If I lived in a coutry controlled by neo-Nazi’s I certainly wouldn’t.

Perhaps. Perhaps not. Many people have bravely spoken out in parts of the world when their lives were at risk. There is discretion, and there is putting your head in the sand.

We don’t live in a country completed governed by religious zealots…yet, so I am relatively free to say what I want without fear of attack. Of course, even if that fear was real, I’d still like to think I’d speak my mind.

That is indeed what I am trying to say. This kind of stuff alienates the very audience that I am trying to get to understand atheism. Why would they care to understand if all they see is an attack on religion? Since THEY aren’t violent, they shouldn’t.

I agree with you. That is why what I write about varies between exposing the lies and horrors of religion, and also promoting the beauty of life, science, rationality, free-thought, and atheism.

“However, if you’re saying that it’s more important for atheists to clarify themselves and promote the benefits of free-thought and rationality, instead of just picking at religion’s faults all the time, I’d agree with you.”
That is indeed what I am trying to say. This kind of stuff alienates the very audience that I am trying to get to understand atheism. Why would they care to understand if all they see is an attack on religion? Since THEY aren’t violent, they shouldn’t.

You’re correct that most wars are fought for resources, land, or money. But many wars if not fought directly for religious reasons are religiously motivated. I doubt any historian would claim that the Crusades were not religious wars. The French Wars of Religion between Catholics and Protestants are another example. So is the Thirty Years war. Or the Saxon Wars, were pagans were forcibly converted to Christianity or killed.

Politics can be a broad term. Were the 9/11 terrorist attacks and fighting in Northern Ireland for many generations political or religious? Well, both. It’s impossible for politics not to come into play when discussing nations and people, but the primary divider between many wars is religion. It has been the single term of identification between rival groups. Protestants vs Catholics is a well-known example. Christianity vs Islam is a more recent example.

So, like I said above, I’m not pinning ALL murder and war on religion, but I am pinning a lot of it on there. I recommended reading Sam Harris or “God is not Great” by Chris Hitchens. I also wrote about religious massacres recently here:
http://ellis14.wordpress.com/2007/07/24/why-do-i-bother-tue-24th-jul-07/. To quote myself:

What if you were one of the 90,000 Christians slaughtered by Persians in 614 AD? How does the Qurayza massacre of 900 Jews at the hands of Muslims back in 627 sound? What about the 4,500 non-Christians killed by Charlemagne in 782? Still bored? Ok: the first crusade in Germany where 10,000 Jews were killed? The 20,000 Muslims butchered in 1098 at the Siege of Antioch by the Christian Crusaders? The 70,000 Muslims slaughtered a year later in Jerusalem (guess by whom?) The 2750 Jewish and Muslim prisoners murdered by Christian King Richard in 1191? The 40,000 Christians killed by Sultan Baibar in 1268? The 10,000 Christians in Tripoli exterminated in 1289 by Muslims? How “boring” was being a Huguenot I wonder when Catholic mobs wiped out 70,000 of them in 1572? Ulster, Ireland, and the year 1641: 12,000 Protestants are murdered by Irish Catholics? Skip forward to 1933, in Simele, where 3000 Christians are targeted by Iraqis.

1947, India: about one million are killed in religious warfare between Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims.

Rwanda, 1994: the religion-inspired conflict between the Hutus and the Tutsis reaches a zenith when 937,000 Tutsis are extirpated by Hutus.

2005, Turbi in Kenya: sixty people are shot dead (twenty-two were children) near a primary school.[1]

Joe said:

You completely failed to respond to the part about how it is bad for the public acceptance of atheism. Does that not matter to you?

I assume you’re referring to your original statement here:

Also it does not advance much public acceptance of atheism to have atheists blaming religion and the religious for war and violence. If the goal of atheists going public is more acceptance by mainstream culture than this rhetoric needs to be downplayed or avoided not trumpeted in every atheism book and blog.

That’s like saying we shouldn’t blame Nazis for the murder of 6 million Jews, in case it offends people.

My goal isn’t to make atheism necessarily more popular, like some pyramid scheme or football club. It’s not about winning votes like a politician and saying whatever keeps the masses happy.

Sometimes speaking out is unpopular, but you still have to do it. Of course the public view of atheism matters to me, and if atheists were generally lying about religion and blaming it for things it hadn’t done, then fair enough. But we’re not doing that. We’re pointing out what IS wrong with religion and the violence that HAS been done in its name.

