When people pray, they are basically calling god a moron. You are challenging his divine plan. Who are you to ask god to change his plan?
Chrebet, first of all I didn't say that, nor do you understand the context. More importantly, do you know why you think slavery is wrong? It is because people CHANGED the norm. Normative thinking accepted slavery throughout history, it was religious figures who changed that. YOU are the intellectual by-product of religious thinking, NOT secular, by condemning slavery. Follow now? Like you, I condemn slavery and come from the earliest tradition we know of that questioned slavery (I am Jewish). As an aside, normative thinking can and will change. Some of what we espouse today will, in the future, be looked upon by our progeny as absolutely idiotic. So I would be less judgmental of those in the past and judge them within their context. After all, wouldn't you like the same? Or are you so sure that the way we live is utterly without flaw and immune to criticism that we needn't fear the judgment of history? If so, then I'd wager that many of them felt that way as well and yet here we are judging them to have been wrongheaded in so much. So I wonder what we have done today that will be viewed as wrongheaded in a century or two or three?
And yet I can, and have, provided a significant example (and can provide others) where religion and event religious institutions have done tremendous good. What good did the Nazis do? There was the Autobahn (an idea proposed under Weimar), their economic revival (begun by Weimar), and their anti-smoking campaign (they get that one). Now as an aside: I actually agree with you btw. Even as a Jew I can argue that if Hitler had, for the sake of argument saved a billion people while exterminating 11-13 million, would I say he did more good than harm? Yes. But he didn't, did he? He and Stalin murdere more human beings than any other people in human history and NEITHER were religious figures, they were the very definition of secular. (No doubt you'll attempt to twist this post into a defense of Hitler now). In the end what you think was a witty you've proven my point nicely (one I dislike making for a variety of reasons) and your replies have been disingenuous. I have made serious and considered posts, but if you cannot reply in the same way feel free to ignore my posts.
Do you know why I know that slavery is wrong? Empathy. Would I want someone to enslave me? I know that being enslaved wouldn't be a very good experience and I wouldn't want to impose that on somebody else. You claim that religious figures changed that. You mean Bishop Abraham Lincoln?
Hitler was an animal lover. Any good done by religion has been negated by the atrocities committed by religion. There is absolutely nothing that religion provides that cannot be achieved through secular means.
When I teach Western Civ, World History, etc., here is how I explain this: Let's say you believe that allowing your neighbor to believe the "wrong" religion is a sin. In this way, the concept of tolerance that we have come to expect of each other is rejected. Tolerance means you accept sinning in your midst and if you accept sinning then YOU are the sinner. It then becomes your duty to try to make others see that they are wrong and, if that cannot be accomplished, then they must be purged for your soul and theirs. This mode of thought was particularly prevalent in the Middle Ages but it is not limited to religion. I refer to it as an construct of an absolutist ideology.
Perhaps, and yet some of the attempts to accomplish what religion does through secular means have been mixed. Some succeed and some fail. Also, be careful about "atrocities" committed by religion. The vast majority of so-called religious wars are really dynastic squabbles. They'd have occurred with or without any religious component. In fact. The more we understand many of the wars of the Middle Ages the more we understand that the Church was trying to play peacemaker and failed. The church was powerful (and often corrupt, yes) but often attempted to do much good. Chrebet, try not to take such an absolute view of things. You're absolutely right that religion has been abused, but I think many people today have been given an overwhelmingly biased and negative view of religion, and many evils have been attached to religion that may not be fair (eg- dynastic wars). After all, did Stalin kill millions because he was secular? Religious people would like to make that argument, but I'm not so certain. I think he was a paranoid, sadistic, murderer and would have been so whether he was religious or secular. Do you see my point? Btw, honest question: which things do you consider to be atrocities committed in the name of religion? I'm genuinely interested.
Btw I forgot Hitler was an animal lover. Gotta give you that one. It always saddens me when I think that he tested his poison on his dog. Too bad he didn't just put a bullet in his own noggin in, say, 1918.
There is no atheist doctrine or authority. Stalin didn't kill in the name of not believing in the claim of a god. Let's not even go as far back as the Inquisition or the Crusades. How about 2015 where we still have people opposing gay marriage because of a book that is mostly fictional? How about people being burned in Africa because they are accused of witchcraft? Do we even want to get into genital mutilation?
