Actually, Pol Pot WAS a Buddhist. And he also went to a Catholic school.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pol_pot

Quote:Saloth Sar was born on May 19, 1925—the eighth of nine children,[11] and the second of three sons. He was from a moderately wealthy family of Sino-Khmer descent[12][13] living in the small fishing village of Prek Sbauv, Kampong Thom Province during the French colonialism of the area. In 1935, Sar left Prek Sbauv to attend the École Miche, a Catholic school in Phnom Penh. His sister Roeung was a concubine of King Sisowath Monivong, so he often visited the royal palace.[14] In 1947, he gained admission to the exclusive Lycée Sisowath, but was unsuccessful in his studies.

Oh dear...seems his young life had catholic teachings...Hmm. That doesn't bode well for your argument, suddenly...

Also: http://www.xefer.com/2005/08/polpot

Quote:Perhaps Short’s most controversial thesis is that it was the particular branch of Buddhism and its exhortations to the negation of ego that resonated in such a tragic way with Communist notions of state planning and control.

“You see the ox, comrades. Admire him! He eats where we [tell] him to eat… When we tell him to pull the plough, he pulls it. He never thinks of his wife or his children.”

He went so far as to ban the use of money altogether, so that people became in actuality slaves of the state, dependent upon them for their very existence...

Huh. Became slaves of the state... Like sheep...in a flock...dependent on the shepherd for their very existence for without the shepherd they do not eat, or drink, or have a place to live... Sheep...hm...where have I heard this analogy before...

Quote:...Some have criticized Short for in effect “blaming” the Cambodians for acquiescing to the tragedy, but this is simply not the point he is making. Buddhism simply colored the tragedy, it didn’t form it. I actually found this to be a rather compelling and challenge argument. People often lay the blame for genocidal tragedies at the foot of theistic mindsets; it was interesting to see how something as seemingly docile as Buddhism have a role in something so barbaric.

Hmm. The Khmer Rouge, shaped in its ideals by Buddhism...you know...a religion? Huh... Truth be told, even I did not really put the parallels together myself [I'm not exactly up on my knowledge of Pol Pot, I know him more for his crimes than his personal history but it seems he was an ass-backwards idiot who came into power...NEVER a good combination].

(May 28, 2012 at 3:27 am)Kayenneh Wrote: Sorry for butting in, but I wanted to give my 2 cents.

I can only speak for myself, but I think at least a few here can agree with me, since it's put into practice everyday. Debates and discussions can get heated, insults might be thrown around, but show outside these threads that you're a nice person and your belief will be overlooked or ignored. To me there are many theists here that I can't see eye to eye with when it comes to religious topics, but as human beings I like them just fine. This is after all a forum to discuss both sides, it is a small battlefield, but I try not to forget that there is another person sitting on the opposite end.
Unfortunately there will be those, who will come across as insolent, bigoted and mean persons, no matter what they say and no matter what the topic. If it is due to the conversation being on the net or if that person actually is a piece of shit, I cannot say. But those can fortunately be put on ignore
So yes, I agree, there is definitely a middle, just not in the debates.

I hope I'm not the one butting in now if you were specifically addressing jesuspipes. I don't know about you but when I come across someone reasonable who fundamentally disagrees with me my interest is tapped. I'm always hoping to find an intelligent conservative, for example, who will tell me how they see and value things that makes them want such different things politically than I want.

I suppose the questions I'd ask jesuspipes by way of exploring our differences would be what he thinks is the nature of this higher power. Is it something on-board or is it out-there? I believe in a 'higher' power on-board in a totality-of-consciousness/Joseph Campbell sort of way. I don't however believe in assigning ranks to the various aspects of consciousness. I don't think any part is in charge while other parts wait for marching orders. Waking consciousness is ostensibly in charge of choices but the totality of consciousness can support or disrupt your endeavors as it too acts to protect our being. It touches on the free will debate, we are consciously free to pursue what we want but perhaps it is the totality of consciousness with its attention to the bigger picture and pre-verbal mammalian brain which determines what we want.

