(August 13, 2015 at 7:25 pm)Parkers Tan Wrote:(August 13, 2015 at 4:47 pm)Cephus Wrote: It doesn't matter why he did it, it only matters that he did it. The religious don't want to acknowledge that, or aren't even aware of it, because it interferes with their oppression narrative.
I get what you're saying, that they are dissimulating, but from the atheist perspective, it very much matters why he did that. He wasn't being generous, and we shouldn't give the impression we think he was, in order to avoid the inevitable "aha!".
As Abaris has pointed out, history is a very complicated and nuanced study. Appealing to the simple-minded thinking of religionistas in order to score points demotes us to their rank. We should exemplify the thinking we wish to encourage, even when we cannot garner points in argumentation about it.
My point is, there are a lot of theists out there who insist that Stalin persecuted the churches and outlawed religion and that's all there is to it, when that view is factually incorrect. Nobody is saying Ol' Joe Stalin was a nice guy, he wasn't, but he wasn't the religion-hating atheist that the religious desperately want to make him out to be, especially when they want to blame his atheism for his actions, which is likewise, entirely untrue. Stalin was pushing communism, a political system which requires functional adherence to the state, he was wiping out other institutions which got in the way of that and religion was one, but hardly the only, one of those systems that he got rid of, at least for a while. But there are a lot of Christians out there who are trying desperately to twist the historical facts to their religious narrative, that atheists are religion-hating, baby-eating monsters, and they're doing history entirely wrong.
That's the sum total of what I was saying.
There is nothing demonstrably true that religion can provide mankind that cannot be achieved as well or better through secular means.
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