(March 24, 2017 at 10:00 am)Isis Wrote: Maybe I am just being pedantic here, but I really don't see how a religion can be deadly. That's like saying atheism is deadly due to the high body count of dictators like Stalin and Mao.
Religion is deadly, not because all religious people will kill, but because people do act on their beliefs, and if their logic is bad that logic can lead them to do very horrible things in defense of that bad logic.
Now can atheists do the same? Sure, I never want the word "off" which is what "atheist"means to be turned into a religion. I do not like some current atheists trying to write their own moral lists and create "atheist churches" in order to compete with religion, those groups with those concepts would be just the same.
You can avoid that kind of superficial tribalism by accepting that our morality is not in a label, but in our evolution, and that includes atheists.
Stalin and Mao demanded the same blind loyalty as any dark age theocracy and Saudi Arabia. The issue is how humans use labels to form groups. That does create safety in numbers and allows the group when in big enough numbers to have control over resources and even bully other groups.
No label, not even the word "atheist" will determine if the individual claiming that label will be cruel or compassionate. Religion should be considered anything, any label, be it religion, economic view, or political party that gets to the point of oppression of questioning authority. Basically the point a group gets to the point of demanding blind loyalty.