Our capacity for language is a fairly recent development. Our ability to realize risks and opportunities and to act on intentions far out dates our ability to articulate in words any of it. It still goes on inside of us all. Language trails behind or signals to colleagues suggestions for group efforts. Solid reasoning, the idea of establishing validity preserving patterns of thought, is a much more recent yet development. Some would say it is our greatest achievement and that reason should gather the reigns of action and be the final arbiter of all our actions. I personally question both the feasibility and advisability of such an endeavor.

(May 28, 2012 at 3:03 am)Aiza Wrote: Sorry I am a bit delayed, I went on the most amazing discernment retreat of my entire life.

No worries.

(May 28, 2012 at 3:03 am)Aiza Wrote: Comparing two locations is fine. When you get into territory such as: "Southern states are more religious and also have more teen pregnancy, ergo religion is correlated with pregnancy" that it starts to get sketchy, especially when on that individual level you note that more religious teenagers are less likely to get pregnant than their irreligious peers--Southern states are just poorer in general.

Substitute 'less religous' for 'irreligous' and I agree on the pregnancy issue. Which brings us to the link between poverty and religion. I don't think religion makes a region more likely to be poor, but I do think an area being poor makes it more likely that the population will tend to be more religious. An area being prosperous is likely to have a population that is both more educated and less religious on average.

(May 28, 2012 at 3:03 am)Aiza Wrote: It is a fair point, and yes, there are atheists who are religious--some 1-2% of American Christians (iirc) are atheist, and there are atheist Unitarian Univeralists, etc. Any religion has its share of atheists within it. And of course there are theists who are totally irreligious. Sometimes that line between religious/irreligious and theism/atheism is conflated, probably because so many atheists are anti-religion, and often use the stats of people with "no religion" as the numbers of atheists (which you can actually see on that very freethoughtpedia link you gave me).

So yes, even trying to talk about "atheists on average" being more aggressive, impulsive etc. isn't necessarily true--its "non-religiouson average", but there are religious atheists and irreligious theists. So yes, I think you do have a point and I should be perhaps a bit more care in my wording.

And I think I may have been harsh in my estimation of your reasonableness. My apologies.

(May 28, 2012 at 3:03 am)Aiza Wrote: Welll....yes. Yes very much so, because I thought that was the point. If you just wanted to say that atheists have died for reasons totally unrelated to atheism than yes, absolutely, I am sure, in every era atheists have died.

Right. When atheists are executed by the authorities, their atheism is not the reason they give for doing so. When theists are executed by the authorities, their theism is not the reason they give for doing so. Even in totalitarian communist states, no one was executed for 'being a theist'.

(May 28, 2012 at 3:03 am)Aiza Wrote: There is a difference, but those headlines are both sensationalized and also not true. Science reporting in the mainstream media is infamously terrible.

The 'not true' part is what you need to make a case for, rather than merely observing the sensationalism. And remember that critiquing the study is not the same thing as showing its findings are untrue, which is what you're claiming. A lousy study is not evidence either way.

(May 28, 2012 at 3:03 am)Aiza Wrote: I am sorry for that one? For me those anti-atheist attitudes and state atheism and similar anti-religious forms of atheism are tied together--not rightfully so.

I remember from when I was a devout Christian how shocking the idea that there were people who didn't believe in God was. I didn't need any historical context to consider atheists as being pretty close to alien beings who might be capable of anything. I was already primed to accept anything my pastor had to say about them. I think the tying together of these things is a post hoc justification for feelings people already have.

(May 28, 2012 at 3:03 am)Aiza Wrote: Oh please. Those "many beliefs" don't include the actual key one worth highlighting, right? The use of force and violence? You know? By all means, criticize me if you find fault in me, but don't criticize me because someone else who believed in the Eucharist thought it was okay to torture.

If you re-read what you just said enough times, I think you'll get my point.

(May 28, 2012 at 3:03 am)Aiza Wrote: And yes, it is hypocritical if you do accuse all Christians or lump them under the Inquisition.

