[iamzack]

because some of them arent too stupid

[mxlm]

thats not atheism thats communism. marx was a paranoid bastard. he thought everything religions did was to control people. just cause your paranoid doesnt mean their not out to get you.

Could you perhaps point to the place in the Manifesto or Das Kapital where Marx advocates a system of leader-worship of the kind seen the USSR, PRC, or DPRK?

[headdie]

Why do people continue to argue about this if all of them are too stupid to listen to anyone in the first place?

because it amuses us too, lets face it this thread just took up 5 minutes of my free time and mildly amused me, just like it did for most of the people who have read it and successfully diverted the thinking time of everyone who posted here.

[Liberator]

I'm keeping out of this.  I'm not in the mood.

BTW, this is just as trollish as what I did last week.  This was posted just to push certain peoples buttons.

[karajorma]

BTW, this is just as trollish as what I did last week.  This was posted just to push certain peoples buttons.

So you admit to trolling last week then?

[Dilmah G]

So you admit to trolling last week then?

LOL.

This was posted just to push certain peoples buttons.

I disagree, some of us have a sense of humour. 

[NGTM-1R]

I'm keeping out of this.  I'm not in the mood.

BTW, this is just as trollish as what I did last week.  This was posted just to push certain peoples buttons.

Forcing people to confront their own cognitive dissonance is not trolling.

Though I grant they look awful similar.

[Kosh]

Funny that he mentions Buddhism in there, considering Buddhism is generally atheistic, and those Buddhist sects that do (sloppily, I would argue) include a vague deity certainly don't consider it a creator.

True, but they still believe in spirits and souls and other things like that. I think what this guy was referring to was people who don't follow any of that stuff......

[MR_T3D]

Ugh, Rick Warren.

I'd love to have a debate with this asshole about how the human perception of beauty in the environment is more of a result of thousands of years of the human mind attempting to make sense of and find meaning in the world around it (you know, like religion), and not the result of some higher being taking time out of his busy day to make a rock on a mountain look pretty for a part of his creation he knew was going to **** up.

But that would be like arguing with a brick wall.

I would call that due to Atheism being less a belief than a lack of one.  It's kind of hard to die in the name of a lack of something.

You apparently missed that South Park episode didn't you?


Science damn you, United Allied Atheist Alliance!

fixed.
... Really, the title is kindof correct, it takes more balls to believe in not being able to know everything eventually than to pussy out and say its just a higher   being did it.

[TrashMan]

Even if they weren't religious, it's important to point out that very few people have ever died in the name of atheism. People die in the name of religion every day.

Who cares what you shout when you kill somebody? For the party? For Freedom? For God(s)? For concept X? For science?

Doesn't mean you're actually doing it for that reason... And it  doesn't matter to the guy who ended up dead.

Oh, regarding that article:
TrashMan approves (+10)

[zookeeper]

Even if they weren't religious, it's important to point out that very few people have ever died in the name of atheism. People die in the name of religion every day.

Who cares what you shout when you kill somebody? For the party? For Freedom? For God(s)? For concept X? For science?

Doesn't mean you're actually doing it for that reason... And it  doesn't matter to the guy who ended up dead.

It matters for Rick Warren according to what he said. That was kinda the point, I presume.

Of course it doesn't really matter.

[Black Wolf]

It's all meaningless anyway. We in the west are living in the last days of religious relevance - it's been coming since the enlightenment, but it's only recently that we've really started to shine a light into the last few places "god" can hide. Give it a few more generations and, assuming we've not killed ourselves through environmental degredation or nuclear fire, atheism or agnosticism will be the biggest belief system in the western world, and it's all downhill from there. It'll take longer to get into the less educated parts like Africa, South America and the red states in America (Oh Snap! ) but it'll happen. Let Rick Warren and his ilk believe what they want, and fight the battles against religion-inspired idiocy that are worth fighting (abortion, stem cells, environmental protection, palestinan rights, extremist terrorism etc.), but this ****? Ignore it as the irrelevance it's becoming.

[jdjtcagle]

IMO, it's not hard to find anyone in the world of several billion people that believe something false and who are adept at making the news.  I even have no problem with people arguing against his unfounded "points" to the death.

I'm not offended until the fight becomes hostile against religion itself, it's possible to have a rational mind with faith. Maybe not literally but there are personal / philosophical reasons to believing in a supreme being since nothing will ever be 100% proven or completely answered. The choice to have faith must be rationally founded and that's all too often what we don't see in these types of threads.

