Q about arguments for God's existence.

[Lek]

Hitler specifically used religious iconography and principles to incite his people to do his bidding. Whether or not he specifically believed is neither here nor there, the point is that your religion's symbols and natural inclination to obedience and pogroms played a role in that period of history, much as you might want to deny it.

And I'm saying that what Hitler did wasn't the fault of christianity.

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But you're missing the point, which is that you're attempting to pin the blame for some things on atheism, which is a concept, for which the primary motivation can more accurately be ascribed to other things. You're trying to say "atheism oppresses religion," but the things you're pointing to had nothing to do with atheism and everything to do with seizing power from other groups that might hold it. That's why your point is dishonest: you start by accusing atheism of being oppressive to religion, and then when someone actually questions you on whether atheism was the motivation- when you specifically accused it of being the motivation a moment before- you act like motivations don't matter.

You're missing my point. I never blamed atheism for persecuting christians. I did say that atheists have persecuted christians.

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Just saying it's bogus doesn't make it so. The fact is that there are plenty of violent acts that would not have happened without your religion there to motivate them. The trouble is that you can't even demonstrate that any of the things you believe in are real, and so from an outside perspective, a rational one, those people died for nothing. Your point about nationalism makes no sense: at least we know nations exist. There's a difference between fighting for something demonstrably real, and the waste of life cause by religious violence. Neither should be encouraged of course, but at least the former serves a realistic purpose.

If there were no religions, the acts that were motivated by religion probably would not have occurred, but other atrocities would have happened which would be motivated by other rationale. Like I said in my posts, terrible acts were motivated by numerous influences for many different reasons. Evil people commit evil acts.