It would be illogical rather than hypocritical. I tend to blame whoever brings up body counts first. There are people whose group identities are relatively blameless: Quakers, Jains, and Humanists come to mind.

(May 28, 2012 at 3:03 am)Aiza Wrote: Resistance against the state---suppressing religion. The churches "went back up" after rules relaxed during WWII, but you cannot say they were left alone. The Church (or religion in general, if you'd prefer) will always "go back up" when it is allowed to.

Who allowed it?

(May 28, 2012 at 3:03 am)Aiza Wrote: You can't destroy the human spirit I don't think. Even in the most hateful of times, there are those who keep it alive, and will die to do so throughout all ages.

There's nothing like oppression to forge an oppressed minority into a determined resistance.

(May 28, 2012 at 3:03 am)Aiza Wrote: ANOTHER link to "Freethoughtpedia?" The very same "pedia" that tried to claim Pol Pot was a Buddhist? "Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people"? God help me. But you said you prefer the studies they used with respect to prison populations aaand... okay. Well, that cool, lets "follow the sources". I am nothing if not open to this.

I prefer them to less-existent studies, yes.

(May 28, 2012 at 3:03 am)Aiza Wrote: First, they have a random string of info they admit was "floating around the internet", and they literally have no other info on where it came from. They actually are asking for any random reader to step forward and find a source for this info--post first and ask questions later I suppose.

Do you not think this is an effective way to find out the source, if any?

(May 28, 2012 at 3:03 am)Aiza Wrote: They also cite "The New Criminology" from Schlapp and Smith (not to be confused with a newer book from Taylor et al)..... wow. Its written in 1928. Like....almost 90 years old. Apparently this book was written in order to prove that criminal behavior was caused by chemical imbalances in the brain, and not from a lack of moral training.

It is also the ONLY verifable study of the actual topic, the representation of atheists in prison. It's not much, but it does have the advantage of not lumping in atheists with people who don't go to church much, which is more than any of your sources have done.

(May 28, 2012 at 3:03 am)Aiza Wrote: I don't really have anything to say to this. I get a few thousand results when I google for this book. Apparently it was an unpublished study, and was written in a very sensationalized format. Very obscure paper since we now know that criminology is quite a bit more complex. Atheists seem to like it though, because 4 out of the first 10 results I got were actually from atheists clinging to this particular study.

It's about atheists and there isn't much else. Why shouldn't we be interested?

(May 28, 2012 at 3:03 am)Aiza Wrote: And if you think that conflating "irreligious" with "atheist" is flawed (because some atheists are religious),

Much more because the vast majority of 'irreligious' are theists.

(May 28, 2012 at 3:03 am)Aiza Wrote: this (or really, how some atheists have chosen to interpret this article) is to conflate "atheism" with "lack of any sort of religious training". Welp! You seem like a thoughtful person so I hope I don't need to say more about either of these.

I suspect constant accusations of being unstable and/or immoral may account for a quickness to latch on to 'evidence' showing otherwise.

(May 28, 2012 at 3:03 am)Aiza Wrote: Freethoughtpedia is like some bizarro atheist (or "free thinker") version of conservapedia isn't it?

I'm not familiar enough with the site to judge it, I was more looking for sources.

(May 28, 2012 at 3:03 am)Aiza Wrote: Really? I usually think of atheism as sort of a bit of a default (weak atheism anyway), and then both strong atheism and theism are that which you need to "think yourself into" a bit.

In a country where atheism is the default, that would be the case. However, most of us North Americans are raised to believe in God, and most atheists come to the conclusion God isn't real later.

(May 28, 2012 at 3:03 am)Aiza Wrote: But now that I have reflected on it some, I suppose maybe weak theism might be the default instead.

But you are right, if they were to study atheism in prisons, it would need to be straightforward "are you theist or atheist or unsure?" type of question. Or do the "Do you believe in God, a higher power, or neither?" question as seems popular in some studies, since actually quite a few (21%) of self-described "atheists" will also turn around and say they believe in God. I can get you the source for that as well. I fear the complexities of studying these sorts of correlations go quite deep.

