Who Kills More, Religion or Atheism?

[Anymouse]

People (and a ton of other things as well) kill people. Fantasy stories about fairies don't have the power to pull a trigger. Lack of belief in faeries, also, cannot pull a trigger. Whatever religious reason is given for this or that it's ad-hoc. The person made the decision, and then justified it after the fact (though sometimes before the act). I can't imagine what reason an atheist would give for killing someone other than "I wanted/needed to" since, by definition, they have no one to blame.

Perhaps books do not have the power to kill a person. Neither does propaganda.

However, things such as the Inquisition or witch killings today in Africa are not perversions of Christianity, they are expressions of it.

After all, when you truly believe that the immortal soul is doomed to an eternity of damnation, what is a small amount of suffering here on Earth if the point is to save it?

Ideas kill. They kill because they draw fanatics. True it is the fanatic that pulls the trigger, the rack, or the witchduck, but without the ideas the fanatic would not express them. And ideas, whether speech or in a book, are formulated by people. The shooter is merely the accomplice.

The argument runs now in the Gabrielle Giffords shooting if Sarah Palin's Website with its crosshairs on Democrats' photos incited the violence against her. Naturally Sarah Palin maintains no. The shooter himself is never likely to have a coherent day in court. Like Dr. Tiller's assassin, who gunned him down in church, he will claim his religious views guided him. Ideas do kill.

And religious radicals are not going to check their religion at the Capitol steps if they get elected. And though they might be 430 odd representatives and 100 senators, they rule over us all. I will make damn sure whomever I vote for is not a "letter of the Bible belivin' Christian." I don't want to go to the witchduck next. And when the Fundamentalist hold the keys to are nuclear arsenal, and the awesome power to bring about the Armageddon they actually pray for, you don't think they won't use it? You have a skewed knowledge of human history if you believe that.

And to a lesser extent, ideas can hold back a society just as well as destroy one. In how many districts today in the United States, if a candidate held forth to the public openly and honestly that they were Wiccan, or atheist Goddess forbid, even with the best economic or political ideas, do you think the Fundamentalist voters will put aside their difference in religion to vote for that candidate, or do you think they would stand a better chance of winning the Powerball? Or more likely, would they not live to election day, when some kook like the fellow who knocked off Dr. Tiller in Kansas decides you're the AntiChrist and God has given them the means to stop you?

James
PS: the world is overpopulated. But Christians pray for Armageddon, they want the destruction of the world, it heralds the coming of their Saviour. Oh yes, ideas kill, and the idea that overpopulation is a myth will kill us all. Robert Heinlein once calculated that at the present birth rate, the population of Earth will exceed its mass in about fifty or so more years. If population is not controlled, everywhere, fully, and religions aren't gotten out of the more babies business, that'll be our Armageddon. Or more likely, when the world of starving people outnumber and outgun the rest of us, and have nothing else to lose, that will be. This isn't prophecy, it is cold mathematics. Even Christians can count. And folk like Quivverful are counting their allies, and making as many more as possible.

If they are so "pro-life," why do so many Christians oppose contraception and abortion yet support the death penalty? Christian support of the death penalty is the strongest argument against using it. Gotta make sure the next Inquisition is legal.