Summations Only

I've had it put to me that atheists must be amoral (because morals come from god), that believers must be more moral than me because they believe in God and one even said that there was nothing stopping him raping and murdering except for his belief in god and an afterlife.The trouble with all these people is that they're universally stupid.

Hitler either was a Christian or he was pretending to be one.Done.

I'm pretty much with you on that in that art is defined as something made by an artist and an artist is anyone who says he makes art.Of course Hitler could have been lying about being a Christian in order to further his political ends but as we can't actually tell the difference between a 'real' Christian and a pretend Christian, it's safest to take him at face value.btw Catholics aren't Christians apparently; which must come as a bit of a shock to them all.

To make a fair comparison across history, we need to adjust for relative population size and weaponry. I'll leave others to do the sums......

As well as correcting for relative population sizes and efficiency of weaponry over time, we should also consider correcting for belief system.We could start by making an assumption that all Stalin's top executive ranks were rabid atheists intent on nothing other than eradicating religion from their countrymen. So maybe that's a hundred people? We could then assume that the remainder of his top staffers have a normal distribution of belief and non-belief and are just following orders.How can we then allocate individual killings between atheist and believers? I suppose a start would be to say that the distribution of atheists amongst the Russian population would be about what it is on average today - say 10% - and that apart from the top dogs, that distribution will apply to his admin staff and military and civil security forces. So a start would be to say that around 90% of the deaths were down to believers following orders.We could then argue for relative blame, maybe add a correction factor for relative culpability dependant on distance from the killing decision. Perhaps we could use political and military rank as a proxy, then weight accordingly?Or we could just say that this whole argument is a crock of shit as no-one fights and dies for atheism. Communism and psychotic totalitarianism was the cause.

That's as daft as claiming that because they all have facial hair, that they killed in the name of Moustaches. Perhaps they all read Jane Austin or collected stamps too? Maybe they all had grandfather's whose favourite colour was red?

If the atheist was The Godfather, would it be a mafia-motivated atrocity or an atheist-motivated atrocity?

Agreed, he was just a very naughty boy.
(who just happened to perform miracles)

Are you seriously suggesting that God isn't Catholic?Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

Just as a general point, it's quite revealing that the question 'what religion is God?' or 'what religion is god a member of?' is just too damn embarrassing and revealing to answer.The concept of God being a Muslim, Hindu or a Baptist is utterly bonkers. Even those that believe in him, seem to know that he's above all that nonsense.So how come it's so important down here on our little planet?

Sadly, I don't think that's actually possible. It's a less extreme form of the Christian homophobe's 'love the sinner but hate the sin.' It's nonsense - beliefs maketh the man, people judge you on them and they can't avoid it.

Maybe the following quotes from True Christians from the Hitch is Dead thread can show us some true moral high ground: Maybe not.But on the assumption that two wrongs don't make a right, can we count the dead again? Or are we all agreed that it's an utterly facile activity?

Well, the subliminal proposition is that because atheists don't believe in God they are not threatened by the afterlife (or lack of) and so have no reason not to follow their primal lusts.We can rape and steal, lie and murder, pillage and slander without fear of reprisal by a vengeful god.Funny how we don't isn't it? You'd think that little piece of evidence - that we behave quite well considering - might carry a little weight, but for the idiots that believe it, it carries none. So we get inane threads like this.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

Woosh - there goes free will.......

Thanks for the advice Chuck, I am new here but not quite green enough not to notice the banned symbol next to your name or recognise cant when I see it. Enjoy the enforced rest.To get back on topic.Given that god has created us in order to die (but could obviously have done it differently), why is how many either side of this argument kills of any relevance to morality? Surely simply by just creating the mortality of all life, he has made killing a trivial issue in his own terms? So who are we to think any differentlty?