Oh, I know that one. I think the population of people who think they're atheists but believe in God are the main source of Christians who say they used to be an atheist.

Since some pastors seem quick to define atheists as people who don't go to church, drink, smoke, swear, and have sex outside of marriage; I think some theists honestly believe they are atheists even though the believe there is a God.

(May 28, 2012 at 11:08 am)Creed of Heresy Wrote: Actually, Pol Pot WAS a Buddhist. And he also went to a Catholic school.

No he wasn't, nor does that link say that he was Buddhist. (Because he wasn't and actually heavily persecuted Buddhists and envisioned a society free of Buddhism).

Also no idea why some atheists try to mention Pol Pot went to "Catholic school". Catholic schools are open to all people regardless of religion. Bringing it up just seems silly.

Quote:Huh. Became slaves of the state... Like sheep...in a flock...dependent on the shepherd for their very existence for without the shepherd they do not eat, or drink, or have a place to live... Sheep...hm...where have I heard this analogy before...

But yeah, all that "controversial" book tries to talk about is Buddhism's effect on the culture of Cambodia and indirect effects on Khmer Rogue. The Khmer Rogue itself was anti-Buddhist, as you would know if you were familiar with the regime.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution...hmer_Rouge

(May 28, 2012 at 12:03 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote: An area being prosperous is likely to have a population that is both more educated and less religious on average.

Sure, and then some atheists try to jump to "therefore religious are less educated" while those studies which properly control for those aspects (income, area) find quite the opposite.

The link between holiness and poverty is one that is highlighted in many world religions, of Catholicism/most of Christianity (going back to Jesus Christ) as well as Buddhism IIRC. Wealthier people in general are also similarly much less empathetic, more selfish, less religious (not to be confused with theistic per se), and paradoxically enough, give less to charity than poorer folk.

When I become a (Dominican!) Sister, I will take a Vow of Poverty, owning absolutely nothing myself but sharing it in community with my other sisters.

Quote:Who allowed it?

The state in order to bring up the morale of Russian people during WWII (many of whom were still secretly Christian). To then say that implies the state "left the Orthdoox alone" is just ridiculous because it was after decades of suppression.

Quote:Do you not think this is an effective way to find out the source, if any?

It might be an effective way to "find out the source"(though you give a very big "if"). Its not an effective way to write a legitimate source of information.

Quote:It is also the ONLY verifable study of the actual topic, the representation of atheists in prison. It's not much, but it does have the advantage of not lumping in atheists with people who don't go to church much, which is more than any of your sources have done.

Except it doesn't talk about atheists at all. It talks about people with "no religious training whatsoever", which would include both theists and atheists. Its even less meaningful than those studies about religion, because while a small amount of atheists are still religious, most atheists probably had some form of religious training, particularly in 1928. Its no more "about atheists" than the other studies. This one just appeals to atheists more I suppose.

Quote:Oh, I know that one. I think the population of people who think they're atheists but believe in God are the main source of Christians who say they used to be an atheist.

Whatever helps you sleep at night!

Catholic schools are not open to anyone. Why do you continue to spout untruths as if they are fact?

Pol Pot despised intellectual people too, so there goes your idea that he was persecuting people based on religion.

(May 28, 2012 at 11:42 am)whateverist Wrote:

(May 28, 2012 at 3:27 am)Kayenneh Wrote: Sorry for butting in, but I wanted to give my 2 cents.

I can only speak for myself, but I think at least a few here can agree with me, since it's put into practice everyday. Debates and discussions can get heated, insults might be thrown around, but show outside these threads that you're a nice person and your belief will be overlooked or ignored. To me there are many theists here that I can't see eye to eye with when it comes to religious topics, but as human beings I like them just fine. This is after all a forum to discuss both sides, it is a small battlefield, but I try not to forget that there is another person sitting on the opposite end.
Unfortunately there will be those, who will come across as insolent, bigoted and mean persons, no matter what they say and no matter what the topic. If it is due to the conversation being on the net or if that person actually is a piece of shit, I cannot say. But those can fortunately be put on ignore
So yes, I agree, there is definitely a middle, just not in the debates.

