Good post KC. However it seems to be within mankind to need an explanation of what he sees around him so he invents a creator and then is willing to commit atrocities to defend the creation he has made. There are many good religious people but I am sure they would be just as good if there was no such thing as religion.
Unfortunately it is all too easy to measure the amount of people who have killed in the name of their religion - but far more difficult to calculate the number who have refrained from killing for exactly the same reason (the larger number I would imagine). Without religious people who meddled in politics you would have no such thing as conscientious objection, no such thing as amnesty international, and no such thing as Greenpeace. I am sorry but the largest wars in history have been started by atheists, who thought that they would never have to answer for their actions.
Is the same not true of atheists? So there are no organisations for good in this world accept those who are supported by organised religion? And all supporters of your stated list are religious? I've supported both those organisations after I saw the light of atheism. In 1933, prior to the annexation of Austria into Germany, the population of Germany was approximately 67% Protestant and 33% Catholic; while the Jewish population was less than 1%. So where did Hitler find the troops? Hitler wrote: "I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator. And accepting Stalin was trying to spread atheism again the people were largely believers prior to 1922 so the mighty religious faithful stood up against him? I am not saying that during the early development of man that religion didn't serve a useful purpose. And no one is saying that to look for an answer to your questions you may not resort to spiritualism. But when a religious person, most often by chance of birth location, argues that he is one of the chosen, and that the rest are wrong, one has to wonder why his god who made the world is so weak. Wouldn't a god who made the world, the creator of all, love all the people?.
It is impossible to guess how many people refrained from killing so you cannot compare the two. As you say - you just imagine. Amnesty international could exist with or without religion. I was an atheist member. If there is no religion you do not need conscientious objectors in a religious sense but you will still have people like me whose conscience does not allow me to support killing- without a god to tell me. I was also a member of Greenpeace - as an atheist. In a world without religion people would still have an innate sense of right and wrong - a conscience; and organisations like Amnesty and Greenpeace would exist but be formed perhaps by the very same people without hiding behind a mysterious force. Wars are generally fought for tribal reasons it is true - but religion has been used since pre-biblical times to support and exaggerate them. Even Hitler used religion to support his actions. Since biblical times gods have been used to justify any wars men wanted to fight. A god who believed in his own ten commandments including thou shalt not kill would make sure people understood that was an absolute - not don't kill unless other people are horrible. Anyway - you missed the main point of my post which was not to blame wars on religion but to say: There are many good religious people but I am sure they would be just as good if there was no such thing as religion. In other words people do not need religion even to be good.
We seem to have got bored with the election results so tolerate another off subject comment please. Christians, Jews and Muslims all profess to believe in an all-powerful god. I think in all three he sets himself up as the ultimate judge and favours people not committing murder. How then does a follower of one of these three religions justify taking on god's role? If Protestants are bad, or Catholics are bad - or Jews or Muslims then god can sit back and give them what for when they peg it. Until then members of that faith would be better just warning their fellow humans that come the big day they are for it - instead of deciding to do it for god without his permission.
Just one further thought: Where does Greenpeace say it has any relationship with religion? And Amnesty international says "We are independent of any political ideology, economic interest or religion.".
I do not include Cologne or others on this board of this BUT I do think many religious people believe they are superior to unbelievers. Hence they think good things are made by religious people and somehow religion is the cause. In fact it is nonsense - people are good or bad in spite of religion not because of it. I also am only talking about the religions that have a little god sitting on a cloud directing traffic -not spirituality etc - that is entirely different. Any of us can believe there is some "force" or "thing" beyond us - that is not unnatural - a bit like belief in ghosts - but people who justify what they do because they think it is god's will are another kettle of fish.
Interesting that the monotheistic religions.. christianity, islam and judaism... all see God as a person.... so that may give soldiers terrosrists etc something to identify with. Less wars in Hindu and Buddhist countries... with a different view of God. I have always found it farcical that armies have chaplains who bless them etc.. on each side of the battlefield... who has the better God!!
