Damned STUPID Priest yesterday . . .

[The Grand Nudger]

You are absolutely right Gae, I was incorrect and sloppy again, thanks for calling me on it. I didn't mean anti-theist I meant anti-religious, which is different from atheism and anti-theism.

Religions aren't people..either, all the wanting to shank religion in the world won't amount to wanting to shank a person.  You're just reasserting the same thing in other words. You can refer back to my exposition of the motivations of the khmer rouge both as they stated them and as they were to see why this will never amount to anything more than amateur jingoism.

Certainly morality can deter killing. I see your point in laws being reactionary and detaining related and agree. Beliefs do motivate people, whether fear of reprisal, religious beliefs, etc. What does anti-theism propose as a social motivator or set of beliefs that motivate people?

Even the religious are mostly motivated by a mountain of things other than religion.  Most of them don't stop to wonder whether or not jesus would order the steak or the salad, knamean?  I don't see any need to offer a replacement for religious motivation, as nothing worthwhile will be lost to need replacing.  It's like you asking what I would replace a parasite with, after having removed it. Nothing.

Why do you feel theism is an effective magnifier of the worst in human nature and why do you feel that's so?

Mostly because religion, not unique in this but in the set...gives us a dangerous certainty in whatever we happen to be doing.  It can subvert our better judgement and, while it does so, convince us that this antithetical judgement is THE BEST judgement.  Then theres it's institutional nature...which means that..when it inevitably goes south, it's not just one deranged asshole on the crazytrain to boomtown.

So, some homophobe might be uncomfortable around gay people..but it takes a believer to think that the lord of creation hates queers and wants them dead-ed...and that it would be good and godly to fulfill that creators wish or at least make it as hard as possible to just wake up and breath every day. Rinse and repeat with every outgroup as each religion sees it. Imagine a whole country full of these fuckers....and then remember that I'm living in one.

A persons decency has an inverse relationship to their fundamental religiosity. We can all tell the nutters (the irreligious and the moderately religious alike) by how seriously they take the most seriously fucked up things they find in their respective magic books.

Even more simply..though, to be asked why I might think that a gaggle of life rejecting faiths that spent their first few thousand years annihilating all life affirming faith..and in which all members now dream of the apocalypse........is absurd, on it's face...to me. Ultimately, these were the winners in the wars the gods waged with mens bodies and minds as proxies..and if we hit the reset button..I;d expect an equally barbaric set of faiths to win out yet again. Red in tooth and claw actually applies to the gods just as aptly as any other animal. Any religion not willing to go toe to toe in atrocity ends up the victim, not the victor.