Atheism - less war?

[Dawud]

So Im wrong...

No one could ever kill because someone else believes in God

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Yup

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[The Grand Nudger]

Pitch straw elsewhere, I'd very much accept that someone could kill because someone else believed in god. Particularly if it's not the god you believe in, and you believe that god commanded you to kill the heretics.

This wont make -your- point though.

[pocaracas]

I'll give it a brief try...
Stalin pushed communism... his version of communism... there seem to be almost as many kinds of communism as there are of christianity.
But this kind in particular had in it the atheist view.

Stalin pushed for his communism, atheism was just part of the package.
He didn't end up pushing communism because of atheism, he ended up pushing atheism, because of communism.
It wasn't atheism that drove him. It was the political system that he wanted to impose... it just happens that this system implies atheism.... maybe because he wanted to acquire the assets that belonged to religious orders... that part of history is lost to me... but again, it's not atheism that drives it.

[The Grand Nudger]

Nor was atheism, in truth, what was pushed - only conformity and fealty.

[Dawud]

I don't believe in God so I avoid churches so I make up my own mind about theists from secondary sources. The secondary sources show me that theists have done awful things so I decide to kill them...

Irrational but possible

Bit you just run and hide from this fact

[Tonus]

Nice. Thirteen pages of:

Dawud: So, are atheists like this?
Atheists: No.
Dawud: K, lemme ask again. So, are atheists like...

[The Grand Nudger]

I'd respoond to that poster the same way I;m responding to you Dawud - something else is required, between "I don't believe" and "I don't go to churches".

I don't believe, but I do go to churches. Particularly when they need my smoker for some badass pulled pork sammys (and their wallets are open).

"Theists have done awful things" is -in what way- related or dependent upon atheism? How does it follow? I'll help you, in no way - and it doesn't. Regardless of whether or not you believe (in gods) that position can be held (and in fact is - by maltheists - who believe that there is a god, but that the god and it;s adherenants are abjectly evil).

[A_Nony_Mouse]

Well, you and I both know that such examples won't be found. There aren't any gods ordering anything anywhere in the first place. That doesn't address whether or not the people involved used their gods as an expression of whatever other motivations they may have had for something.

I presumed my statement would be taken as "claims of" giving such orders not evidence of the source. The examples should have made that clear.

Many polytheistic cultures (and even some more accurately described as animist) necessitated armed and lethal combat with their fellows as it is attached to something they positively valued - or as a means to achieve a spiritual end. Quite often the endorsement of a god (where applicable) was attendant to this larger trend.

Excuse but not argumentation or supposition or as I specifically excluded after the fact support as a result of sacrifice.

Consider certain subsets of germanic paganism wherein a requirement of death in battle was mandated by a deity (in order, no less, to swell the ranks of his apocalyptic army - that was doomed to lose) in order to be granted entry into their positively valued version of the afterlife. This is a mandate not for targeted warfare - but random and wanton destruction of life (up to and including ones own).

When there is a war already or a requirement for entry into Valhalla is not the same as Odin ordering raids on England.

Similarly, any culture in which a warriors success or prowess is intrinsically tied to the "spiritual power" of the group is also a culture in which some god or another is used to establish the legitimacy of this model. Such is the case with a number of native american tribes (and more generally, many tribal societies the world over)

If it were that nebulous god ordered our wars on Iraq instead of it being a Bushism.

Consider here again the hindu mythological wars which were waged with the intention of exterminating - that is the correct word- exterminating the rival forces. That one side is seen as "the good guys" and the other "the bad guys is entirely equivalent to any narrative posed by monotheistic deities - similarly that the account is mythical (in this case) is also equivalent to the mythical command from any -one true god-.

You mean the monkey king?