There may be many atheists who are members of those groups, but they were both started by Quakers. Just as it was the Quakers who first succeeded in establishing conscientious objection as a legally accepted term. They were also the first people to free slaves in the Southern States before the American Civil War. Harold Wilson also said that the Labour Party owed more to Methodism than it did to Marx - and he was right. A third of its first MPs in Parliament came from a Methodist background. The question is - were these good people who just happened to be Quakers or Methodists ? Or, were their actions a result of their religious beliefs ? We will never know this. When I said earlier that the biggest wars in history were started by atheists - I did actually have Hitler in mind at the time of writing. He despised all known religions and churches - particularly Catholicism, but had to appease them with some of his rhetoric. He regarded Christianity as having enslaved mankind and diverted him from all 'nobility'. Like most dictators in those times he was able to say one thing to one group of people and something completely contradictory to another (without the medial possibilities of being found out). There could have been no long term coexistence between National Socialism and the church (unless the Nazis had completely rewritten the Bible). In the end the war on the Eastern front was waged between 2 forms of Socialism - both atheist (and, I hate to admit it - both left wing). And Mussolini was even more antagonistic against the church.
Interesting stuff colognehornet and wouldn't dispute any of it. The only points I'd add are: It is only in recent times and only in some parts of the world that atheists have been able to 'come out' if you get my meaning. To this day in the US if you want to be in politics you declare yourself Christian, if you want to 'live' in some parts of the middle east you declare yourself Muslim. Not all is as it seems. While I accept some religious people do good I'm still concerned that hundreds of thousands of believers rushed with enthusiasm to support Hitler and Stalin in their activities. Yet WW2 had nothing to do with religion? I seriously question whether Mother Theresa did more harm to the world than good. Again not all is as it appears. I offer this to illustrate the most worrying thing for me - that many religious people are happy to destroy this planet in their rush to get to their heaven. As you say both the organisations you mention have had to dis-associate themselves from their religious origins (in the sense the originators had a religion, which in their time would be strange if they hadn't). And there are already many excellent organisations in the world started by atheists and run on an atheist basis. Sadly some of them exist to protect individuals who dare to question the particular form of religion practised in their birth place. [Note: I always find the idea of apostasy being punishable as quite bizarre. It is like a bad teacher beating hell out of a poor school child because he didn't understand. ] And I still cannot reconcile how any religion can claim to be the true religion. The odds, even if you ignore atheism, are very, very small. And why has the true god failed to get his message across to the planet he built? But I will say if all religions were like the Quakers or the CofE I would have no problem with them. But I must leave it there. I will continue to be mystified as I said before how any moderately educated non brainwashed person can in a literal sense believe in one faith. And I seriously suspect that given access to information and free will the number of members of organised religions would be minimal. I guess I must settle for being glad that after an attempt to indoctrinate me by the CofE I saw the light and became a hornet.
Just because some religious people are peaceful - in fact most religious people are peaceful - does not obscure the fact that wars have been fought for centuries purely over religious beliefs. I am sure the kind of people who started beneficial movements would have done so anyway. Do you really think that people who believe in good need a personal god to tell them to do it? Strangely the fact that Hitler hated religion is an argument in favour of atheism - perhaps if he had not got the hatred of Jews, Catholics etc - if they did not exist even he would not have found fertile soil in other people's prejudice.
People being stoned to death for adultery, homosexuality etc are products of religion. Making suicide a crime is the result of religious intolerance. Denying abortion and the way women have been treated when found to be pregnant out of wedlock are most associated with religion. In fact most intolerance is the product of one religious bigotry or another. There may be some good associated with individual religious people but the institution of organised religion has been hateful in the most part. Unlike KC I do not consider the CofE exempt in any way from the prejudice of other protestant sects - their support for warfare and approval of putting to death young men who were shell shocked etc has been abominable.
Quickly adds "I meant CofE as it is in England today. Fairly benign" ps Cologne: Ed and I seem to be ganging up on you and that certainly is not my, or I suspect his intention. I'm sure if we got together we would have a great and in depth discussion. Accepting I'm sure we would part still with differences. Anyway I must get to work so all the very best to both of you and thanks for an interesting discussion and sharing your views in a civilised manner (not so common on the internet these days) .