To make excuses for religion or be politically correct about what we say is mealy-mouthed pandering, in my opinion.

However, if you’re saying that it’s more important for atheists to clarify themselves and promote the benefits of free-thought and rationality, instead of just picking at religion’s faults all the time, I’d agree with you.

“2. Your statement above supposes, for example, that instead of a Holy Crusade to the Middle East to forcibly convert millions of Arabs to Christianity, the armies of England would have Crusaded for another non-religious reason. This is, of course, nonsense.”
Religion was not necessarily the primary motivation behind any of the crusades. So much so that the Christians at times used Arab (i.e. Muslim) mercenaries to bolster their numbers. They were plundering expeditions. Most wars are for resources, land or money.

“3. The direct cause of many atrocities and war, and indeed the reason for much oppression to progress etc, is directly religious. To say that if religion wasn’t around then people would find something else to repress and fight over is totally unjustified.”
Again, it is religion as the cause that I am disagreeing with.

“It is like saying to someone who is bereaving the death of a loved one: “oh get over it, if you weren’t crying over their death you’d be crying over something else!”

Well, no, actually. If the other person hadn’t died they’d have no reason to cry! Simple as.”
I’m not saying that. I’m saying that’s not really what they are crying about. maybe they are really crying about not getting an inheritance.

You completely failed to respond to the part about how it is bad for the public acceptance of atheism. Does that not matter to you?

Neither evolution or your atheism statement are myths. Myths are what Bronze Age goatherders who sit around a fire concoct because they have no technological or scientific ability to determine the facts that will explain their lack of understanding of the world around them. So they make up stories. These stories then get told over and over, through generations, until someone has the bright idea to put them in writing, after writing is invented. They then give these writings a name, like The Bible, or the Qu’ran, or the Bhagavad Vita.

That’s what a myth is.

Evolution, being far more recent, and supported by scientific research, is not a myth, unless you’re a Christian who doesn’t accept the facts because it conflicts with your written myths.

Whether someone has killed in the name of atheism is not a myth either, unless your a Ph.D. Chemist, who refuses to accept the fact that there is no evidence for it.

I’ll take your last post as a concession on both counts. Thanks. It’s been fun.

I’ll tell you what, let’s just go with your story that no one has ever killed in the name of atheism.

So now we have 2 myths; macro evolution and atheists are all swell guys!

I am fully accepting of the fact that people over the ages have done horrible things in the name of religion. That does not necessarily put the blame on the religion. I prefer to blame the people.

I was going to respond by using that metaphor, then didn’t, but it was still in my head and my head connected it to you and voila’, when it did come out, it became yours. Sorry.

You are probably correct! I will only credit your guys for 50 million deaths instead of 100 million. You sure are one hell of a negotiator for your side!

Let’s do a little more negotiating. Actual evidence since the old USSR opened up is about 3 million actually killed. Some find that unreliable, because records are unreliable. It also doesn’t include somewhere from 6-8 million who died in the famine, which may or may not have been intentional. (I find famine to be a somewhat odd tool for genocide, but, hey, whatever works!) The most liberal estimates go no higher than about 20 million, but as I say, the only real evidence is for about 3 million.

Now, I can find no evidence that anyone was executed, deported, or otherwise killed or missing because they refused to embrace atheism, as opposed to being deemed enemies of the communist state. Since that’s your claim, it’s your burden to show it, so let me know if you have any evidence for it, your jocular offer to split the difference notwithstanding.

I got my info from Wikipedia, and I know you don’t accept that as definitive.

But I saw my name and was wondering where you got this “The gun metaphor Geno used is apt, in a perverse way.” I made so such gun metaphor.

So, there claim was “disbelieve or die!” and 100 million died in the name of “no God.”

To say otherwise is to rewrite history.

So you’re saying that everyone killed in the Russian pogroms, all the people sent to Siberia, all the peasants who died from famine and starvation caused by Stalin’s agrarian policies, all the people who died in his purges, was because these people refused to denounce their religion, and embrace atheism?

Who’s re-writing history here?

Remember, this is his response to my challenge that atheist do similar bad things.

Ummm, no. It was in response to Joe’s statement preceding mine:

I think the whole “religious people do bad things” line of argument should be dropped. It is unfortunate that Richard Dawkins and other popular atheists continue to flog it. People do bad things; religions and philosophies don’t.