The Atheist Obsession with Insulting Christians

[Randy Carson]

But for all that, you can't actually refute anything that I post, can you?

Hence, you belittle me for doing so because you have nothing else to say.

No, Randy. I'm just a person who doesn't like to repeat himself, since I went to great lenghts in other threads explaining the matter at hand. If you're interested, you can easily look them up.

If you're bored with the material, you don't have to read my posts and participate in my threads, abaris.

I don't follow you around the forum looking for yours...

[abaris]

If you're bored with the material, you don't have to read my posts and participate in my threads, abaris.

If I see idiocy, I comment on it.

That's supposed to be an insult, by the way. I'm simply amused how seriously you take yourself and your half baked knowledge. No, I'm not bored.

[Randy Carson]

If you're bored with the material, you don't have to read my posts and participate in my threads, abaris.

If I see idiocy, I comment on it.

That's supposed to be an insult, by the way. I'm simply amused how seriously you take yourself and your half baked knowledge. No, I'm not bored.

Then I'm happy to entertain.

Tell me, is there a particular topic related to theism or Catholicism that you would like to discuss?

[abaris]

Tell me, is there a particular topic related to theism or Catholicism that you would like to discuss?

No, because I deal in realities. Unless you want to discuss the history thereoff. In which case I'm happy to help, as you already know.

[Crossless2.0]

Let me put it this way: Hitler and the National Socialists incorporated Nietzsche in rather the same way that some crackpots in the Christian camp "incorporate" the Bible into their worldviews without bothering to responsibly read the Bible and really understand it.  I'm pretty certain that Nietzsche would have hated Hitler's fucking guts.

And if I may ask a follow up:

How did the Nazis use Nietzsche to their own purposes - or what did they find in his writings that enabled them to justify in their own actions?

I'm just about ready to leave the office and go out with my wife, so I'll simply throw out one example.  Nietzsche was fond of characterizing Judeo/Christian morality as a type of "slave" morality, distinguished from what he called "master" morality which he associated with the old Gemanic/Nordic religions and culture as he imagined it before it was "corrupted" by Christianity.  On the face of things, that seems to fit with certain Nazi tropes. However, "slave" and "master" were not prescriptive terms in Nietzsche's usage; they were simply descriptive types he employed as a kind of shorthand, and he never advocated the enslavement (much less the attempted extermination) of Jews.  In fact, among major 19th Century European intellectuals, Nietzsche stands almost alone in his repeated, even shrill, denunciation of anti-Semitism, and he expressed some qualified respect for Jews and Judaism.  (He also referred to Buddhism as a sort of slave morality/worldview, but it's pretty clear in his writings that he had a qualified respect for Buddhism, especially when contrasted with Christianity.)  Since Nietzsche was a confirmed a-moralist and during a later stage in his career tended to view everything through the prism of will to power, there has been this persistent misunderstanding that when he wrote about Ubermensch he had in mind strongmen such as Napoleon or the Borgias, and that he would have welcomed a Hitler as a sort of "Over Man".  What this leaves out of account are the myriad passages in his work in which he discusses the need to sublimate one's drives for power into life-affirming, creative values.  Again, he cites Goethe as a prime example of what he had in mind.

One of the many problems with Nietzsche is that he was not a rigorous, systematic philosopher (and changed his views a number of times throughout his career) and that he was almost too good a writer for his own good.  He delighted in puns, paradoxical expressions, hyperbole, etc., so he is one of those writers a reader must approach with wariness.  He practically invites misunderstanding, and any Nazi looking for confirmation of his biases and prejudices can certainly find what he wants in Nietzsche, provided he doesn't read the books carefully and completely.

Finally, I should point out that the book most cited by the Nazis was an abomination called "The Will to Power", which was actually just a collection of scattered notes that Nietzsche had compiled for a projected four-volume work he eventually abandoned in favor of other projects.  He never intended these notes for publication (the blame for this publication lies with his sister who became his literary executor after his breakdown), and they should not be seen as representative of his developed thoughts or his work as a whole.  On a side note, prior to his breakdown, he had fallen out with his sister because she had married a virulent anti-Semite and had adopted political views that can fairly be characterized as proto-Nazi. His disgust with this state of affairs is frequently expressed in his letters and alluded to in his books.  Anti-Semitism, incidentally, is also one of the issues that led to his falling out with Richard Wagner years earlier.

[Minimalist]

Tell me, is there a particular topic related to theism or Catholicism that you would like to discuss?

What's with all the pervert priests?  Why did the brass try to cover it up instead of dealing with their crimes?  Why have you no shame to still be a member of such a vicious little cult?

[Thumpalumpacus]

Official records from the USSR aren't necessarily very reliable. The advent of extrajudicial punishment meant that many deaths were never recorded.

Granted, there were likely quite a few extrajudicial killings, but nothing on the order of massacres that would change the results by a huge margin. But the Soviets actually tended to keep pretty good records, most of the time, and they weren't exactly ashamed of anything they were doing, such that they'd try to hide it. If there's one thing socialist republics do well, it's bureaucracy! 

However, it's why I was easily willing to concede the higher number of 20 million as the "concensus" estimate, while noting that the number of actual executions in the name of the state (the ones that would have been done publicly, "to make a point for effect"), which is the only category that actually bears on the original topic of "killing in the name of atheism", was far, far lower.

Well yeah, killing in the name of atheism was a pretty paltry number. As others have accurately pointed out, the murders committed by the Soviet regime were driven by power politics or economic policy, not religion, largely. The kulaks weren't killed for their faith; they were killed for the land expropriation and the fact that they represented a power bloc that posed an exaggerated threat to the regime. Another factor not touched-upon is that GULag deaths were often random -- people enslaved not for any action, but solely on the basis of a report that landed them in Vorkuta or Kolyma, where they were worked to death logging or mining.

The Orthodox Church was indeed persecuted, but generally to the extent of expropriation of church property, not the murder of believers, or even clergy in general.

But I disagree with your minimizing extrajudicial murders, based on my reading of Solzhenitsyn -- admittedly controversial, but still relevant. According to him, there were numerous killed with no records kept. Nor were accurate records kept, I think, of the resettlements during the 30s.

The true number will never be known. Solzhenitsyn's estimate of 50-60 million is almost certainly too high, but I don't for a moment doubt that Stalin exceeded Hitler's toll of roughly eleven millions. That being said, your point that the massacres were generally not based on faith or its lack is spot-on.

[Thumpalumpacus]

[Minimalist]

The orthodox church suffered the same problem as the catholic church in France.  Way too closely aligned with the oppressors...which is typical of religion...and deserving of all the shit they got from the revolutionaries.  You can only push people so far and then even muttering 'god' won't save your sorry ass.

[Thumpalumpacus]