(May 10, 2012 at 7:07 am)Paul the Human Wrote: Meaningless wordplay. People kill in the name of their religion and/or their god. Theism as inspiration to kill. Atheists that kill are not inspired to do so by their lack of belief in gods.I think his point was, theism on its own has never been used to justify the killing of anyone. Just as there are no people who say "there is no god, therefore I will kill people", there are no people who say "there is a god, therefore I will kill people". The reasons for killing in the name of God are always down to religious ideas about God, and whilst theism is often a core tenet of religion, you cannot equate the two.
People who say "there is a God, he/she says this person must die, therefore I will kill this person" are theists, but they are killing in the name of a religious idea of God, and not the idea of God itself.