Unfortunately many people have just enough religion to divide them but not enough to bring them together. Many of the so called practices or laws which we associate with various religions are, in fact, cultural. Priestly classes have hijacked religion for their own purposes and they interpret the scriptures for the masses - how many Moslems have actually read the Khoran and understood it in their own language ? Very few I would suggest. How many Christians know that a type of Communism is described in the Bible as the model of how Christians should live together ? Also very few - those parts of the Bible have been very suppressed over the last 2,000 years. If a person believes in God then he is compelled to accept that God loves variety - many different races, many different species, and yes, many different religions - surely an omnipotent God could have created us all believing the one thing if he had wanted it that way. But he didn't - he/she/it created a World with as much variety as possible - and so we must also embrace this variety. If you really read the Khoran, Bible, Tora and Bhagavad Ghita then you will find the same things said in a different way. Unfortunately many believers don't reach this stage of belief. If you however choose not to base your life around dead, crusty books (what can dead books tell us about the living anyway ?) then I can well understand this.
Hitler was a christian and that was his cause. One read of Mein Kampf makes that obvious. There is plenty of evidence to support this position through his rise to power and during the war and only apologist "historians" disputing the fact. Mao was raised a Buddhist. Stalin was educated in the seminary and was to be a priest. No wars have been fought in the name of atheism. They have all been fought in the name of religion or political ideology. All three knew that religiosity had to be destroyed or channelled: Mao and Stalin chose the former, Hitler chose the latter. Hitler only persecuted those elements of the church which did not share his vision (i.e. did what any decent human being would do and protect the persecuted) but for the most part they followed him. Atheism means a lack of belief in god or gods. That's it. I am an agnostic atheist - I do not "know" that there is no god, but I see no evidence for a God: and absence of evidence IS evidence of absence. I go two steps further: I am anti-theist (a dislike of all organised religion); I am an apistevist (I consider Faith to be the most dishonest position). Take away the religion and you take away the pretence of righteousness to hate: hate is stripped bare and has nowhere to hide. Religion preys on our fear of death: my way or the die way be it in this world or "the next"... this is why islam, in particular, is such a problem. Religion controls what we can and cannot put in our mouths... I'm sorry but no goatherders guide to the galaxy is going to tell me what I can or cannot put in my mouth. Nor do we get our morality from religious text: it precedes it. God is not great and religion poisons everything: Christopher Hitchens. Religious tolerance is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural ignorance: Sam Harris.
Fez, there is a difference between Hitler's public pronouncements on Christianity and eg. ''Hitler's table talk'', which was based on shorthand recordings of Hitler's conversation - taken down for prosterity by SS officers at the behest of Bormann. It appears that Hitler did a very good job of hiding his religious scepticism from millions of Germans - just as he hid his ideological respect for Marxism in Mein Kampf. These other sources make it very clear that Hitler was neither a practicing Christian nor an openly confessed atheist - but had rather an opportunistic approach. He could not afford to offend the religion of so many Germans - but it is clear that the long term coexistence of National Socialism and the Church would not have been possible. His views on religion were very similar to those of Stalin. He is noted for having regretted that Christianity became the religion of Germany - whereas the Japanese religion, which emphasized dying for the fatherland as a virtue, and Islam, were more suited to the German nature than Christianity with it's flabbiness (his words not mine !!!).
I echo KC's comments but know Cologne is aware that this is friendly debate. I also am pretty sure his spirituality is not based on a monotheistic religion so we are all discussing "other people's Faith". Personally I have no issue with what anybody believes - for me they have invented god and that is their right. I have a problem when somebody has a belief and expects others to live by it.
We have discussed this before and neither of us have anything new to add. We have agreed to disagree in the past and I am happy with that as well as being comfortable with my position. One does have to wonder why the catholic church only saw fit to excommunicate only the one of Hitler's henchmen and that for the crime of marrying a protestant. I note that that particular institution continues to abjectly fail in its responsibilities. It has so much blood on its hands, it will not wash. Hirohito was indeed a living god to his people, but the concept of kamikaze came much later when they were losing: this is not the same as fighting to the death and not surrendering.
