RE: Who killed more people Atheists or Christians?
April 8, 2014 at 5:49 pm
(This post was last modified: April 8, 2014 at 6:06 pm by Mister Agenda.)
(March 19, 2014 at 8:46 pm)Phatt Matt s Wrote: If that's the case then I won't ask questions like this anymore. Wasn't trying to provoke people. The thread can be closed for all I care. I was curious what the answers would be.
A practicing Christian is actually suppose to love their enemies. How many Obedient Christians are there? Don't know if I have met them.
What makes it a troll question is limiting it to the 20th century. It's like an anti-Christian picking the century with the most Crusades as the target century.
In the 20th century we had mechanized killing devices that made it easier to kill large numbers of people than ever before. Do you think the Inquisition's body count might have been higher if they had machine guns?
And comparing atheists to Christians is a category error, like comparing apples to oranges. Why take one demographic with only one characteristic in common: nonbelief in a deity, and compare it with a demographic with a variety of beliefs in common? If you're going to do that, you might as well make it atheists vs. Quakers, it's just as meaningful.
So apples to apples would be atheists vs. theists, or communists vs. Christians. But the first doesn't make atheism look bad enough, since you have to weigh their crimes vs. the crimes of Christians, Muslims, et al, combined. And the latter has an obvious comeback: So what? I have as much in common with Stalin because I'm a communist as a Quaker has with Osama bin Laden because she's a theist.
If you want me to question the wisdom of my atheistic identity, show how freethinking humanists have the highest body count.
(March 21, 2014 at 6:42 am)Jacob(smooth) Wrote: What frost says.
It's a valid question, but contains a logical landmine. There is an implied post hoc ergo propter hoc error, that because theists / atheists killed more it was because they did so BECAUSE they were atheists / theists.
Without looking it up I believe chairman Mao tops the body league table, what was he?
Tibetan Buddhist. Talked about going to meet God soon when he was elderly.
(March 21, 2014 at 4:49 pm)Chuck Wrote: No, Mao is as atheist as they come. He usage of "Great God" was almost assuredly figurative, much as Mikhail Gorbachev spoke of "God on high", or modern Chinese communists speak of death as "going to see Marx".
Mao was conflicted. As a communist, he felt atheism should be promoted, but he also said “it is wrong to tell people to be against religion.”. (to delegates from Peru). He never announced or specifically wrote that he was an atheist. And there's this exchange recorded in 'Behind the Bamboo Curtain':
Pham Van Dong: How are you, Chairman Mao?
Mao Zedong: Not very well. I have had a cough for some days. It is time to go to Heaven. It seems that I am summoned to meet the Good God. How is President Ho?
I don't possess your certainty that he was 'as atheist as they come'.
(March 22, 2014 at 8:40 am)My imaginary friend is GOD Wrote: Not sure if there even were 3.5 million Native Americans to kill, much less that Winston Churchill is responsible for their deaths.
I'm pretty sure that the Indians being referred to did not live in the Western Hemisphere.
I'm not anti-Christian. I'm anti-stupid.
