Most westerners are woefully misguided in their interpretation of eastern religions.
We are still people.
I'm always shocked when Europeans or Americans single out Christianity as some uniquely malevolent force.
People are like this. We have always been like this. Being atheist, agnostic, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, pagan, heathen, etc -- it doesn't make you superhuman. We're all capable of this and the sooner everyone realizes this the sooner we can work to prevent tragedy.
Much religion depends on magical thinking and/or blind appeals to authority. IME it facilitates bad behavior that's less likely to be tolerated by more rational belief systems.
The worldview of many atheists I know seems to depend on magical thinking, holding of contradictory beliefs, and blind appeal to authority when it comes to the government.
I don't think there is clear cause and effect when it comes to religion and irrational behavior.
Certainly exceptions exist to every rule or trend.
Having visited over a hundred churches (for thousands of services), they are the only place I've consistently seen people teach and accept things that what everyone can plainly see is false. Children are taught that fallacies are better than critical thinking, wherever it serves their belief system.
People often easily conflat religion, theology and theocracy. But an atheist dictator that would put death sentence for anyone that engages in a religion would obviously not be more ethical than some religious zealtoth doing the same for atheism. I'm not aware of any politically powerful atheist in history that went this path. I mean, most likely Stalin was atheist, but I doubt it ever was a matter to send people to gulag. Atheism is just rare as an ontological belief, so it makes sense most faith intolerance happened between religious dévots.
Note that strictly speaking, atheism is just rejecting the existence of any god. That doesn't necessarily make magic out of the equation. Though certainly atheism is generally associated to the rejection of any superstitious belief.
But just believing that ZFC make a sound mathematical foundation doesn't make you an advanced flawless logician. People stay mere humans, whatever they believe might be the most relevant foundation to use their more or less weak reasoning ability.
Mathematics is seen a formally grown, logical system, that has features that are "discovered" rather than invented .. "Given some {X}, {Y} follows without question".
It is understood that one can tweak an axiom, the fifth posulate for example, and get a different logical ediface - a non Euclidean hyperbolic geometry in that case.
The ZFC "Axiom of Choice" has bearing on infinities and other things, including many proofs that depend on reduction by absurdity.
The arc of history simply does not show that. We can point to the various issues in communist states (not criticizing communism but all the communist states are undoubtedly atheist).
Was it the absence of religion that created issues in communist states? Or perhaps authoritarianism, hero worship, overly centralized planning, low trust culture, or some other combination of factors at play?
History's arc is much longer than communism, and religion is tied to some pretty horrific events.
Given that some of the hatred was targeting specifically religious people (for example, the CCP bans religious people from their ranks), then I think it's safe to say that it is driven by a dislike of religion
You can agree with their take on religion or not, but their motivation remains the same.
The big genocides and mass murders of the twentieth century were motivated by non-religious (the holocaust) or atheist (in the Soviet union, China, and Cambodia) ideologies..
Even historically religious motives for "bad behaviours" were rare.
Were those genocides really motivated by of a lack of religion or other factors like racism and authoritarianism?
> Even historically religious motives for "bad behaviours" were rare.
Doubt. Still, even if that's accurate, my point was that raising people to be easily manipulated sheep doesn't produce a robust society. It just makes them easier to exploit. MLMs are common in predominantly Mormon communities for a reason.
> Were those genocides really motivated by of a lack of religion or other factors like racism and authoritarianism?
You misunderstand what I said. I was refuting the idea that religion caused genocides, rather than claiming lack of religion caused genocides.
I think religion per se is too generic and varied to correlate with anything. Sometimes the lack of a particular religion or variant of a particular religion may either cause or oppose genocide - there is a reason, for example, that the Nazis wanted to replace Christianity with new religions, (Positive Christianity and new-paganism - both very different from the originals they drew on/pretended to be), consistent with their ideology.
I mean... We constantly hear that European colonization was due to Christianity and yet that cannot account for the treatment of the Syriac Christians of Kerala by the European colonists supposedly driven by Christianity.
This is the heart of the matter: any ill by an atheist is determined to be caused by something other than atheism. Meanwhile any motivation of an evil doer who professes a religion is pinned on that religion.
> I mean... We constantly hear that European colonization was due to Christianity ..
Who is "we" and why do they hear that?
Eg: Australia was colonised to take land possession ahead of the Dutch and the French, for finnancial gain, and to utilise the prisoners piling up in hulks on the river flats once the thirteen colonies in North America stopped taking them.
The thirteen US colonies were largely established as hard nosed business ventures with substantial private investments that looked for an eventual return.
The South and Central American colonies were pretty much all established to support plantations for sugar and other goods.
In these examples religion came along for the ride and provided a carrotof comfort in contrast to the sticks and guns of the military who also rode in.
> It's constantly used in polemics of Christianity.
Doesn't make it true though.
> Whereas actions of atheists are unable to be used against atheism
Why not, aside from the obvious observation that "atheists" are not as homogenuous in their belief as, say, "Catholics".
In general the actions of, say, Nazis, can be used against them (ie Nazis) but not against humans globally or atheists in Australia, that's nonsensical.
> Why not, aside from the obvious observation that "atheists" are not as homogenous in their belief as, say, "Catholics".
Only if people are doing something because they are Catholics.
Atheist polemicists often treat the actions of any (supposed, in many cases) Christian as an objection to Christianity in general, which is just as nonsensical. That is what is objectionable in their argument.
I'm sure some do .. I'll even grant that most online that engage in such arguments likely do.
I'd suggest the bulk of atheists don't spend much time pointlessly going around and around in such circles.
The "common tactics" of "Atheist polemicists" presented here so far are just daft - they're more the hallmark of obsessives that engage in oline forum textfests.
> Only if people are doing something because they are Catholics.
The statement I made was that "atheists" are not as homogeneous in their belief as, say, "Catholics".
I stand by it.
I would also suggest that Mormons are more homogeneous as a group than "atheists", the Greek Orthodox are more homogeneous as a group than "atheists", etc.
If people engage in activities under the organisational overwatch of the Catholic Church, eg: the Christian Brothers in Bindoon, then the Catholic Church bears responsibility for allowing those actions to proceed unchecked.
> I'm sure some do .. I'll even grant that most online that engage in such arguments likely do.
Its pretty common to do so.
For example, blaming the Spanish inquisition (an arm of the Spanish monarchy) on the Catholic Church, or people claiming that Hitler was a Catholic (without adding the important "as a child" qualifier).
> would also suggest that Mormons are more homogeneous as a group than "atheists", the Greek Orthodox are more homogeneous as a group than "atheists", etc.
Going back to what I said earlier, the original point was religion vs lack of religion - and I would argue that religious people (Christians, Hindus, pagans, ....) are a less homogenous group than atheists.
You do understand that the Coran state very explicitly that apostate should be killed, and while this is nice to pretend holy books are all about metaphors, it won't change much to the mind of those who think they are acting in good faith with divine commands when they murder heretics.
Of course, atheist compatible doctrines too can can be taken as reason to go kill those who dare to believe otherwise. But they can't pretend they have a book directly inspired by some super being that justify their actions. That is, one can also adulate Marx and kill random dudes because that's fair within their interpretation of das Kapital.
We are still people.
I'm always shocked when Europeans or Americans single out Christianity as some uniquely malevolent force.
People are like this. We have always been like this. Being atheist, agnostic, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, pagan, heathen, etc -- it doesn't make you superhuman. We're all capable of this and the sooner everyone realizes this the sooner we can work to prevent tragedy.