Summations Only

I couldn't agree more. Indeed, the problem begins with the people who write "scripture" and invent gods in order to externalize the responsibility for whatever behavior they want to incite (be it good or bad behavior). Or Buddhist truths, or Hindu truths, or Zoroastrian truths, or Mayan or Aztec truths, or animist truths, or (my personal favorite) Socratic truths. (I think you meant to say "deterrent" rather than "detriment".) No, I think you're quite wrong on that point, for a variety of reasons. On the one hand, the terms "Biblical truths" and "Jehovah's righteous standards" encompass rather a lot of nasty stuff (slavery, rape, merciless genocide, etc); on the other hand, there are quite a few deterrents against people committing human rights violations that have no dependence whatsoever on the Bible or your particular God. Since I agree with you that the root of the problem is people, and especially since I don't think there is any such thing as a God of the sort you are referring to here, this statement seems to me very much like a strawman argument. And then there's the "no true Scotsman" aroma that always comes with phrases like "false Christians and other false religions". Would you like to present any sort of evidence-based criteria for differentiating "true Christians" from "false" ones? Is it simply that "true Christians don't do things that we consider bad"?Regarding your first discussion point, I think it's worthwhile to get a little more clarity about the motivation and implementation of atrocities by "atheists" like Stalin, in comparison to those of religious practitioners. (BTW, I think Stalin was an "atheist" primarily in the sense that he opposed organized religion because he viewed it as unacceptable competition for his own demagogic ambitions.)Stalin was indeed responsible for many millions of deaths, not only through ordering deliberate acts of violence (and possibly murdering people himself), but also through the enforcement of disastrous policies for farming (based on dogmatic pronouncements rather than evidence), which led to widespread starvation. Do you think this violence was specifically addressed against theists because of their beliefs, and their clash against Stalin's atheism?I think not. Stalin murdered people (or ordered them to be murdered) primarily for the sake of expanding and sustaining his own power. Now, when Shiites and Sunnis, or Catholics and Protestants, or Hindus and Muslims, or Jews and Muslims, or Buddhists and Muslims, or Christians and Muslims, or Jews and Christians, or Hindus and Sikhs, or... well, whenever any given pair of religions come into conflict, such that adherents of one seek to annihilate those of the other and/or vice-versa, it can certainly be argued that the violence here is also for the sake of expanding and sustaining the power of the particular groups (actually, the religious leaders of those groups).But in those various religious conflicts, the stated reason for violence is always cited to be the will of a deity, and the targeting of violence is always selective, based specifically on the beliefs that people hold. This contrasts starkly with Stalin's violence, which was only selective on the basis of whether he personally felt that a victim's death would further the interests of the Stalinist regime, but was otherwise indiscriminate.{AbE: It's also quite likely that a lot of killing may have been done by others within Stalin's regime, acting entirely on their own initiative and without his knowledge, for the purpose of expanding/sustaining their own power, whether or not they felt it would advance the Stalinist agenda.}In religious conflicts, it is specifically the identification of persons with particular religious creeds that drives the selection of victims in targeting violence. If the religious beliefs (or the differences among religious beliefs) did not exist, there would be no motivation for the violence.Edited by Otto Tellick, : No reason given.