Pantheons are filled to the brim with war and death gods - further demonstrating our very -human- preoccupation..with these occupations. No example of barbarism or brutality (as we would call it now) is unique in the operative to monotheism. This isn't to say that the tone of this sort of thing wasn't altered by the rise of monotheism (but we do have to nod the hat to other contributing factors - such as the time and regions in which monotheism arose). It's difficult, as a transitional society to wage large scale war, for example. But once you have at least a relatively developed infrastructure and industry it becomes again (if not for divine reasons- for practical ones) an imperative to war. I'm not criticizing the notion that monotheism brought something to the mix that had the effect of amplifying this (I think that point has been established to death) - just taking care to accept that the brutality we see in the history of monotheism had been with us for long before any one god was a twinkle in some mullahs eye. IOW, if something unique was leveraged in these examples it wasn't brutality specific to any one faith, but specific to human beings. Further, if something unique was leveraged it doesn't seem to be the faith itself (as many of us had already been more than willing to "kill for our gods" - for quite some time-). As usual, religion gets credit where it is undeserved. I'd say the success of monotheism in the brutality and warfare dept came down to leveraging a point in time and place - rather than anything remarkable about the religions that championed it. Meanwhile, we don't have any evidence that polytheistic societies were any more peaceful (though we longed for this to be the case for quite some time) - while we do have plenty of evidence to the contrary in the stockpiles of weapons and defensive (and offensive) fortifications of the time periods involved (in the regions involved) as well as their cultural narratives - which often do include divine drumbeats to war, divine pretext to war, and divine justifications for war (as well as spiritual or other "ill defined" values associated with the spiritual again extolling the virtue of and encuoraging armed conflict). A conflict over a "sacred site" or "holy land" is hardly unique to monotheism either.

The Americans and the Lakota Indians over the sacred Black Hills but neither to the gods of the hills nor the god of gold ordered it.

Often times "sacred site" was just a border (consider the strategic brilliance in declaring a mountain pass a holy site..btw), or a claim to resources. Tha bit above, about declaring holy sites is one of my biggest interests. For example, many tribal societies would either declare something holy and then build funeral pyres at the site (or the other way round - we can't know for certain) that just so happened to be at a very important point in any conceivable conflict with their neighbors. This always provided a ready justification for "violence sanctioned by the gods" - with the added kick of invoking the desecration of the sanctity of the rotting remains of ones ancestors. A little something for everyone.

Yes, yes to all of that but I was quite clear in what I was talking about, save perhaps for claims of instead of the actual orders, and you have given no examples.

I first realized this around 1999. I have said it in a number of forums and invited contrary examples. I am still waiting.

[Mister Agenda]

He tried to stop people believe g in God through a massive ovine red propaganda campaign.

I call a lack of belief in God atheism - SO DO YOU.

Spreading this was a clearly something he did...

Even if you deny Stalin did this (a dangerous thing to mess with history): at least you can admit the possibility?

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"You believe in God - I am going to kill you"

Totally impossible in your universe?

Stalin had the resources to tear down every church and kill every open theist. Horrifyingly, he killed around 20 million theists. But the holding of a religion was never officially outlawed and the Soviet Constitutions always guaranteed the right to believe. And it was Marxist-Leninism that taught that religion was an obstacle to the goals of the State, not atheism. Atheism doesn't teach anything, nor does theism.

Saying it was atheism instead of communism that motivated Stalin's religious oppression is like saying it was theism instead of Christianity that motivated the Crusades.

[The Grand Nudger]

Yes, yes to all of that but I was quite clear in what I was talking about, save perhaps for claims of instead of the actual orders, and you have given no examples.

I first realized this around 1999. I have said it in a number of forums and invited contrary examples. I am still waiting.

Well, on that count you and I will probably have two positions which agree in the generalities but disagree in the nuance. I do not require an overt command from a god to accept that the belief in the god encouraged violence against any specific peoples. Meanwhile we see that warlike polytheistic cultures did - in fact- have favorite targets (often, grated for the sake of convenience), and perhaps it's just the cynic in me...but I can't escape the notion that said polytheists probably believed that their gods were well aware, well encouraging, and practically demanding of their actions (in those cases where we don't have the overt command - such as we have in germanic paganism - and again granted that it wasn't directed towards anyone in particular).