I can feel your anger

[Creed of Heresy]

It's like you didn't even bother to read what I wrote.
If you kill someone because they're religious, and you think religious people deserve to die...how is that not motivated by atheism? If I kill someone because they're not Christian, and I think people who aren't Christian deserve to die, isn't that motivated by my belief in Christianity?
Similarly, if I kill someone because they're not atheist, and I think people who aren't atheist deserve to die, isn't that motivated by my belief 'in atheism' (so to speak)?

Except that the aforementioned totalitarians never killed people because they were religious. You have to realize that atheism in Russia at that time was actually quite "mainstream," compared to the US; every Christian killed in Russia often stood side-by-side atheists at the firing post. These atheists were often political dissidents who had once supported communism but rejected it once it became clear that Stalinism was just an extreme form of Leninism and was basically just religion in the guise of Government replacing God. Which I could have sworn I just explained. To also expound on this, Stalin was technically still a theist. According to a couple Russian historians, he had a profound belief in a "god of nature." Was he an atheist? Sure seemed it. Did he kill religious people? Yes. Did he kill religious people and no others? No. Did he kill religious people solely because they were religious? No. He killed religious people because organized religion was one of the greatest threats to his power, and the man was ridiculously paranoid about his grasp on power. He had an ego like you would not believe.

And to be entirely honest, his executions of Russian Orthodox adherents is an extremely small number in comparison to the number of people he killed overall: 200,000 or so people killed for being religious, as compared to the 9,000,000 killed for varying other reasons. If the man had specifically targeted the religious and only the religious, this would have more grounds to stand on, but the pattern of his killings point not to being because he was an atheist or doing it in the name of atheism, but rather that he was killing in the name of himself. You literally cannot argue this without basically trying to argue with numbers and history.

I mean, I even phrased it in a very suggestive manner. No theist kills because they think "God exists" is true; that is, nobody kills because of bare theism. They kill because of a particular belief system that implements theism--that is, they think "God exists, and wants me to kill you." Do you see that distinction?

Of course I do, and truth be told I've never stated under any circumstances that theism alone is responsible for the myriad of genocides, crusades, inquisitions, sanctioned murders/mass-murders, witch-trials that have been perpetuated throughout history BY theists...I simply point out that there are specific elements of all theistic beliefs that exhort adherents to commit genocides, crusades, inquisitions, sanctioned murders/mass-murders, and witch-trials.

I think it's a good one, and I think it's useful for analyzing beliefs that motivate action. So let's say that my belief system is B. Then a subset B' of B is said to motivate a belief b iff b is a consequence of B'.
The intersection of every motivating subset is the kernel of the motivation for b--the smallest set of beliefs needed to produce b.

*drools dumbly* ...wut? Sorry, I was never good at math, especially not word problems.

Now, here's why this is useful: Suppose I'm a theist, and I think I should kill you. That belief might not be a consequence of my theism, but rather of some other subset of my belief system--say, racism, or greed, or sadism. This will be borne out in the kernel of the motivation for the belief that I should kill you; my theism is extraneous, and not necessary for my belief that I should kill you (in this particular hypothetical--in other situations, it might indeed be necessary).

Or the many entries of your theistic denomination of choice that tell you to do so. The koran, bible, and torah all have a looot of entries that espouse and condone murdering someone else for a myriad of reasons, racism, greed, and sadism not being the least of which.

The problem for atheism is that every belief system that isn't explicitly theist implements atheism. Anyone who says, "I don't believe there's a God, but I am willing to kill someone for the money in their wallet" has an atheist belief system, and one that justifies murder for profit. Similarly, someone who says, "I believe there's a God, and I'm willing to kill someone for the money in their wallet" has a theist belief system--one that justifies murder for profit.

Actually they have a capitalist belief system, in that they desire capital. If someone says "I believe there's a god and I'm killing you for your wallet" it doesn't mean their belief entails the necessity for murder for money...in other words they're theistic capitalists. And murderers, obviously. There is no justification in either of those sentiments for murdering someone for their money. I am curious as to where you got that idea.

Now, as before, you might argue that the atheist's justification for murder isn't an outgrowth of their atheism--that is, they might acquire a belief in God and still maintain their justification for murder. But if you make this distinction for atheists, you must make it for theists as well. The theist who justifies murder might very well maintain that belief even after becoming an atheist.

Except that, again, there was no justification. Sorry, but the argument falls apart with its foundations being made out of sand. o__o

And I think we've all seen that--a deeply-held belief that is wrapped in theological clothing when it's a convenient justification, and when the justification is no longer convenient, another one is quickly acquired.

But it seems like there's something more at play. Maybe what you're saying is something like: "Sure, a particular atheist might have very immoral beliefs--e.g., Stalin/Pol Pot. However, this isn't a necessary consequence of atheism, but of that particular atheist's fucked-up worldview, which itself is not a necessary consequence of atheism."

I wouldn't even say either of these men had a worldview of anything more than just their own desire for power. Neither of them ever used atheism itself as an excuse or justification for what they did; Stalin made the claim he was killing the religious because religious institutions were an opiate that had to be taken away to clear the way for the worker's paradise, completely perverting what Karl Marx had said [Marx had basically stated that it was the opium of the oppressed people and that take away the oppression and you take away the need for the opiate; you can see where Stalin fucked this up beyond all recognition], yet in truth, as I just explained in regards to his bastardization of Marxism, it had nothing to do with that at all.

And again, I think this is a failure to recognize scope. Just as you can't blame theism for the faults of Catholicism (a particular implementation of theism), since Catholicism is not a necessary consequence of theism, you can't blame atheism for the faults of Stalinism (a particular implementation of atheism).

I DON'T blame theism for the faults of Catholicism: I blame Catholicism for the faults of Catholicism. I just also have yet to see a theistic institution [an organized one mind you] that is not amoral/immoral in some large ways while pretending it is a moral paragon.

Anyway, that's how I tend to think of it: Theism and Atheism as classes of belief systems.

Belief and unbelief, you mean. Atheism, if I may be frank, is the default position. Theism makes the claim, and atheism in the broadest sense basically rejects that claim, and the reasons for it doing so are actually very reasonable.

Let me put it like this: Christians reject 9,999 gods. When you understand why they do so, you'll understand why I reject just one more.[/quote]