Chrebet, you dont understand. No belief is created in a vacuum. The fact is that without the abolition movement you would almost certainly not think this way. Likewise, the abolition movement owes its beginning to a Catholic religious figure named De Las Casas in the Caribbean. The Church, at the time, failed to condemn slavery ( the church was, for all intents, a vassal of the Holy Roman Empire, and probably couldn't have opposed slavery without risking invasion) but individual members of the Church did and De Las Casas was a prominent voice in the early 16th century. Prior to this there had been a very successful movement to end serfdom as well, and so on. You act as though these things didn't happen and that the way you think has no foundation in the past. I can assure you with complete certainty that you are wrong. We are creatures of our past experiences. Now let me ask you seomthing: if all that was required to oppose slavery was to know it would not be a "very good experience" then why did ONLY the Judeo-Christian West successfully abolish slavery, eh? EVERY SINGLE anti-slavery law in the world today was either written by, influenced by, or motivated by Judeo-Christian Western anti-slavery tradition. Are you saying that Chinese, Arab, and Africans think slavery would be a good experience?! Of course not, that's silliness. But a unique tradition developed in western religion in regard to slavery and this tradition has influenced your thinking. And the lack of this tradition is why slavery still flourishes in parts of Africa and Asia. As an aside, since when does a person have to be a bishop to be religious? Lincoln was a religious person and viewed the ending of slavery as something that was a CHRISTIAN duty.
Religion created slavery and then abolished slavery. Sounds like the god of the bible. Create the problem and then solve it and then demand a bone. Like I said, there is nothing about religion that cannot be achieved through secular means.
we shouldnt judge people from the past. that said, nor should we operate off of their primitive writings and policies as well. it doesn't bode well for our evolution. sure, keep the good lessons but can we evolve please? thank you! side note- did you know that 13,000 jewish slaves were the ones who physically built the roman coliseum?
Do to others as you would have them do to you. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+6:31 We can take that from the bible and then archive it for historical purposes.
Actually this is not true. Stalin did kills for following religion, Eastern Orthodox to be precise. The larger point however is that Stalin was killing in the name of Communism. If you look closer, the doctrine of Marxism-Leninism very closely resembles religion. It had its own "saints" (Marx, Engels, Lenin), "bible" (Communist Manifesto), and customs (older posters here might recall parades on the Red Square, for example). My disagreement with you is when you're saying that religion committed atrocities. You're wrong. Atrocities were committed by people who were using religion as selling vehicle. And that vehicle need not to be God, communist and national-socialism work just as well.
Again, Stalin didn't kill in the name of not believing in god. My disagreement with you is when you're saying that National Socialism committed atrocities. You're wrong. Atrocities were committed by people who were using National Socialism as selling vehicle.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_in_the_Soviet_Union Here is a nice, succinct Wikipedia article on the Communist persecution of Christians (you must add to this Jews, Muslims, and other smaller religious groups) in Russia. This includes Stalin's harsh treatment of people and most assuredly he/they did kill people because of claims to G-d. In this case it was that the communists claimed there wasn't any G-d and these religions claimed there was and died for their beliefs. How is this different than the religious atrocities you mention? * I submit your problem isn't with religion, it is with absolutist ideology, which has nothing to do with G-d. However, post enlightenment thinking has chosen to attack religion for our ills. As for some of these other examples, again, I suggest you take a closer look. For example, genital mutilation isn't, in fact, supported by any significant religion. It is a tribal practice that has survived. I agree that it is barbaric and I also agree that some Muslims support it, but is it because they are Muslim or because of their tribal identities? Case in point: where genital mutilation is supported by the society the religious figures tend to accept and even, sometimes, support it. Where it isn't supported the religious figures oppose it, even when they share the same religion! This is key in differentiating what sort of practice one is looking at. You want to look at religious abuse? Look to the Pritestant Reformation when they opposed simony and indulgences. Look at the Jewish conflict over whether it is legitimate to give undue weight to certain Rebbes. And look at the Wahhabi fundamentalist approach to Islam that has helped to create groups like Isis. But once upon a time the ONLY social welfare that existed was the church and, even today where governments have become our safety nets, religious institutions still offer numerous institutions to help people. *- if you don't like Wikipedia I will find some nice academic sources for you. This article cites 12-20 million dead. This is a fairly reasonable estimate but we will never really know for a variety of reasons. Assuming this statistic is even close to accurate then the Communists alone likely killed more people than al of the religious wars of the Middle Ages..... combined!
If your last sentence is a serious point and not a jest, can you also agree that religion in itself is not evil, but rather a mechanism used by evil people?
To first paragraph: IMO communism is in itself an aggressive religion and as such destroyed anyone who deviated from its dogma to eliminate competition of beliefs.
