of the world's population has no access to proper education-- a situation which is, in turn, a tragedy of economics, which is, in turn, a tragedy of the undying human affinity for exploitation.

Everything that matters about religious experience is profoundly personal. You don't even have to believe in god to have a religious experience. It's a ****ing chemical reaction, and I think anyone who knows what it feels like to be rendered inarticulate by something beautiful knows exactly what god is.

[achtung]

TrashMan, when did any of those people you listed claim they were killing for atheism?

This is faulty logic, since we've already described atheism as the lack of belief, as opposed to belief in anything. Apathy doesn't cause massacres on its own. However the charge that more people have been killed in the name of secular power then in the name of religion remains perfectly valid.

I know, I was just trying to prove that you CAN'T kill in the name of atheism by giving him a task he could not fulfill. 

[General Battuta]

We are all atheists regarding ninety-nine percent of the gods humanity has ever worshipped.

The nonreligious are just atheists about one more.

[Kazan]

We are all atheists regarding ninety-nine percent of the gods humanity has ever worshipped.

The nonreligious are just atheists about one more.

 

i love that quote.

and the kill count matters - it's a demonstration of the negative attributes that pascal's wager ignores


plus it's one of the facts that leads to my conclusion that religion is undeniably and incorrectably evil.

[Ford Prefect]

Yeah I'm not having this discussion with you.

[G0atmaster]

and the kill count matters - it's a demonstration of the negative attributes that pascal's wager ignores

But remember, if people believed in the God Pascal believed in, those deaths would be insignificant because of the immortality of the human soul.

[Bobboau]

exactly.

[TrashMan]

I know, I was just trying to prove that you CAN'T kill in the name of atheism by giving him a task he could not fulfill. 

A. You're an atheist
B. You're trying to kill everyone who is religious.

I'd say that qualifies. It doesn't? Well, I can say the same about "religious murders" then too.
Religion didn't kill anyone.
Stupid people did (because of greed, hate, lust)
No one killed anyone. Case closed.


speaking of which I find it interesting people calming they will never believe in God until shown some proof.  Interesting, because such undeniable proof that I can show around doesn't exist.

Let's for a second assume God shows himself to you in all His glory...he shows you many a miracle and you feel he's the real thing. You just KNOW it.
Now you come to me saying that you saw God. O.k, I'll ask for proof.
You go on telling me what you saw - I call you crazy, trippin, drunk, stoned.
You filmed a miracle or two on your camera and show it to me.
I say it's a forgery or optical illusion.
You have the recording analyzed, the expert sez it's the real thing.
I say the expert is bribed, he's lying on purpose or that the recording might be real, but the whole thing was staged and acted out.
A miracle happens in front of me.
I say it's a optical illusion.. I'm having halucinations, someone slipped some drugs in my drink..Heck, I'm in the MAtrix for all I know.

REPEAT AD NAUSEUM.

You see, the problem is that us humans are so freaking good at coming up with different explanations and lying to ourselves that if you don't want to believe something, no amount of "evidence" can make you.

[Wobble73]

You see, the problem is that us humans are so freaking good at coming up with different explanations and lying to ourselves that if you don't want to believe something, no amount of "evidence" can make you.

You got it in one, yet you still believe????

You've been lied to! We have been lied to for thousands of years,but the masses were ignorant, now there are a large majority of people who are educated. Now the more people can make their own minds up, the less people believe in dietys, flying spaghetti monsters, pixies, fairies, phantoms, ghouls etc.

[TrashMan]

You making a fallacy here, by equating with being well educated with being an atheist. Bollocks.

You completely missed the point of my post apparently.

[Mefustae]

You making a fallacy here, by equating with being well educated with being an atheist. Bollocks.

To be fair, there is no real logical fallacy there. The more educated an individual is, the more likely that individual is to question dogma and superstition. It's no secret that areas with increased education and affluence tend to be either secular or have a statistically significant population of atheists when compared to less educated, developing areas. Logic dictates that an individual with the education to explain and understand the world around him would be inherently less susceptible to attributing unexplainable phenomena to a supernatural deity or other such nonsense.

[karajorma]

You making a fallacy here, by equating with being well educated with being an atheist. Bollocks.

You completely missed the point of my post apparently.

No. He got your point, turned it around on you and you misunderstood him.

[TrashMan]

You making a fallacy here, by equating with being well educated with being an atheist. Bollocks.

To be fair, there is no real logical fallacy there. The more educated an individual is, the more likely that individual is to question dogma and superstition. It's no secret that areas with increased education and affluence tend to be either secular or have a statistically significant population of atheists when compared to less educated, developing areas. Logic dictates that an individual with the education to explain and understand the world around him would be inherently less susceptible to attributing unexplainable phenomena to a supernatural deity or other such nonsense.

Oh there is a fallacy, since there are ore than enough well-educated religious people. What education does is makes people be more critical and thoughtful before accepting a religion (which is not a bad thing).

No. He got your point, turned it around on you and you misunderstood him.

That's what you think.
Point being, since we can always find another way to explain something, why should we believe in anything except what we want to believe?

Heck, I can find other ways to explain gravity, but that doesn't mean it's right. In the same sense, just because you think you can find some way to explain some miracles, doesn't mean they didn't happen or weren't miracles.

It's a double-edged bladed since this argument can stab at ANY belief in ANYTHING.

[Bobboau]

but just because I can be denser than a neutron star does not mean I should be.

you have a mind, use it, look at evidence and try to find the best answer.

[karajorma]

It's a double-edged bladed since this argument can stab at ANY belief in ANYTHING.

Which surely means that the sensible choice is simply not to believe then?

[General Battuta]

I was raised Christian. Even as a child, I spent a lot of time arguing with and rejecting the stories because they didn't make sense.

*shrug* Just a personal anecdote.

[TrashMan]

It's a double-edged bladed since this argument can stab at ANY belief in ANYTHING.

Which surely means that the sensible choice is simply not to believe then?

Then I shouldn't believe in gravity either? Or quantum mechanics? After all, I'm SURE I can come up with dozens of other explanations.

[jdjtcagle]