I hope I'm not the one butting in now if you were specifically addressing jesuspipes. I don't know about you but when I come across someone reasonable who fundamentally disagrees with me my interest is tapped. I'm always hoping to find an intelligent conservative, for example, who will tell me how they see and value things that makes them want such different things politically than I want.

I suppose the questions I'd ask jesuspipes by way of exploring our differences would be what he thinks is the nature of this higher power. Is it something on-board or is it out-there? I believe in a 'higher' power on-board in a totality-of-consciousness/Joseph Campbell sort of way. I don't however believe in assigning ranks to the various aspects of consciousness. I don't think any part is in charge while other parts wait for marching orders. Waking consciousness is ostensibly in charge of choices but the totality of consciousness can support or disrupt your endeavors as it too acts to protect our being. It touches on the free will debate, we are consciously free to pursue what we want but perhaps it is the totality of consciousness with its attention to the bigger picture and pre-verbal mammalian brain which determines what we want.

Our capacity for language is a fairly recent development. Our ability to realize risks and opportunities and to act on intentions far out dates our ability to articulate in words any of it. It still goes on inside of us all. Language trails behind or signals to colleagues suggestions for group efforts. Solid reasoning, the idea of establishing validity preserving patterns of thought, is a much more recent yet development. Some would say it is our greatest achievement and that reason should gather the reigns of action and be the final arbiter of all our actions. I personally question both the feasibility and advisability of such an endeavor.

Your question is unfortunately above my level of comprehension in my inebriated state so I doubt I will fully answer what you ask.

I believe if there was a God, it would have little desire or care in what goes on in anyone's daily life. Religion happens to be Earth centered, but there is a whole Universe out there. I know much of science, and I know how small Earth is in the grand scheme of things, and I know how much smaller I am than Earth, so I realize that I am smaller than an atom to a person when we are talking about scale. I could care less what a single atom does. We are all insignificant in the Universe. I think if God created it all, then why would 1 person on the planet Earth really matter.

Though if you believe that God is always around you, watching and always with you, then it makes you feel significant. I don't believe that God is, but I think most religious people do. If God is real I would probably just think it created everything and then sort of just hung out. No, I don't think it created humans. I believe in science, but have no clue what happened before the big bang. Religion isn't the enemy, people doing evil things with the justification of religion are. Peace.

(May 28, 2012 at 10:02 pm)Shell B Wrote: Catholic schools are not open to anyone. Why do you continue to spout untruths as if they are fact?

Yes they are. Some private Catholic schools (those owned by a religious order vs. a diocese or parish) have educational requirements attached, but there is no religious requirement to attend a Catholic school, and many non-Catholics currently are in the Catholic school system. Some 20% of Notre Dame's students are non-Catholic for example, and according to the NCEA some 12% of children in Catholic elementary schools are non-Catholic.

http://www.catholiccourier.com/in-depth/...-students/

When I was an atheist I dated a Wiccan who was going to Catholic school.

Quote:Pol Pot despised intellectual people too, so there goes your idea that he was persecuting people based on religion.

This doesn't even make any sense, I'm afraid. Thats like saying Hitler also despised Communists, so there goes my idea he was persecuting people based on ethnicity. Huh?

(May 28, 2012 at 10:18 pm)Aiza Wrote:

(May 28, 2012 at 10:02 pm)Shell B Wrote: Catholic schools are not open to anyone. Why do you continue to spout untruths as if they are fact?

Yes they are. Some private Catholic schools (those owned by a religious order vs. a diocese or parish) have educational requirements attached, but there is no religious requirement to attend a Catholic school, and many non-Catholics currently are in the Catholic school system. Some 20% of Notre Dame's students are non-Catholic for example, and according to the NCEA some 12% of children in Catholic elementary schools are non-Catholic.

http://www.catholiccourier.com/in-depth/...-students/

When I was an atheist I dated a Wiccan who was going to Catholic school.

