Religious moderates enable religious extremists

[Sword of Christ]

My submission is that those things were the products of the people involved, and not the religion.

I agree that's it's not "religion" it's the good within humanity which is through God. But you think it's chemical reactions, instinct, evolution or whatever and we just follow our programs like machines. Thee is no good, no evil, no freewill and no point.

Incidentally, I find it hilarious that you would start with human rights and equality, because the one thing your religion can do is inspire hate where none would otherwise exist, and christianity in particular has been used to justify human rights violations including the slave trade, and the inequality of gays and women even today.

Christianity helped to end the slave trade and promote human rights. Yes homosexuality is a thorny and divisive issue in certain Churches though it doesn't mean inequality is promoted they just believe it to be a sin, like sex outside of marriage would be sinful.

... Oh, but I'm sure in your mind the reverse of what I just said is true, no? Let me nip that in the bud: the hate in this case requires "god wants x!" which isn't something you'll see from atheists, yet you do see the charity from them.

Not generally as much on average but they still feel some compulsion to do good and help others certainly.

It's stealing credit for human brilliance.

Human brilliance comes about from being made in the image of God. You can give equal credit to both.

Since you can't prove its true, and all...

You may as well prove atheism is true though I would say the evidence is against it.

Oh, silly boy: name me a single ideology that committed atrocities in the name of disbelief in god.

Atrocities were committed due to or in association with atheist ideology, see for instance the French Reign of Terror. If you want to go on raw numbers then atheism is associated with millions more deaths than religion. Of course you can't pin this on a "disbelief in God" because no-one would kill anyone based on what they don't believe.

Since I know you can't

Only because you loaded it as "disbelief in God". Otherwise it would be easy to point out the death toll of Communist socialist anti-religion regimes which you well know is staggering.

, then wouldn't you say that there were other factors motivating these things? Say, greed or a lust for power or anything else?

Motivated by pure human sin yes.

Given that you can now not draw a link between atheism and communism, let's look at your other claim: if fascism drew any inspiration from evolutionary science, then it was a drastic misunderstanding of how the theory works, for one.

Much like atrocities committed in the name of religion are drastic misunderstandings of God it's the same kind of thing.

Secondly, I think you'll find that you're thinking of the philosophical concept of survival of the fittest- not actually a tenet of evolution, fool- and not natural selection, which works completely contrary to the acts of a fascist regime.

The Nazi's "euthanized" it's mentally and physically disabled citizens, the people who would be a drain on their economy. They also attempted to conquer an empire where their own people would rule and have dominance over the lesser races, gain all their land and resources and so on. You can say they had the right idea if you want to disregard all our God given morality. It's not the good of the human race that would matter but the prosperity of your own tribal unit in competition with others. The strongest survive and the weakest die.

So, both of those things were inspired by evolution and atheism in the sense that they neither understood nor acted in ways in keeping with those two concepts

You can't really fault what they did in any practical sense you can only fault them on their morality.

, and in fact did literally the opposite, and in the latter case did so without ever doing so in the name of the sole atheist position.

The removal of belief in God and religion and all it's power was one of the goals of Communism. Not just against Christianity but you can see for instance the persecution of Buddhists in China. A new state religion based around man or based on blood and soil would then be put in Gods place.

They were influenced by those secular things in the sense that they weren't at all influenced by them.

You could say it was a religious motivation but a purely human made religion to be put in Gods place. What we don't want or need are false idols in place of God.

"Nope?" Wow! I've never thought about it like that before! "Nope!" I'm totally convinced!

Excellent, time for some repentance to the Lord then.

A= Acknowledge your wrong doings
B= Be sorry, or feel bad
C= Confess your sins to the Lord (or priesthood authority if the sin warrants!)
D= Don’t do it again

Holy hell. "Nope." I was totally wrong. Thank you for changing my mind with your bland assertion that I'm wrong, you goddamn idiot.

No need to thank me thank the power of the Lord. All I did signpost the way out of the darkness and you allowed God to carry you out.

Because creation is tremendously satisfying.

Because creation is an act of God and we're in Gods image. That's why it's satisfying.

Because charity makes one feel good

This what you would calla "heavenly reward" it feels good because you draw yourself closer to God.

, and helps people. Because we are strengthened as a group through our artistic endeavors and acts of kindness.

Exactly, now you have come to understand the true power of the Lord!

I'm an atheist, I don't believe in your god, and yet somehow I find the will to both write and do creative things, and do charity work on the side.

So the power of God is working through you even though you try to deny the existence of that which motivates you to do good? You see how the best kind of evidence is internal within you?

It's not fucking rocket science, and it's the reason why I'm confident in presenting this idea that your religion has nothing to do with the human spirit, except the ways in which it harms us.

It's not religion that's the cause it's God and our relationship to God who is the cause.

The results of human strength and creativity, yes.

And we get all this from?

They do speak for themselves, without any input from your god.

Well no there is a reason for these things, and the reason is God. Why don't you like the idea of having a good reason and explanation for things that happen?

Those few decades are the only time they have, Sword.

On this side of eternity yes.

Wow, more telling me what I think. Go fuck yourself.

That is what you think! You don't believe in God a higher power or purpose therefore we're that are the byproduct of a natural process what bloody hell else do you think we are?

For the record, I think we're the product of millions of years of evolution, small parts in an enormous creative engine that spans the entire globe.

And all of this exists and all the natural processes it took to engineer all this exist because? What it's just randomly here for no reason?

I think we're the crest of the wave, the current cognitive best that this process can produce, capable of immense feats of creativity when we put our minds to it.

Why does this whole process exist in the first place?

I think we're going to be superseded by what comes next

There is a direction to it then? I think we're as developed as biological life can be myself. There is scientific backing that a larger brain to body ratio would be less efficient.

, that our fate is to be the giants whose shoulders the next generation will stand upon, and that we have a duty to make the world better for them.

And eventually everything will grind down into the dust of a universe in decay and ruin for which there never was any reason or purpose for it's existence and within which we were just byproduct of organic scum? This is not an uplifting vision of humanities future or current state however you try to cut it.

I think all of that without the need for a god, nor any real interest in one.

You're still interested in all that God represents, you're still interested in some kind of goal or purpose to life. Which you won't have without God.

I think it's sad that you're so reliant on your magic sky daddy that you can't see all that too without it.

It's a shame you're so reliant on brainwashing materialist dogma that you can't see what you yourself believe.

Yes, that's the theft of human accomplishment I was talking about before. Thanks for giving a great example.

Human accomplishment and Gods accomplishment go hand in hand together we are Gods creation we're in relationship with God.

You keep telling me what I believe, I'll keep telling you what to go fuck.

I keep telling you what atheism is about not necessarily what you believe if you don't agree with atheist philosophy. We would be machines made by a fluke of natural coincidence and mechanistically determined. Have a read of Stephen Hawkings the Grand Design to get more insight into this if you don't want to take my word for it you can take his.

Proof, or get the fuck out.

The proof is internal within you and the evidence is everywhere you look.

You look like a dick. Maybe you are one- it seems likely- but it'd be great if maybe you could at least try not to appear as one. Cover up the tip with a hat or something.

It takes a dick to fuck assholes and pussies? Just your opinion though as I haven't meekly backed down under your overwhelming reason and ad hominem attacks.