He assumes the existence of God therefore basis all his premises trying to prove there is a God rather than being objective and unbiased; assuming there could not be a god... Everyone is smart enough to figure out that he's logically fallible and he's wrong in assuming that it takes "more faith" to believe in a purely natural world where no god exists because of his inability to look at it objectively. I don't think it's wrong for him to assume the existence of God but I do believe it's wrong to criticize and wrongly "belittle" those who rather look at it rationally/objectively which honestly is where everybody should start.

[Kosh]

We in the west are living in the last days of religious relevance

While that may be true in Europe, most of America is still VERY religious. According to surveys a few years ago about half of all americans don't accept the theory of evolution, and there is still a lot of fighting about that topic going on because so many of them still want creationism taught in high school SCIENCE classes. So far the only thing stopping them has been the seperation of church and state, but this is also subject to the interpretation of the judge because they can claim states rights.

Let Rick Warren and his ilk believe what they want

Part of the problem has been him and his ilk have been exporting their BS overseas, especially to Africans. Believe me, Africa is a very dark place when it comes to this. There anything supernatural goes without question.


EDIT: Here is another article that partly touches on this towards the end.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

Why do people continue to argue about this if all of them are too stupid to listen to anyone in the first place?

Because they're too stupid to ignore the topic completely?

[TESLA]

why are ignorant assholes allowed to make news?

We all need a little happieness to know that we are better off than someone else   

Or just not as screwed up as others 

[TESLA]

Stalin and Hitler were both religious actually (although it's hard to tell what Stalin was to be honest). So he's wrong on the numbers.

Actually Stalin being the fully fledged communist madman maniac he was. Did he best to destroy religion in the USSR in the early days. Evidence of many priests sent to Gulags and the destruction of the Church of Christ the saviour.

Hitlers was just plain nuts. Didnt have much time or belief in religion. He simply used religion as a weapon to spread his own ideas, or get the masses on his side.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

Weird, I always thought that they were non-religious.

[General Battuta]

Stalin and Hitler were both religious actually (although it's hard to tell what Stalin was to be honest). So he's wrong on the numbers.

Actually Stalin being the fully fledged communist madman maniac he was. Did he best to destroy religion in the USSR in the early days. Evidence of many priests sent to Gulags and the destruction of the Church of Christ the saviour.

Hitlers was just plain nuts. Didnt have much time or belief in religion. He simply used religion as a weapon to spread his own ideas, or get the masses on his side.

Ah, subgrouping. Wonderful heuristic.

[karajorma]

Maybe not literally but there are personal / philosophical reasons to believing in a supreme being since nothing will ever be 100% proven or completely answered. The choice to have faith must be rationally founded and that's all too often what we don't see in these types of threads.

I've never had a problem with people who believe there must be a God to explain why the universe exists, but when you start claiming that there must be a God to explain how, then I've got a problem.

My problem with that line of thinking is that it's anti-logic, anti-rational thought and anti-science. "Let's not bother with research into evolution or the big bang. We already know God did it, why do we need to look into those things."

Rick Warren merely shows his ignorance here. It doesn't require more faith to be an atheist. It doesn't require any faith at all. That's the entire point of being an atheist. It does, however, require more brainpower than he comes equipped with though. Because if you don't have a sufficient level of understanding to see how things like evolution or the big bang would work it becomes much simpler to believe in some magical being who did it all in the blink of an eye.

Actually Stalin being the fully fledged communist madman maniac he was. Did he best to destroy religion in the USSR in the early days. Evidence of many priests sent to Gulags and the destruction of the Church of Christ the saviour.

It's a hell of a lot more complicated than that. Bear in mind that the actions of a non-Christian religious tyrant would look exactly the same if he didn't disclose what religion he had. Stalin got rid of the religious leaders because they were a danger to him, as was religion itself. When you have a large amount of power in the hands of someone other than a tyrant then the tyrant will always view that person as a potential threat.

It's actually pretty hard to tell which religion Stalin actually had. It seems to change based on who you talk to. I've heard people say he was agnostic or atheistic for the most part.

Hitlers was just plain nuts. Didnt have much time or belief in religion. He simply used religion as a weapon to spread his own ideas, or get the masses on his side.

Again, far more complicated than you make out.

So the claim that atheists have killed more than religious people are obviously based on very odd interpretations of what an atheist is.


Then we get to the point that those killed by Stalin were basically due to him trying to advance a communist agenda. But if you count those numbers as "Deaths by atheism" you then open the door to the question "Exactly how many people have died as a result of Western Christian leaders pushing a capitalist agenda?" That's a hard question to answer with no control group but you could make the argument that the number is pretty high.