The question here is, did your Wiccan friend tell his Catholic teachers that he was Wiccan?

Your source does not say that all Catholic schools allow children of all faiths and no faith to enroll. Catholic schools are not "Catholic," because they are run by Catholics. They are Catholic because they teach, embrace and promote Catholicism. They are for Catholics and they do not exempt non-Catholic children from observation of and learning of Catholicism in the school.

Quote:

Quote:Pol Pot despised intellectual people too, so there goes your idea that he was persecuting people based on religion.

This doesn't even make any sense, I'm afraid. Thats like saying Hitler also despised Communists, so there goes my idea he was persecuting people based on ethnicity. Huh?

It's actually not. It's like saying Pol Pot hated religious people and atheists, which means he hated everyone. Pol Pot's reign was one where he targeted virtually everyone as a means of gaining control. He was not an atheist out to get Catholics as you paint him to be. Your position is clearly largely based on your beliefs and the influence of those who share your beliefs. If you were capable of objectivity, you would see that Pol Pot did not kill anyone because he was an atheist. He did it because he was an asshole. Many Catholics, on the other hand, murdered specifically because of their faith and what their faith taught them. Answer me this, would you suffer a witch to live? If yes, you are not following your faith.

Your problem is that you try to paint atheists with a single brush when they only share a single disbelief. You, and the murderous Catholics of old and new, share an entire worldview. You actually embrace the rules that allowed them to commit their murders, yet you think atheists are somehow less moral and more likely to be horrible than Catholics? Get over yourself, Aiza. You are just like every other converted theist -- confused and grasping.

I think the general point I was trying to make to you didn't quite register. I am actually aware that the Khmer Rouge was anti-Buddhist...and anti-anything-that-argued-with-it-at-all. As I've stated before, communist regimes have a long, storied past with them not tolerating any kind of dissidence, and indeed want to force the individual to surrender not just their bodies but their minds to the Party as well, which again, I reiterate; exactly as all religions do. Totalitarianism is no different than religions in general; they demand you think a certain way, thinking otherwise is worthy of punishment, you are an inferior being below the head of the party [or an inferior being below god], and to speak out is to incur damnation. There are many more but those are the largest, most over-arching ones and you have yet to dispel the similarities between them that I have pointed out thus far.

It's interesting to note that the "replacement of god," IE totalitarianism, has such striking resemblances to the "establishment of god," IE religion...almost as if both were man-made...but THAT couldn't POSSIBLY be the case...could it?

And I don't really care whether or not anyone can get into a catholic school, again you either are missing the point or, I suspect, are simply not wanting to get it because of the implications. Pol Pot went to a Catholic School [also in that article, at the bottom of the page it indicates Pol Pot is in the "former buddhists" section of Wikipedia; I WONDER WHY] and do I really honestly CARE if he was catholic or not at this point? No. Why did I bring it up and also bring up the parallels between the Khmer Rouge and Buddhist teachings? Allow me to spell it out.

It's where they got the inspiration for what they did later in life. Catholic school is not a secular-centric kind of school. It does NOT divorce religion from education; it MAKES religion the chief component of the education. Now, Pol Pot was apparently a really poor scholar when it came to the aspects of literacy and mathematics, and yet when it came time for him to become a ruthless dictator he enacted policies that sound right at home with Catholic doctrine; all those under your umbrella are your sheep and you are their shepherd and woe betide he who thinks an impure thought. Since you make the attempt so much to try to ignore what I am getting at: The catholic church in its glory days lived off of the illiteracy of those who followed it; literacy was exceedingly rare in the middle ages, and literacy was required to be part of the church's order. If just anyone could read the bible, they supposed, there would be no need for the priests [and the various schisms, especially the Protestant schism, are proof of this fear being well-founded] so they didn't make any effort to elevate their flock to be able to read the bible until certain events eventually forced their hand to change this dogma. Now we compare this similarities with the Khmer Rouge who denounced intellectualism because having more capacity for free thought led to the individual questioning the party. Kind of like today where people who can read the bible often find themselves questioning many aspects of it. Both claim[ed] perfection, all the while knowing what they said is absolute falsehood, because if they truly were perfect, nobody would be able to question them.

