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[Glitch]

[Minimalist]

The "atheist" leaders killing people argument gets tiresome in a hurry....although I note that this guy is smart enough to leave a fine xtian like Hitler out of the mix. Got to give him that point.

Blackbeard killed people too but not because they were religious. He killed them because they weren't pirates. Similarly, Stalin and Mao (he forgot Pol Pot, too) killed people because they were not COMMUNISTS not because they were some variant of religious nuttery.

Only religion - I repeat - ONLY RELIGION deliberately kills people because they believe in a different invisible sky daddy and thinks themselves very fucking holy for doing so.

[Glitch]

Interesting thoughts, but i see two very false statements. Blackbeard never killed anyone, perhaps his crew... The misconception of his violence was created by a biased 18th century author who portrayed his antagonist as much worse people as they truly where, in order to sell more obviously. Coincidentally I watched a few great documentaries on his life style roughly a week ago on the history channel and other information hubs.

Those communist saw religion as a threat to the state. You are correct, although you are dealing with such an absolute. Stalin was an honest atheist, he truly did not like religion, So in his case I believe you are incorrect, unless you can provide solid evidence.

Persistent isn't he? Haha.

[Cato]

This was my reply to a very similar challenge earlier today:

"I don't know what you look like, so let's assume your skin is blue. Do you consume food because your skin is blue? Or is there a more rational explanation?

My point is that isolating one trait of an individual and then assigning that trait as the motivation/reason for a particular behavior is unreasonable unless you can demonstrate how that trait results in the behavior described."

[Glitch]

[Faith No More]

Perhaps you should remind your friend that atheism is just the lack of belief in god, and atheists derive their morals and worldviews from a variety of different influences and sources. There is no cohesive atheist worldview, and it is therefore illogical to use an example of three atheist leaders to criticize all political systems that atheists and their varied influences are capable of putting together.

[Esquilax]

Perhaps you should remind your friend that atheism is just the lack of belief in god, and atheists derive their morals and worldviews from a variety of different influences and sources. There is no cohesive atheist worldview, and it is therefore illogical to use an example of three atheist leaders to criticize all political systems that atheists and their varied influences are capable of putting together.

This. Trying to compare atheism to theism of any stripe misses one very important point; the former addresses only a single issue, the latter evokes a worldview.

To be an atheist, you need only disbelieve god claims; anything else you believe is based on a number of other things, not necessarily atheism. To be a christian, one must necessarily adopt certain other things as true that do inform beliefs; there's an omnipotent god, he has a set of rules and sins, heaven and a hell, dislike for nonbelievers... these are all contingent propositions that one accepts when one becomes a christian.

Not so with atheism.

Now, as to your christian friend's claim that religion enforces moral rules to such a degree that removing them would be harmful... maybe ask him just how many of the biblical rules have actually been translated across to societal ones. Sure, we've got laws against murder, but our laws are much more strict than the bible's; there's no exemption for executing nonbelievers or gays, after all. We've got laws against rape that are much, much more strict than the bible's. And many things that are in the bible, we just don't care about anymore; we have no laws restricting worship, nor adultery, nor examples too numerous to list.

See, that's the thing; these people are all too quick to point out their particular religious texts as being the source of all moral laws, but we as a society have trimmed a lot of the fat and malignant vestigial bits from religion in order to arrive at the moral state that the religion is taking credit for. There's clearly something else at play here beyond just religion; to claim the bible is a useful source of moral law is to ignore all the parts of the bible that are simply too immoral for us to stomach in a practical sense.

And this idea that religion hasn't committed a large scale atrocity in a long time... actually think about that for a bit. What's changed between the inquisition and now? What's the variable? Whatever it is, it surely is not the religion, since it has the same holy book as it did back then. Their laws haven't changed and yet, somehow, their operating behavior has; what's changed?

Well, the societal pressure has. Religion doesn't sculpt society; society sculpts religion, which then proceeds to turn around and claim credit for those very changes.

[Drich]

sounds like your friend knows what he is talking about. why would you want a refute somethiing that makes sense?

[Minimalist]

Persistent isn't he? Haha.

No. Just typically dense. Blackbeard was the captain. He ordered the cannon fired....not the ship's cook.

As far as Stalin goes, there would have been any number of people killed in his purges. Russian orthodox, muslim, jewish, atheists, he did not care.
He had a goal to spread communism and this bullshit about religion being a threat to the state is the standard cop out answer. It was not a concern. Lenin had done a fine job of suppressing the church long before Stalin came to power. This was mainly because of their propping up the Tzarist regime which was standard of most churches...as Jefferson noted long before the Russian Revolution.

In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.