But the questions exist, implying imperfection.

Then we go to the idea of heresy. Or thought-heresy. Was it not Catholic dogma that held that holding impure thoughts risked your chances at salvation? Doesn't it still do that? Well, funny thing, the Khmer Rouge used that again in the form of its anti-intellectualism, which I've already mentioned. The catholic church states that if you deny god, you are damned to eternal torture. The Khmer Rouge stated that if you deny the party, you will die a long, agonizing death by torture.

Are you getting it yet?

And you're going to be a sister? Really? I'm going to turn something around on you that the christians love asking me for some reason: "What if you're wrong?" If you're wrong and I'm right then you're wasting your life in blind service to something that doesn't exist. You are forsaking the pleasures of life itself, the limited life you have, in the blind hope that you'll be rewarded for it when you die...except that life is tangible and something you can feel and no matter what you say, you CANNOT PROVE that god is real. You can say that you are "thinking of eternity," but here's the thing; eternity might have a time measurement: The human life. Eternity might be this, and when it ends, thus ends eternity, and you will have wasted your life. I can't stop you, and really if it's what you decide...well, so be it, but I really hope you've actually considered this. I don't mean considered it through the rose-tinted glasses of your beliefs, either, I mean actually stepped back and genuinely thought this over.

(May 28, 2012 at 9:50 pm)Aiza Wrote: ]Sure, and then some atheists try to jump to "therefore religious are less educated" while those studies which properly control for those aspects (income, area) find quite the opposite.

You don't need statistics to refute stupid reasoning.

(May 28, 2012 at 9:50 pm)Aiza Wrote: The state in order to bring up the morale of Russian people during WWII (many of whom were still secretly Christian). To then say that implies the state "left the Orthdoox alone" is just ridiculous because it was after decades of suppression.

The atheist state that was determined to wipe out theism (except for overlooking several hundred churches they could have destroyed) was happy to promote it when it served the state's purposes? It's almost like they were motivated by expediency. You think maybe the churches that were spared before the late forties supported the state?

(May 28, 2012 at 9:50 pm)Aiza Wrote: It might be an effective way to "find out the source"(though you give a very big "if"). Its not an effective way to write a legitimate source of information.

In fact, it sounds like writing a legitimate source of information wasn't what they were trying to do at all. 'We have info that says X, can any of you guys source it' sounds like something else entirely to me.

(May 28, 2012 at 9:50 pm)Aiza Wrote: Except it doesn't talk about atheists at all. It talks about people with "no religious training whatsoever", which would include both theists and atheists.

As I said, it's not much, but people with no religous training at all is a group in which atheists are likely to be highly represented, as opposed to the group of people who don't go to church much.

(May 28, 2012 at 9:50 pm)Aiza Wrote: Its even less meaningful than those studies about religion, because while a small amount of atheists are still religious, most atheists probably had some form of religious training, particularly in 1928.

So those atheists wouldn't be included.

(May 28, 2012 at 9:50 pm)Aiza Wrote: Its no more "about atheists" than the other studies. This one just appeals to atheists more I suppose.

It does more to limit the field to atheists than the other studies, in my opinion. I could care less to whom it appeals, I don't see a causal connection between atheism and morality; although I strongly suspect a causal connection between humanism and morality.

(May 28, 2012 at 9:50 pm)Aiza Wrote: Whatever helps you sleep at night!

Ah, the insufferable smugness returns. You'll make a great nun.Nice impugnment of my motivations and integrity. I'm sure you think it was okay since you didn't use any bad words. I guess I'll go back to thinking most of the so-called ex-atheists are liars, given how profoundly ignorant most of them are of real atheists. What was I thinking, giving them the benefit of the doubt. Ignorance is excusable, lying about having been an atheist as a 'witnessing technique' or to get 'religous cred' is corrupt. Shame on me for thinking they were merely honestly mistaken.